Free The Hundred Years War by Desmond Seward Page A

from Crécy and Calais. They would not grant him any money. With great difficulty Philip’s officials managed to extract a little from the local assemblies and the clergy. Even now, after so many years of frustration and humiliation, he still planned to invade England.
    Edward III basked in the adulation of his subjects. The Parliament Roll records how both Lords and Commons approved motions thanking God for their King’s victories and agreeing that the monies which they had voted him had been well spent. The ‘realm of England hath been nobly amended, honoured and enriched to a degree never seen in the time of any other King’.
    It was probably in June 1348 that Edward formally founded the Order of the Garter at Windsor, based on an association of knights on the model of the Round Table some years before. It seems that the legend is true, that the first Garter was dropped by the beautiful Countess of Salisbury while dancing and that the King—who was in love with her—fastened it round his own knee, saying ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ to save her from embarrassment. (The blue, different from today’s Garter blue, was no doubt derived from the royal blue of the French arms.) Membership of the Order was to be the crown of a successful military career throughout the Hundred Years War ; it is noticeable how many leading commanders received the Garter right up to the very end of the War, both English and Guyennois—with some exaggeration it may be compared to the Companionship of the Bath (CB) during the Peninsular War.
    The incident of the Countess of Salisbury and her garter is said to have taken place at a triumphant banquet at Calais, in celebration of its capture. The King nearly lost his new town when its governor, an Italian mercenary, offered to sell it to the French. Unfortunately for the latter Edward got wind of the plot, persuaded the governor to co-operate, and with the Prince of Wales crossed the Channel so secretly that no one knew he was in Calais. When the French arrived to take possession they were ambushed and all taken prisoner. With his accustomed style King Edward, ‘bareheaded save for a chaplet of fine pearls’, entertained his captives to a sumptuous dinner on New Year’s Eve.
    In 1350 Edward won yet another victory. The Count of Flanders had allowed the Castilians to assemble a fleet at Sluys, from where they wrought havoc on English merchant shipping and menaced the sea-link with Guyenne. Edward gathered his ships at Sandwich in August and, accompanied by his third son John of Gaunt (who was only ten), sailed to meet the enemy. The Castilian fleet of forty vessels was commanded by Don Carlos de la Cerda—a prince of the royal house of Castile. In a famous passage Froissart describes how Edward appeared to those on board the cog Thomas, the same vessel in which he had fought at Sluys ten years earlier. ‘The King stood at his ship’s prow, clad in a jacket of black velvet, and on his head a hat of black beaver that became him right well; and he was then (as I was told by such as were with him that day) as merry as ever he was seen.’ He made his minstrels play on their trumpets a German dance which had just been brought to England by Sir John Chandos, and commanded Chandos to sing with the minstrels, laughing at the result. From time to time he looked up at the mast, for he had put a man in the crow’s nest to warn him when the Castilians were sighted. On seeing the enemy Edward cried, ‘Ho! I see a ship coming and methinks it is a ship of Spain!’ When he saw the whole Castilian fleet he said, ‘I see so many, God help me! that I may not tell them.’ By then it was evening—‘about the hour of vespers’. The King ‘sent for wine and drank thereof, he and all his knights ; then he laced on his helm’.
    The battle which ensued—off Winchelsea, but known as Les-Espagnols-sur-Mer—was a far more dangerous and close-fought business than Sluys. The advantage of galleys over cogs