Free A Great and Glorious Adventure by Gordon Corrigan

to the duchy turned out not only to have been forged but also to have been forged under his instructions. Philip had been made a fool of and was furious. A criminal prosecution failed when
Robert fled the jurisdiction, hiding out in the Low Countries or anywhere else that would give him shelter and railing against the French king, threatening revolution and the death of the royal
family by witchcraft. The understandably vindictive Philip,meanwhile, banned him from all French territories, confiscated his lands, and tried in vain to have him kidnapped
or assassinated. Eventually, in 1334, Robert turned up in England, where he was received with interest – but little else – in the court. Edward III was still, at this stage, anxious to
placate France, so Robert was ordered to keep his head down and cease his propaganda against Philip, which for two years he did.
    By 1336, things had changed. Edward had secured his northern borders against the Scots and had quietly built up a series of alliances with states bordering France, some owing allegiance not to
Philip VI but to the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV, 21 who was rather less holy now that he had been excommunicated but powerful nonetheless. The
enthusiasm of these allies was directly proportional to their distance from France: the German states, with the River Meuse between them and France, were all for it; the count of Flanders, next
door to France, was less so. The threat of stopping exports of English wool was deployed to bring the Flemings into line. In France, litigation in the courts was chipping away at the rights of
English cities and bishoprics in the disputed lands, and, thanks to the pope, Philip was the owner of a large fleet of ships.
    Since 1309, the papacy had been based in Avignon in southern France, whither it had moved to escape the infighting and machinations of the great Roman families who had hitherto dominated the
office. From then until the return to Rome in 1378, all the popes would be French, and so would an increasing number of cardinals, often relatives of the reigning pope. Although the south of France
was very different in both language and culture from the north, where king and government lay, the English tended to assume that popes were in the French king’s pocket and, while paying lip
service to the papacy, regarded any secular actions by it with suspicion. Pope John XXII was querulous and superstitious but a shrewd amasser of riches, and, when he died in December 1334, his
treasury was found to be full to overflowing. John’s successor, Benedict XII, concealed behind an obese and drunken exterior sharp political antennae, and in order to keep the peace in Europe
and to direct the warlike tendencies of the French and English externally towards the recovery of the Holy Land, rather than internally towards each other, he had happily financed thebuilding of a fleet to transport the crusading army. Then, in March 1336, the pope cancelled the crusade and rescinded his authorization for the clergy to be taxed to finance it.
Benedict had concluded that he could not keep the peace between England and France, and that, if Edward of England was not going to join an expedition, then the French king could not take his army
abroad. So Philip now had a fleet to use for other purposes, and the ships began to move from Marseilles to the Channel ports. The English knew very well that the move could only presage a
sea-borne invasion of England, and Edward began to take measures to deal with it.
    Although English kings had long styled themselves ‘Lords of the English Sea’, by the time of Edward III it was an empty title, and at this period of English history there was no
great maritime tradition to fall back on. From 1066 until King John lost his lands in France, England controlled directly or through alliances the whole of the Atlantic coast, and, while navies
were occasionally raised after that when invasion threatened, they were swiftly