to what would now be thought a dangerous extent. There were no less than two hundred men per ship. It was no doubt for this reason that the fleets of that time were attended by a swarm of small vessels called victuallers. There was, in fact, insufficient room to store the provisions required for such considerable bodies of men in such diminutive craft for any length of time. These victuallers were of course a serious hindrance to any fleet. They were slow, and, being only merchant ships, employed wholly as transports, were perfectly incapable of offering any resistance to an enemy. Thus the naval force which they were meant to feed was not only kept back from movements of any rapidity, but was constantly compelled to employ a large part of its strength in protecting its own food against attacks by even insignificant ships belonging to the other side. One short cruise out, an attack on some part of the enemy's coast, and a prompt return home, was all that could be expected from fleets pestered by so many obstructions.
It is said that Howard was so well pleased with the force under his command that he urged the king to come down and take part in the attack on France himself, for which he was soundly rebuked by the Council as having shown an insufficient regard for the safety of His Majesty's sacred person. Yet King Henry might have made this voyage with very little risk, and Howard himself might have returned from the coast of France in safety but for his own headlong courage. On reaching the neighbourhood of Brest, which he seems to have done on the 12th of April, the admiral found the enemy in no humour to give him a meeting. Their ships fled back into Brest on his approach, not, as it appears, into the actual harbour, which lies at the end of the very appropriately named Goulet or Gullet, but into Bertheaume Bay, which lies just outside on the north. Here they took refuge under the protection of forts, and refused to be enticed out. Howard had, in fact, made his appearance on the French coast at a very inconvenient time for the enemy. Pregent, who was on his way with the galleys from the Mediterranean, had not yet been able to join the French ships at Brest. The English were placed between the two divisions of the enemy, and, being apparently superior in force to either of them, could have crushed them in detail if once they could have been got out of the protection of their forts. But to come out was just what the French would not do; nor could Howard by any insults, or even by the damage he inflicted on the coast villages, sting them into giving him battle. Provoked by the shyness of his enemy, and perhaps sore from the rebuke inflicted on him by the Council, Howard made two successive, and, as the result shows, very rash attacks on the enemy. He first endeavoured to sail in and attack the French at anchor in Bertheaume Bay, but, being very ill supplied with pilots, he speedily came to grief. One of the largest of his vessels, commanded by Arthur Plantagenet, a natural son of Edward IV., ran on the rocks, and became a total wreck. It does not appear that Howard blamed "Master Arthur" for the loss of the ship. In a letter to the king on the 17th of April he praises him for his courage, and says that he had given him leave to go home. "For sir, when he was in extreme danger … he called upon our Lady of Walsingham for help and comfort, and made a vow that, an it pleased God and her to deliver him out of the peril, he would never eat flesh nor fish till he had seen her." As Master Arthur Plantagenet would have been reduced by his hasty vow to the sad necessity of living upon dry bread, it was humane to let him get home as quickly as might be. The Middle Ages were not yet quite over, but the years were at hand when any officer of King Henry's who had pleaded a vow to our Lady of Walsingham as the excuse for retiring from the presence of the enemy would have soon found himself in another and even a worse form of peril than shipwreck.
After the failure in Bertheaume Bay, Howard turned to attack "Pery John," as he calls him. The Knight of Malta, finding himself cut off from Brest, had taken refuge in Conquet Bay, which lies just round the point San Mathieu, the extreme western end of the north side to the approach to Brest. Le Conquet is a little island, one of several which stretch south-east from Ushant, and the bay is just opposite on the mainland; the channel between them is called the Passage du Four. The French commander had drawn his galleys up on the beach. It was one of the advantages of these long, narrow, and in stormy waters unseaworthy craft, that they could be beached with ease, and so escape larger and heavier vessels which dared not follow them so near the shore. If Howard could have landed men and guns, he might very soon have made an end of the galleys. And it does appear that he had a scheme of the kind in contemplation, but, whether because he feared interruption by French ships coming out of Brest, or whether only because his buoyant courage ran away with him, he took another course. The story is told by Sir Edward Echyngham in a letter to Wolsey dated the 5th of May. "The news of these parts be so dolorous," he begins, "that unneith I can write them for sorrow;" and it was indeed a sorrowful story. Sir Edward Howard, so we make out, finding that the enemy would not give him a fair meeting, and that, while he was subject to interruption from Brest, he could not safely land his soldiers to attack Pregent, had at last despatched part of his fleet into what we then called the Trade, which is now known as the Passage de l'Iroise, and had decided to make a front attack on the enemy in Conquet Bay with the others. It was, in fact, a cutting-out expedition; and once more we note that the Middle Ages were lingering on, for the admiral led himself, as Sir John Chandos might have done, on a piece of work which in later times would have been more appropriately left to a subordinate officer. The object, as Sir Edward Echyngham reported, "was to win the French galleys with the help of boats, the water being too shallow for ships," and he goes on to describe what followed in words which it would be hardly possible to better.
"The galleys were protected on both sides by bulwarks, planted so thick with guns and cross-bows, that the quarrels and the gonstons (gunstones) came together as thick as hailstones. For all this the admiral boarded the galley that Preyer John was in and Charran the Spaniard with him and sixteen others. By advice of the admiral and Charran they had cast anchor into [word illegible] of the French galley, and fastened the cable to the capstan that if any of the galleys had been on fire they might have veered the cable, and fallen off; but the French hewed asunder the cable, or some of our mariners let it slip. And so they left this [word illegible] in the hands of his enemies. There was a mariner wounded in eighteen places who by adventure recovered unto the buoy of the galley so that the galley's boat took him up. He said he saw my Lord-Admiral thrust against the rails of the galley with marris pikes. Charran's boy tells a like tale, for when his master and the admiral had entered, Charran sent him for his hand gun which before he could deliver the one galley was gone off from the other, and he saw my Lord-Admiral waving his hands and crying to the galleys, 'Come aboard again, come aboard again,' which when my Lord saw they could not, he took his whistle from about his neck, wrapped it together and threw it into the sea."
So died Sir Edward Howard, deeply lamented. "For there was never nobleman so ill lost as he was, that was of so great courage, and had so many virtues, and that ruled so great an army so well as he did, and kept so good order and true justice." Sir Edward was the first of the short list of our admirals who died in battle, and it may be said that he was the last knight in the old sense of the word—that is to say, a valiant man of his person, thinking more of the point of honour than of beating an enemy by good management—who commanded an English fleet. Although it has been the custom to speak of the valour of this attempt as honourable to the whole force engaged, the truth seems to be that Sir Edward Howard was not well supported. This small English galley in which he boarded the Frenchman appears in sober fact, to have been seized with a panic. No sooner had the knights and gentlemen leapt on to the Frenchman's deck than their mariners left them to shift for themselves. Nor was it only the sailors who were somewhat deficient in spirit. Sir Edward Echyngham reports that "Sir Henry Shirborne and Sir William Sidney boarded Prior John's galley, but being left alone, and thinking the admiral safe, returned." These two, though brave men, satisfied themselves hastily of the safety of their leader, and it is not easy to understand how they could have failed to see his peril, considering that the whole body was crowded on the narrow space of a galley's deck.
The loss of Sir Edward Howard most certainly had the effect of depriving his command of all spirit. Within ten days they were back in England, and Echyngham's account of the repulse was written from Hampton. The excuses given for this hasty return were that the fleet did not know to whom the command ought to fall upon the death of the admiral, and the want of victuals. They are more plausible than convincing, and the fact probably is that the fleet was dispirited on finding that
