[126] _Ibid._, i. 4069; Vitell. B. xviii. 39.
[127] L. and P. H. VIII., i. 4078; Vitell. B. xviii. 45.
[129] _Ibid._, i. 4328; Galba B. iii. 113.
[130] L. and P. H. VIII., i. 4296; Galba B. iii. 115.
The defeat of the French at Novarro set all Rome daily expectant to hear of their extermination by the English in Picardy, while experts in Germany shook their heads over such a possibility.[131] They said that the advantage lost last year in Guienne would not be easily recovered. Wingfield expressed the English feeling of confidence when he wrote "but such is God and better which only is the head of your enterprise, and hath given the noble courage and hardiness to elect of yourself the cost, travell and jeopardy, to attain the honour and glory that must needs follow."[132]
[131] _Ibid._, i. 4216; Galba B. iii. 83.
The musters of the mercenaries had been fixed for Dunkirk on May 20, and the captain of the vanguard, the Earl of Shrewsbury, was to be at Calais on the 16th,[133] but, as is so often the case, paper plans drawn by able clerks did not develop rapidly into accomplished facts, and by the 19th nothing was ready.[134] What a muddle it all reads, and the marvel is that any men were ever shipped at all! First all the shipping had to be pressed or borrowed, and the hoys had to be hired in the Low Countries or along the English coast and towed to the embarking or loading ports. Then the victuallers had to be loaded in the Thames and at Sandwich, and brought round to the ports where were the hoys or ships. There was hardly a man in England but was pressed for the King's service and wore his coat; the very carters of Kent and Sussex sported the white and green as they cracked their whips by their horses' sides on their way to Sandwich, while all the able-bodied men south of Trent were on their way to Dover or Southampton with journey money in their pockets and the King's coat on their backs. As company after company arrived they had to be housed till transport was found for them, and for two days' journey inland round Southampton the country was swarming with men waiting to be embarked.[135] Fox, bishop of Winchester, was worrying through with the business of transport there; Lord Mountjoy had been sent in a hurry to superintend the Cinque Ports,[136] and the victuallers, while Wolsey, the King's almoner, was worn to a shadow[137] in London in the endeavour to deliver into life his admirably sketched plans for organization. Human nature is not passive pen and ink, and then as now what is called the English lower middle class was absolutely undisciplined. If you doubt it, think of the Biscay performance in 1512, and more recent muddles since. Waste, leakage and unpunctuality were the opening notes of the proceedings, but it is only fair to add that during the whole campaign there was no lack of wholesome victual and in consequence no epidemic. Fox, appalled at the sight of the undisciplined army of brewers, bakers, coopers, smiths, horsekeepers, millers, etc., invading the port, and overwhelmed at the thought of the oxen from Lincoln and Holland, the ling, the cod, bacon, beer, biscuit, to say nothing of the tankards, platters, and cauldrons needed to feed the host, longed for the arrival of Charles Brandon and Lord Howard.[138] But Sir Charles was court-bound having just been made Lord Lisle by his adoring King, and Lord Howard, admiral of the Fleet in the room of his late brother, whose gallant death a month ago at Brest had retrieved the honour of the English nation, was wind-bound at Plymouth, and could do nothing either by way of scouring the narrow seas to ensure the safe passage of the hoys and men, or in assisting to bring order out of chaos. He was waiting impatiently for the next wind to bring him round to the Wight, refused all leave to his men and raised a gallows at the water-edge as a grim gloss upon his order.[139] The victuallers' ships had not come from Sandwich and transport from the west was wind-bound with the fleet, but Fox muddled on, sure that once Howard came with Lord Lisle things would hum to the right tune. They evidently did, and Henry himself came down privately with Lisle to see the vanguard's departure.[140] Lisle's large retinue went with it, chaplains, fifers, Blind Dick the minstrel and all, but Brandon himself remained behind to cross with the King on a hypothetical June 15.