Royal fleet equipped and despatched from Portsmouth.
Its first engagement.
Increase of the French fleets. at this juncture, Henry could not afford to declare war, as his exchequer was very poorly furnished; but the country itself had not sunk so low as to be unable to defend its own coasts and its own traders. Sufficient money having, through the aid of the London merchants, been at last found for their immediate purposes, a small but admirably equipped fleet was silently fitted out at Portsmouth, secrecy being observed as far as possible, in the hope of taking the offenders by surprise. Sweeping out into the Channel, this fleet soon fell across four French ships of war which had been plundering English merchant vessels in the vicinity of Mount's Bay, and closing against heavy odds, sunk one of them and drove the other three from the coast.[1] The time had, indeed, arrived when it became essential to the independence of England that a fleet sufficient to command the Channel should be permanently maintained. France, having resolved on open war, was straining every nerve to humiliate her old and inveterate rival. One hundred and fifty of her ships of war and twenty-five swift galleys had assembled at the mouth of the Seine ready to convoy transports with sixty thousand troops on board; the intention being to occupy the Isle of Wight as a prelude to a further attack on Portsmouth, and the destruction of the small English fleet collecting at Spithead.
Extraordinary exertions of the English to meet the emergency. To meet this imposing force Henry VIII., warmly backed by his people, made extraordinary exertions. One hundred and forty thousand English soldiers, with a few German contingents, supported his efforts; but there were only sixty available ships of
- ↑ Froude's 'History of England,' vol. iii. p. 250, et seq.
