Lastly, a few words remain to be said on the subject of the government of Calais. If the name of that town were graven on the heart of Mary Tudor at her death, from the grief which its loss during her reign caused her, it must have been also graven upon the minds of her father and his minister, from the trouble its maintenance gave them during the last seven years of the latter’s power. In March, 1533, Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, was nominated successor to that learned soldier, Lord Berners, as Deputy there, and took the oaths at the town, on the 10th of June[374]. The choice was certainly unfortunate, and Lisle’s unfitness for his new position was destined soon to be made evident. He seems to have been a man completely lacking in the qualities necessary for a good ruler of such a place as Calais was in those days: he possessed small discrimination in judging what things he could deal with by his own authority, and what things it was necessary to report to head quarters. Hence there are many mild rebukes among Cromwell’s letters to him[375], in some of which he chides him for bothering the King about such a trivial thing as a private quarrel between two minor officials in Calais, while in others he ‘mervayles not a litel’ that he should be so negligent as not to make immediate report of sacrilegious preaching. Calais was by no means an easy post to manage; Henry and Cromwell kept its officers and garrison exceedingly short of money; the soldiers wrangled and mutinied, and religious conferences amongst the townspeople sometimes took most violent forms, and not seldom resulted in dangerous riots. Placed as a sort of spy on the movements of Francis and the Emperor, in a town, the government of which on a small scale presented all the difficulties of that of a great kingdom, the Deputy was in a position which demanded resources greater than his own.
The first part of Lisle’s administration seems to have been comparatively uneventful. Cromwell, always keenly alive to the necessity of having the country in an adequate state of defence, at once caused him to repair all breaches in the ramparts, a task which Lisle set about without competent men or supplies; and the immediate result of his ill-judged attempts to lay a new foundation for one of his walls was the fall of the small part of the old fortification which was yet standing[376]. Lisle was of course continually busied in preventing his neighbours, French and Flemish, from meddling with the King’s Pale, especially throughout the year 1536, when the war between Francis and the Emperor broke out afresh[377]. He tried to keep the town well victualled and in good defence, and was zealous to do as he was bidden by Cromwell, though seldom successful, for he lacked ability. After 1537 he was confronted with a new and more difficult problem.