Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/91

 1 563. ] THE ENGLISH A T HA VRE. 71 enemy's shot, the bakers were dead of the plague. The besiegers by the middle of the month were closing in upon the harbour mouth. A galley sent out to keep them back was shot through and sunk with its crew under the eye of the garrison. On the 1 9th their hearts were cheered by large arrivals, but they were raw boys from Gloucestershire, new alike to suffering and to arms. Cannon had been sent for from the Tower, and cannon came, but they were old and rusted and worthless. * The worst of all sorts/ wrote Warwick, 'is thought good enough for this place/ It was the one complaint which at last was wrung from him. To add to his difficulties the weather broke up in storms. Clinton had twenty sail with him, and three thousand men ready to throw in. If the fleet could have lain outside the harbour the ships' guns could have kept the approaches open. But a south-west gale chained Clinton in the Downs ; the transports which sailed from St Helen's could not show behind the island, and there was a fear that the garrison, cut off from relief, might have been overpowered in their weakness and destroyed. Too late for the emergency, and still with sullen un- willingness to yield, the Queen on the soth sent over Throgmorton to accept Conde's terms. But the French Court was with the besieging army, and knew the con- dition of Warwick's troops too well to listen. The harbour was by that time closed ; the provisions were exhausted ; the French understood their power and meant to use it. Warwick, ordered as he had been to hold the place under all conditions, ' was prepared to