wise, and of judgment to gouerne his doings’ (ib. p. 430). Leicester knighted him by way of publicly confirming his good opinion. Next year Williams appealed to the queen and Walsingham to send further reinforcements. He was besieged in Sluys, and was anxious that the city should be relieved. But the queen was deaf to his appeals. On 30 June the citadel of Sluys fell into the enemy's hands, and the city was surrendered a month later. Parma respectfully saluted Williams as he entered the city, and invited him to enter the Spanish service or take the field against the Turks. Williams replied that his sword belonged to his queen, and that when she had no further use for it it would be placed at the service of Henry of Navarre. Williams was sent by Leicester to bear the tidings of the disaster at Sluys to the queen. Leicester urged the queen to give Williams a horse, but no reward was forthcoming. Williams was inclined to blame Leicester for inadequately pressing his services on the attention of the court, and the two men were thenceforth alienated.
In the summer of 1588, when the camp was formed at Tilbury with a view to resist the possible landing of a Spanish army, Williams was entrusted with the important duties of master of the horse; but Leicester complained that he frequently absented himself without leave (Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Naval Records Soc. i.). As soon as the dangers incident to the Spanish armada were passed Williams returned to the Low Countries, where Peregrine Bertie, lord Willoughby, was in command of the English forces. In March 1589 he finally left the Low Countries with Willoughby, and in the autumn following joined the army that Willoughby conducted to Dieppe in support of Henry of Navarre, who was engaged in a fierce struggle with the forces of the catholic league. The rest of Williams's military career was devoted to the cause of Henry of Navarre, for whom he characteristically declared a passionate attachment.
In May 1590 Williams was present with Henry of Navarre at a conference with representatives of the league and of Spain before the gates of Paris. With some irrelevance he took occasion to announce his personal hatred of both Spain and the league. In May 1591, at the head of six hundred men—four hundred of them English—he attacked two full regiments of the league in the entrenchments at Dieppe. The rout of the enemy was complete. Five hundred were killed or wounded, and four hundred were captured. ‘Glory to God and to the said Sir [Roger] Williams,’ wrote Henry of Navarre's ambassador in London on hearing the news, ‘who has not belied by this action the good opinion that all good people of both nations had of him this long time.’
Other successes for Henry of Navarre's army followed in Normandy. Williams was prominent in many skirmishes, squabbling as of old with his commanders, challenging the enemy to single combat, and writing to the queen with almost insolent frankness of the niggardly support she was according her foreign allies. Reports of the progress of the war were issued in London in pamphlet form, under the title, ‘Newes from Sir Roger Williams. With a discourse printed at Rhemes, containing the most happie victorie, lately obtained by the Prince de Conty, Lieutenant generall ouer the kinges forces in Anjou, Touraine, Maine. … Printed by John Woolfe, and are to be sold by Andrew White, … Anno 1591,’ 4to (a copy is at Lambeth).
In July 1591 the Earl of Essex, the most active and influential of Henry's English friends and sympathisers, brought yet another English detachment to France, and the newcomers aided Henry in besieging Rouen. Williams, who was already favourably known to Essex, was invited to join him, and they were thenceforth on terms of close intimacy. When Essex was recalled to England on 8 Jan. 1591–2, Williams took his place as commander of the English troops which he left in camp before Rouen (Coningsby, Siege of Rouen, Camden Soc. Miscellany, vol. i.).
In 1592 Williams greatly distinguished himself when besieged in the town of Rue, fourteen miles to the north-west of Abbeville. At the head of two hundred musketeers and one hundred and fifty pikemen he, without armour, led his men against five squadrons of Spanish and Italian horse and six companies of Spanish infantry. He singled out and unhorsed the leader of the Spanish troopers, and nearly cut off the head of the Albanian chief, George Basti, with a swinging blow of his sword. Afterwards being reinforced by other English companies, he drove the whole body of the enemy with great loss to their entrenchments. ‘The king doth commend him very highly,’ wrote Sir Henry Unton [q. v.], the English ambassador in France, ‘and doth more than wonder at the valour of our nation. I never heard him give more honour to any service nor to any man.’
Williams remained in France for most of his remaining years, though he occasionally brought news to London. At home he
