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

sorrow’:
    On St Mark’s day, [25 April] the Admiral appointed four captains and himself . . . to win the French galleys with the help of boats, the water being too shallow for ships.
    The galleys were protected on both sides by bulwarks planted so thick with guns and crossbows that the quarrels 36 and the gun-stones came together as thick as hailstones.
    For all this, my lord would needs board the galley himself for there [was] no man [to] counsel him the contrary.
    When my Lord Admiral leapt into the French galley, and all for fear of the ordnance that was shot from the galleys and from the land . . . they left their admiral in the hands of his enemies.
    Howard scrambled up over the bows into the forecastle of the French admiral’s galley, together with the Spaniard and his small party of English sailors. They hitched their boat’s cable to the capstan of the French ship, but it was either cut by the enemy or somehow let slip, and the boat was swept away on the tide, leaving them marooned on the enemy deck.
    There was a mariner wounded in eighteen places, who by adventure, [was] recovered [by the French] galley’s boat. . . . He saw my lord admiral thrust against the rails of the galley with morris pikes. 37 Charran’s boy tells a like tale, for when his master and the admiral had entered, Charran sent him for his hand gun . . . and he saw my lord admiral waving his hands and crying . . . ‘Come aboard again! Come aboard again!’
    When my lord saw they could not, he took his whistle from about his neck, wrapped it together, and threw it in the sea.
    Later, under a flag of truce, ‘Prior John’ acknowledged that ‘there was one that leapt into my galley with a gilt target [shield] upon his arm, [who] I cast overboard with moorish pikes and the mariner that I have prisoner, told me that same man was your admiral’.
    Howard, encumbered by his armour, sank quickly beneath the waves and drowned. He was thirty-six. Etchingham ended his despatch:
    The great ships lay without doing anymore, for they knew not perfectly where my Lord Admiral was. Sir, when the whole army knew that my Lord Admiral was either taken or slain, I [swear] there never was men more full of sorrow than all were.
    There was never a noble man so ill lost as he was that was so full of courage and had so many virtues and that ruled so great an army as well as he did and kept so great order and true justice. 38
    Three days later, Howard’s body was recovered from the sea by the French, disembowelled and embalmed, and buried nearby. Prégent wanted to keep Howard’s heart but his whistle was sent jubilantly as a trophy of war to the French queen, Anne of Brittany, and his armour to Princess Claude. 39
    Sir Edward Howard died a swashbuckling hero, more corsair than naval commander. Admirals have no place in war in boarding ships with a handful of men to fight against overwhelming odds, cut off from any hope of reinforcement, or indeed escape. Their role is strategic or fighting tactical or strategic battles - not engaging in single-handed combat against lower-rank enemy sailors. His death was unnecessary, avoidable, and the result of crass, if not blind, stupidity on his part. Nonetheless, his ‘death or glory’ end, his relentless drive to destroy the enemy, warmed the heart of many a patriotic Englishman and saddened others. The symbolism of hurling his silver whistle - the badge of an admiral - into the sea, moments before he died, is the stuff of legend, if not a Hollywood epic.
    Howard had married Alice Lovell, sister and sole heir of Henry, Lord Morley, in 1505, but the couple had no children. 40 He did, however, have two underage illegitimate sons. His will, written the previous January, made provision for them:
    Whereas I have two bastards, I give the king’s grace the choice of them, beseeching [him] . . . to be [a] good lord to them and that when he comes of age, he may be his servant.
    Him that the king’s grace chooses, I bequeath him my