On 19 October, Norfolk reported that his army would ‘lie tomorrow in the field’. But his orders that with every 100 men ‘there should be two carts laden with drink and with every ten, a spare horse with victuals’ had been completely ignored. ‘[They] say it is impossible, as the carriages they did bring were destroyed by the foul ways and the weather.’ Despite his instructions ‘that no horse that should come past Newcastle, . . . serve for a spear[man], a javelin or archer; all have come on naughty nags, saying they could not travel on foot and keep the day.’
17
His 20,000-strong force of levies from the northern counties of England finally crossed the Scottish frontier three days later at Berwick.
18
The Duke of Suffolk and Bishop Tunstall soon heard of him, from near Coldstream, still complaining about the lack of food. His note, brought in by panting horseback messenger, urged Suffolk ‘to warn all Northumberland to bake and brew for the army at their return’. Local reports suggested that Norfolk and his troops had headed off in the direction of the small town of Kelso and ‘from whence much gunshots [were] heard and [he] has done great harm’.
19
It all sounded very encouraging. But the reality was very different.
On 28 October, Norfolk reported from Kelso, built on a bend of the River Tweed, that he had been ‘forced to turn homeward and the next night shall be our last in Scotland’.
The principal cause is our lack of victuals, for few of the army found [food] bread and drink between York and Newcastle and [it was] much worse in the four days’ journey from Newcastle to Berwick.
Since entering Scotland, [for] the most part [we] have drunk nothing but water these five days and eaten no bread . . .
I never thought Englishmen could endure with so little and yet be willing to go forward.
I have come through such ill passages that the wains [wagons, drawn by horses or oxen] are broken . . . and ordnance and carriages have been with difficulty brought hither.
This day and yesterday nineteen men have died with drinking puddle water and lack of victuals and many more are like to follow.
20
It was all a litany of accidents, worsened by ‘horrible rains’. Five of his soldiers, for example, drowned when a bridge collapsed. On the positive side, his troops had looted and burned Kelso and its Romanesque abbey to the Blessed Virgin and St John, belonging to the Tironensian order.
21
Eight Scots had also been hanged for stealing his cavalry horses. That same day he sat down before dawn to assure his allies in London, Gardiner and Wriothesley, that ‘his was the goodliest army I have [ever] seen’. Then came the nip: ‘Had we set forth with victuals two months earlier, we might have done what we would, without great resistance.’ The old warhorse was exhausted and ill with the distressing affliction of ‘the lax’ which was ‘marvellously sore on me, as my lord of Hertford . . . knows’. One shudders to think how.
He begged his friends to obtain Henry’s permission for him to return to court. His fervent plea was not only influenced by the debilitating effects of his uncontrollable bowels. A stronger motivation was his desire to snap up some of the choice property, belonging to his comrade-in-arms, the recently deceased and barely cold Fitzwilliam, which was now available. Others might profit by exploiting his absence in the benighted Scottish borders!
I hear that the king has distributed the late Privy Seal’s things. I pray that the house of Bath Place
22
may light upon me, for I have no place in London, for I have no entry in Exeter Place but only of lending [?leasing].
23
Just in case there were any lingering doubts at court as to his loyal service, Norfolk stressed that his ‘cost and pain in this journey has been treble any other man’s’.
24
For all his suffering, Norfolk had lost none of his bravura: he claimed that his troops had so devastated the corn crops (?in late October) and the countryside that ‘they shall not be able to recover [from] this displeasure [for] many years hereafter’.
25
He was plainly scrabbling around, seeking to find tangible military benefits from his all too brief sojourn in Scotland. In truth, his much vaunted punitive expedition achieved almost nothing. A contemporary document talks of the twenty ‘towns’ he put to the torch around Kelso, but most were mere hamlets, some too small to appear on large-scale maps of the area. They may just have been single dwellings. At Kelso,
A tall man of ours that was above in the abbey looking forth was killed by one of our gunners in mistake for a Scot. Certain of our men were taken and some slain.
26
After just eight days wandering in enemy territory, he and his army were back in England. Norfolk, Hertford and Browne adroitly sensed they would not be viewed in London as all-conquering military heroes. Clearly rattled, they begged the king to believe that ‘we have done all in our power’. Henry, naturally, was far from impressed, and they knew it. Norfolk feared that ‘his highness is not pleased with proceedings. Assuredly, we could do no more as we will show when the king pleases to hear us.’
27
A disgruntled Henry did require some hard facts on what glories his expensive attack on the Scottish borders had added to the lexicon of English military prowess. On 2 November, he sent an acerbic, caustic letter to Norfolk, which must have made uncomfortable reading:
We wish that such a costly and notable enterprise had been more displeasant to [our] enemies.
We marvel you have not sent the names of the towns, villages and castles which you have destroyed, with an estimate of the spoil done that it might be set forth and magnified to the world.
28
His generals became defensive, pointing out that no castles had been destroyed because ‘they were thrown down by Norfolk twenty years past, and as for the towns and villages, we do not know the names’. But, they added, somewhat feebly, ‘the country will not recover . . . these many years’.
29
The duke’s sufferings and worries increased by the hour. An old man needs his comforts. He admitted to Wriothesley that ‘I was never more vexed [afflicted] with my disease. Please forward my letter, enclosed, to my servants at [Chesworth in] Horsham to make provisions for my house this winter as I desire not be far from court. I dare not take great journeys.’
30
Two days later, he wrote again to Wriothesley, describing his ailment in almost scatological detail:
Since I wrote last, I have been so very ill of the lax that if medicines had not stopped it, I think I should never have seen you. I had incredible purging from six o’clock on Friday until ten o’clock in the morning but am now well.
31
Despite his ‘incredible purging’, Norfolk was still anxious about his chances of acquiring Bath Place, and, indeed, whether the king still held a good opinion of him. ‘I have had no letter from you or the Council for a long time’ was the cry of a man a long way from home and uncertain of the welcome awaiting his return. He added plaintively, with a rare hint of honesty: ‘I am sure that no man could have done more to give satisfaction, though all things may not have been [done] as well as could have been wished.’
32
The duke’s growing agitation over his perceived sins of omission in Scotland must have deepened still further at the end of November, when Sir Thomas Wharton, the Warden of the Western Marches, although hugely outnumbered, routed an invading Scottish army of 18,000 men on the tidal marshes of the Solway Moss near Longtown in Cumbria with the loss of only seven men. As the Scots retreated, they were caught up by the oncoming tide and many were drowned in the sea, the River Esk or horribly in the surrounding bogs, the weight of their armour dragging them down in the choking, filthy mire. Wharton captured more than 1,200 prisoners, including two earls and five barons; 3,000 horses and twenty-four ‘great pieces’ of artillery; four carts of booty, ten pavilions and thirty standards. Here were some real spoils of war that Henry could celebrate and crow over.
33
When he heard the news of Solway Moss, a triumphant grin spread across his moon-like face and the Spanish ambassador Chapuys noted that, for the first time, the sadness and dejection that had cursed him ‘since he learnt the conduct of his last wife’ had disappeared. Henry felt so chipper that the diplomat believed he was toying with the idea of finding a sixth wife and he began to invite ladies to entertainments at court.
34
After Hertford had burned and pillaged Edinburgh in May 1544, Henry felt secure in his northern borders and free to turn his martial attentions to his old adversary France. He secured an alliance with the Imperial Emperor Charles V of Spain, under which both pledged to invade the realm of that ‘Most Christian’ king Francis I. Spanish forces had been fighting the French in the Low Countries to further imperial claims to Burgundy and to end France’s relations with the Turks, the ‘inveterate enemy of the Christian name and faith’. The Spanish had been reinforced by 5,600 English troops (including Surrey) under Sir John Wallop for the siege of Landrecies (near the border with present-day Belgium) and Henry had contributed cash to pay foreign mercenaries. Now England and Spain were committed to fielding armies, each totalling 42,000 strong, which would launch a twin-pronged offensive aimed at the French capital - the so-called ‘Enterprise of Paris’ - from English-held Calais and the Emperor’s territories to the north.
Norfolk, despite his inglorious expedition to Scotland in 1542, was appointed Captain of the English vanguard, initially commanding 9,606 infantry and 370 cavalry. His son, Surrey, was made Marshal of the Field under him. The Howards supplied one of the largest contingents to the English invasion force, comprising 500 foot and 150 horsemen.
35
The duke landed in Calais on 9 June 1544 and immediately complained about the ‘marvellous scarcity of hay and oats and no new hay cut because, by the great rains, much of the hay [fields are] under water’.
36
The supply wagons were too small; the prices for food far too high. ‘I have been to the market place and found great complaints that the soldiers cannot live off their wages with victuals at such excessive prices . . . The soldiers will go hungrily to bed or else spend more than their wages if such prices continue.’
37
A few days later, even the bovine and tactless Norfolk began to detect his unpopularity among his colleagues in the Privy Council:
I forebear to molest you . . . fearing that I have troubled you with too many things because I have received no answer of any part of them.
I had rather be busy in writing than slothful, and yet I have enough to do besides writing, and for lack of a good secretary, I must draw every minute [document] with my own hand.
38
The duke was also vexed about being kept in the dark over Henry’s grand strategy for the invasion of France - even accusing his fellow general Suffolk of deliberately concealing the king’s objectives from him.
39
At last, on 7 July, the Privy Council informed him of the plans, adding, unnecessarily, that it should be ‘kept secret to your lordship’.
40
The king, he was told, intended ‘to lay siege to Boulogne’ and thus Norfolk’s projected attack on Montreuil
41
had been relegated into a mere sideshow, a diversionary tactic to allow the real military glory to be won elsewhere - and by someone else. True, in strategic terms the walled town was the main French staging area for action against the English Pale of Calais, but Boulogne was thought an easier and symbolic target for Henry to take quickly.
On 15 June, Norfolk and his son led out their soldiers from Calais. Their column made slow progress across the hostile country towards Montreuil, even though they were escorted by their imperial allies:
We might have been at Montreuil three or days past, but we, knowing no part of the country, nor having no guides but such as they gave us, have been brought such ways as we think never [an] army passed - up and down the hills, through hedges, woods and marshes and all to cause us to lodge on French ground and save their own friends [from English looting].
42
By 9 July, Norfolk, commanding a small force of cavalry and infantry, reconnoitred the defences of Montreuil, with its garrison of 4,000 seasoned troops and gloomily reported that he had ‘never seen so evil a town to approach’. The walled town, with its eight churches and a castle, sat atop a 134 foot (40 m.) high chalk hill dominating the surrounding flat, featureless fields which provided little cover for any attacking force. Furthermore, its fortifications had recently been strengthened after an unsuccessful siege in 1537. There was no suitable site for an English camp within a mile of its walls and the duke foresaw problems in crossing the River Canche: it was impassable without his pioneers building bridges of planks laid across boats ‘which are not so easy set up as the king was informed’.
43
Henry was growing impatient with Norfolk’s persistent stream of gripes about just how difficult everything was proving. His generals had been appointed to achieve famous military victories, not to grumble. His secretary Sir William Paget instructed Suffolk to spell out to the duke, rather patronisingly, the obvious. Norfolk should know that
every frontier town is made as strong as possible and if, because they are strong, no man has courage to essay the winning of them, little good is to be done in France [by the English army].
As for the strength of the Montreuil garrison, the duke should be aware ‘how Frenchmen count their numbers which vaunt [boast] always commonly by two for one’. Even if there were so many, after all, ‘they are mostly Frenchmen and Norfolk has Englishmen with him’. Moreover, if Boulogne and Montreuil were regarded as impregnable, ‘his majesty [could] return home without doing anything, which shall neither be to him honour[able]’, nor, Paget added, somewhat pointedly, ‘[to] the reputation of those in charge of such things under him’.
44
The duke must have ground his teeth in frustration after receiving this condescending, sharply worded missive, and, old soldier that he was, became determined to pursue the siege, come what may.