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 Duke of Bedford in 1423; in the following year five thousand men accompanied the Duke of Gloucester to Calais and the Netherlands, to assist him in prosecuting the claims of his wife, Jacqueline of Hainault, to territory in Brabant; and early in 1427, Bedford, who had come to England late in the previous year, took back with him to France a considerable army. The duke had, in 1426, been appointed Admiral of England in succession to Thomas, Duke of Exeter; and he held the office until his death in 1435. Further troops went to France in 1428, when Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, by agreement with the Council, raised five or six thousand men at his own charge for service there. The journey of the young king to be crowned in France in 1430 also necessitated an arrest of shipping, for he went attended by a great number of nobles although he was still less than nine years old.

In these and the immediately succeeding years, the position of the English in France went steadily from bad to worse, in spite of the heroic efforts and great ability of Bedford; and in 1436, the Duke of Burgundy, who had by that time embraced the French cause, and who was exceedingly exasperated by the forays which had been made by the garrison of Calais into the territories of his cousin of Brabant, laid siege with a large force of Flamands and others to almost the last great stronghold that remained to the English on the continent.

On the death of Bedford, John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon and Duke of Exeter, with succession to his son Henry, had been appointed Admiral of England; but the Duke of Gloucester led the expedition for the relief of Calais. A large army, and a fleet of about five hundred vessels, large and small, were collected, and the expeditionary force was landed on the French coast on July 27th,