Page:Royalnavyhistory01clow.djvu/505

 newly captured fortress, and, after having accomplished that service, to lie in mid-Channel, and, "if opportunity may serve thereunto, appoint a convenient number of the small shallops and other small vessels to pass in the River Estaples" (the Canche) "and there burn and bring away such vessels of the enemy as may be there found, or do other such annoyance to the enemy as the time will serve." If the ships in the Canche could not be attacked, other annoyance might be caused on the coasts of Normandy. Finally, after leaving a certain number of ships to cruise in the Channel, Seymour was to return to Portsmouth for more supplies for Boulogne.

Seymour proceeded at once, and on November 6th wrote from off Dover to the Privy Council that he had quitted the mouth of the Orwell in a fog; that he had learnt of seventeen men-of-war being at Etaples; that the place was difficult to approach, and more difficult to get out of; and that he begged to be allowed to operate instead upon the coasts of Brittany.

Permission to attack Brittany was given, provided Boulogne was first attended to, and fourteen ships were left to guard the Narrow Seas; but, in the meanwhile, Seymour was driven from Dover by a gale. He tried to make Boulogne, but was carried too far to the westward; and then, hearing that seventeen sail of the enemy lay in Dieppe, and seventeen more in the Seine, determined to attack them. But the gale veered to E.S.E., and he was obliged to abandon his design. With much difficulty, and with the loss of all his boats, he reached the shelter of the Isle of Wight.

Henry wrote angrily to Seymour on November 13th; but the sailor returned a straightforward explanation, and the king was satisfied. The supplies, however, did not go to Boulogne that winter.

This loss of the valuable fortress spurred France to great exertions. Francis I. concentrated his whole available western fleet on the coasts of Normandy under Claude d'Annebaut, Baron de Retz and Admiral of France, and reinforced it in 1545 with