House Of Treason: The Rise And Fall Of A Tudor Dynasty Read Online Free PDF Page A

fighting, Regent was shackled with chains to the French carrack 31 Marie la Cordelière and Knyvett boarded the larger enemy ship, ignoring the storm of arrows from her decks. As the French fought frantically to repel boarders, their vessel caught fire and the blaze spread rapidly across to the sails and rigging of the Regent . Very soon, it, too, was engulfed by flames. One desperate French gunner, deep in the bowels of the carrack, set fire to its powder magazine, choosing death rather than suffering the dishonour of his ship being captured.
    Howard, coming up with the main body of his fleet, arrived to see both ships disappear in a series of catastrophic explosions, which hurled burning debris high into the air before falling back into the sea like a terrible deluge of fire. Inevitably, there were no survivors from either crew. Knyvett was dead, and so were all 700 of his men from the Regent, 32 together with 1,200 enemy sailors.
    Bad news in war is never welcome. Henry had lost one of his closest confidants, but he managed to control his grief publicly. In London, Wolsey informed Fox of the loss of the Regent :
    At the reverence of God, keep these tiding secret to yourself for there is no living man knows the same here but only the king and I.
    Your lordship knows right well that it is expedient for a while to keep the same secret. To see how the king takes the matter and behaves himself, you would marvel . . . [at] his wise and constant manner. I have not, on my faith, seen the like.
    Howard had also lost a close friend and brother-in-law. He swore to make the French pay dearly, in blood and fire, for Knyvett’s death. Wolsey added:
    Sir Edward has made his vow to God that he would never look the king in the face until he had revenged the death of [this] noble and valiant knight. 33
    Knyvett’s widow, Muriel, swore another kind of oath which, in its way, was as awesome as her brother’s. When news of her husband’s death reached her at their home at Buckenham, south-east of Norwich, on 12 August, she at once declared that she had made ‘tryst with him in Heaven that day five months’. Her will was written on 13 October and she died, just as she had prophesied, on 12 January 1513. Muriel had pined to death, aged twenty-six, leaving two daughters and four sons by Knyvett.
    Sir Edward was one of the many members of the house of Howard who attended her funeral, his craving for vengeance still burning as fiercely as ever. On 19 March, he was appointed Lord High Admiral of England, Ireland and Aquitaine, in succession to John de Vere, thirteenth Earl of Oxford, who had died nine days earlier. On Easter Sunday, 27 March 1513, he again departed Portsmouth with his fleet and headed back to Brest. So hellbent was he on revenge that he sailed without any supply ships.
    The enemy fleet remained in the port’s roadstead, blockaded by the English waiting impatiently for battle offshore. French reinforcements, in the shape of six shallow-draught, oar-propelled galleys, arrived in mid-April under the command of the Chevalier Gaston Prégent de Bidoux, immediately nicknamed ‘Prior John’ by the English. He put into Conquet, fifteen miles (25 km.) west of Brest, his vessels protected by powerful shore artillery batteries. Howard could not deploy his warships in the shallows, so he decided to pick off the French vessels by using fifteen rowing barges, or crayers. 34 The admiral quit his ship for one such boat, commanded by a Spaniard called Carroz, or Charran, 35 and crewed by sixteen English sailors. His plan was that the others would follow, but as the boat was lustily rowed through a hail of arrows and gunfire towards ‘Prior John’s’ galley, Howard found that he was alone. Undaunted, he clambered aboard and tried to capture the enemy ship.
    Edward Etchingham, captain of Germyn , graphically described his commander’s death to Wolsey on 5 May: ‘The news . . . be so dolorous that [hardly] can I write them for