He instructed his engineers to dig trenches so his men could move closer to the walls of Montreuil protected from defending fire. He began construction of a high earthwork from which his limited artillery could batter the French into submission. Unfortunately - and disastrously to his chances of a successful mission - Norfolk signally failed to block the approaches to the town and two gates remained thereafter always open to allow French supplies and reinforcements to enter freely by night.
Despite the duke’s appeals, Henry refused to bolster the besieging English force by diverting men from his own operations to capture Boulogne, which fell after six weeks’ siege on 18 September, after an English mine spectacularly blew up the castle.
Reinforcements belatedly departed Boulogne on 25 September but by that time Henry’s ally, Charles V of Spain, had perfidiously made a separate peace with France and the English were left to fight on alone.
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The Dauphin, heir to the French throne, was now freed of an imperial threat to Paris, and able to concentrate a 36,000-strong army to march on Montreuil, still forlornly besieged by Norfolk and his starving, sick troops. The duke mounted an eleventh-hour, last-ditch attempt to storm the town before the siege could be raised. On 19 September, Surrey led a hopelessly inadequate force to storm Montreuil’s Abbeville Gate. After ‘right warm fight’, he broke through to the adjacent walls, but Surrey was wounded and the English were forced to retreat, pell-mell, to their muddy trenches, carrying their injured commander back with them.
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These were the last shots to be fired in Norfolk’s preposterous siege of Montreuil. Henry, busy supervising the rebuilding and strengthening of the Boulogne fortifications, ordered him to withdraw to the Pale of Calais in the face of the approaching French threat. The English broke camp on 28 September, destroying much of their equipment, and then headed wearily back to the coast. There were no tunes of glory for them or, yet again, for their general.
The Dauphin launched a surprise attack on Boulogne on the night of 9 October 1544 and was narrowly repelled, even though Norfolk and Suffolk had stupidly retired to Calais, leaving only a small garrison under Sir Thomas Poynings to defend it. Henry, whose sole war prize had been the capture of the town, was furious. On 14 October he told his generals that he:
well understood your humble submission . . . to us to forget your late proceedings. These suits . . . [demonstrate] you being indeed penitent for that is past, so [do not] doubt but this shall be a warning for you from henceforth.
47
Almost a year later, the Howards were given another chance to demonstrate their military leadership.
At the end of August 1545, Surrey was appointed Lieutenant of Boulogne.
48
He proved an enthusiastic and zealous commander, always seeking military action, always seeking fame on the battlefield. In this he mirrored Henry’s restless ambitions, but he was out of kilter with the Privy Council, which was becoming increasingly apprehensive about the cost of retaining Boulogne and maintaining so many men under arms. The invasion of France the previous year had drunk deep of Henry’s revenues: more than £700,000 had been spent (well over £200 million at today’s prices), compared with the budgeted £250,000. Furthermore, up to the beginning of September 1545, a further £560,000 had disappeared on war costs.
49
Henry, for his part, was determined to hold on to Boulogne. He told the new Spanish ambassador, Francis van der Delft, that he had captured the town honourably ‘at the sword’s point and he meant to keep it’.
50
But Wriothesley, now Lord Chancellor, had investigated the king’s finances and discovered, to his horror, that the exchequer was nearly empty, while the royal debts were still climbing. He warned Paget:
If you tarry for more money to be sent to Boulogne at this time, you may tarry too long before you have the sum desired . . .
I assure you Mr Secretary, I am at my wits end, how we shall possibly shift for [the] three months following and specially for the two next.
For I see not any great likelihood that any good sum will come in till after Christmas . . .
51
Norfolk, as Lord Treasurer, shared the fears that England was sliding into bankruptcy. He wrote to his son from Windsor, with dire warnings about the taste and tone of his despatches to London. For his own good, the duke said, he should stop his braggart claims about small-scale victories over the French, or just how easy it was to hold Boulogne. Surrey should
animate not the king too much for the keeping of Boulogne, for who does so, at length shall get small thanks.
Sir William Paget had urged him to pass on this caution, ‘upon what grounds he spoke it, I know not, but I fear you wrote something too much therein to somebody’.
52
He also informed Surrey that his request to bring his wife and children to Boulogne had been denied. But the dashing, devil-may-care Earl of Surrey would not come to heel.
His love of splendour and luxury had cost him dear. The previous year, he had built a new, grand house on the site of the Benedictine priory of St Leonard’s,
53
just outside Norwich. Its ambitious construction in the Italian Renaissance style and lavish furnishings had thrown him into painful debt - he had been forced even to borrow from his own servants, such as his steward Richard Fulmerston, to meet the spiralling costs of his fashionable tastes.
Norfolk was proverbially tight-fisted and he decided to use Surrey’s embarrassing impecuniosity as a bludgeon with which he could knock some sense into his son and bring him into line with the Privy Council’s policy.
It was blackmail, pure and simple.
On 26 October, the duke’s own treasurer, Thomas Hussey, told Surrey about his difficult conversation with Norfolk about his mounting debts. The duke asked him: ‘What way takes my son for payment of his debts?’ and he replied: ‘I know not.’ Well, said Norfolk, ‘he owes Fulmerston an honest sum, what does he owe you?’ Hussey answered: ‘So much as I can forebear in respect of his necessity.’ The treasurer promised Surrey he was willing to borrow money himself ‘upon my credit in this town’ to help him, but warned: ‘I cannot see how you can both pay your whole debts and finance your necessities at present.’
The implication was stark: Norfolk would not help his son unless he sang the same tune as the Privy Council: ‘By these means and others, you will be made weary of your will of Boulogne,’ explained Hussey, who finally cautioned Surrey: ‘As my trust is in you, burn this letter.’
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The duke then attempted to block the sale of one of Surrey’s manors, at Rochford, Essex, to tighten the screw on his son’s depleted finances. On 6 November, Hussey wrote again to Surrey about his renewed efforts to convince Norfolk to help:
I moved my lord touching your silver vessel, hangings and loans of money but his grace is clearly resolved to refuse. My advice is to devise some other ways to furnish your necessities.
My lord, to be plain with you, I see my lord’s grace somewhat offended in seeing your private letters to the king . . . of such vehemency as touching the animating of the king’s majesty for the keeping of Boulogne, especially considering his diverse letters [to you] . . .
What his grace and the rest of the council works is the render [hand-back] of Boulogne and the concluding of a peace, in six days, you with your letters set back in six hours - such importance be your letters in the king’s opinion at this time . . .
As to Boulogne, every councillor says ‘Away with it’ and the king and your lordship says ‘We will keep it.’
But the ministers were too afraid to raise the matter with the king: ‘There is not remaining in the council (my lord of Norfolk being absent, who will bark in it to his dying day), a member that dare move [propose] the render.’
Hussey warned that ‘there was no hope’ that Surrey’s expenses could be repaid by the exchequer but promised that, if ‘Boulogne be rendered’, Norfolk would use his influence to ensure his son’s appointment to either the captainship of Guisnes Castle or as deputy governor of Calais.
A generous bribe was on the table. If Surrey did not accept it, the treasurer had heard Norfolk declare that ‘he had rather bury you and the rest of his children before he should give his consent to the ruin of this realm, not doubting that you should be removed in spite of your head [stubbornness], work what you could’.
Hussey hoped to push up the sale price to £1,000 for the manor at Rochford, but added that there was little hope of immediate financial assistance from Norfolk, who himself was facing debts of his own, unless, of course, a request for cash came from his mistress ‘Mrs Holland, whom I think you will not trouble for the matter’.
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Surrey ignored his father’s bile and threats. Almost every day there were skirmishes with the French in his attempts to take the fortress at Chatillon and his vivid reports of the fighting captivated the king as much as they annoyed his hard-nosed Privy Council.
Then, in early January, Surrey pushed his luck just a little too far.
His spies reported on the evening of 6 January 1546 that the French were attempting to resupply the fortress opposite Boulogne. Around 100 wagons, escorted by more than 600 cavalry and 3,000 mercenary foot soldiers, were intercepted the following evening by Surrey’s outnumbered forces. His mounted men-at-arms drove off the French horse and began to burn and loot the wagons. The first and second lines of his infantry also charged, their pikes levelled at the enemy formations. Suddenly, the second wave broke ranks and fled for their lives. Surrey and his council at Boulogne put a brave face on it as they admitted to the king: ‘There [was] loss and victory on both sides.’
By the time our first rank and the second were come to push of the pike, there grew a disorder in our men and without cause, the second line fled. At which time, many of our gentlemen were slain . . .
So started, our fleeing footmen could not be halted in any position that we could use till they came to our trenches on St Étienne’s Hill. But even after being well settled there . . . our soldiers forsook these trenches and crossed the river. This gave the enemy courage to follow them, [but] the night drawing on, they followed not far beyond . . .
The ‘fury of the English footmen’s flight’ was so rampant that all attempts to rally them failed and they did not stop running until they were safely inside the gates of Boulogne. Surrey and his colleagues emphasised that
The enemy took more loss than we, but for the gentlemen, whose loss is much to be lamented. This day, we have kept the field from break of day for the enemy retired to Montreuil immediately after the fight and left their carriages distressed behind them. Not twenty carts entered into the fortress - and that [carrying only] biscuit.
They begged Henry ‘to accept our poor service, albeit the success in all things was not such as we wished, yet was the enterprise of our enemies disappointed . . . If any disorder there were, we assure your majesty it was no [fault] in the rulers [commanders], nor lack of courage on their part. It was the fault of a humour that sometimes reigns in Englishmen.’
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Surrey had lost more than 200 men (including his own second-in-command) and, shamefully, a number of his standards.
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Soon afterwards, he was relieved of his command and replaced by Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford. Paget sought to soften the blow in a much rewritten note:
The latter part of your letter, touching the intended enterprise of the enemy, gives me occasion to write to you, frankly, my poor opinion; trusting your lordship will take the same in no worse part than I mean it.
As your lordship wishes, so his majesty wants to do something for the damaging of the enemy and for that purpose has appointed to send over an army shortly and that my lord of Hertford shall be his highness’ Lieutenant General - whereby I fear your authority as Lieutenant should be touched . . .
The king’s secretary urged Surrey to seek another appointment to regain Henry’s favour:
In my opinion, you should do well to make sure betimes by petitioning his majesty to appoint you to some place of service in the army: as to the command of the [vanguard] or [rearguard], or to some other place of honour as should be meet for you.
So should you be where knowledge and experience may be gotten, whereby you should the better be able hereafter to serve and also, [perhaps] to have occasion to do so notable service which should be to your reputation in the world, in revenge of your men lost in the previous encounter with the enemy.
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Although Norfolk’s son was chosen to lead the rearguard of a new army mobilising for service in France, Hertford’s appointment as the new general could not have been more unfortunate, or untimely. Surrey had long nurtured a deep grudge against the Seymours, whom he regarded as hardly of noble blood and mere noisy upstarts. Moreover, he saw Hertford as a personal enemy, his own
bête noire
, and his irrepressible anger against him led Norfolk to fuss lest ‘his son would lose as much as he [Norfolk] had gathered together’.
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Now, to cap it all, that social parvenu Hertford announced allegations of corruption against Surrey during his time in Boulogne and promptly purged many of his appointees to offices in the town. Surrey furiously denied the claims, saying there were ‘too many witnesses that Henry of Surrey was never for singular profit corrupted nor never yet bribe closed his hand, which lesson I learnt from my father’.
He was recalled to London and on 27 March 1546 arrived at court, ‘but was coldly received and did not see the king. His father . . . is absent from court.’
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Observers noted he had ‘lost greatly in reputation’ because of the English losses at Boulogne.