To do better in the future against the French, there must be brave captains and better seamen; the rowers must be chained to their benches; there must be plenty of archers; and those who should distinguish themselves must be rewarded, and those who should fail in their duty, punished. These expressions seem to imply that Howard, brave and able though he certainly was, had suffered the discipline of the fleet to deteriorate; that some, at least, of the captains had disappointed expectations; that the seamen were inefficient; that the rowers bad abandoned their posts; and that these and other shortcomings had not been duly punished. It may well be that such were the facts. Yet Howard's devotion and gallant death deserve to be remembered.
Lord Thomas Howard,[1] who had but recently returned from the expedition to Picardy, was at once[2] appointed Lord High Admiral, in succession to his younger brother, and took the sea within a very few weeks; but, in the meantime, Prégent de Bidoux had followed up his success, landing some men in Sussex and ravaging the country. During the course of this raid he lost an eye. Lord Thomas Howard chased him back to Brest, then returned to convoy the king and a large army in four hundred vessels to Calais, and on July 1st, 1513, landed at Blanc-sablon Bay and pillaged the adjacent country in revenge for Prégent's raid upon Sussex.[3] Thence he hurriedly returned to co-operate against the Scots, who were endeavouring by an invasion of England to get satisfaction for the death of Andrew Barton. Howard, who had been so intimately concerned in that affair, commanded the van of the English army when it crushed the invaders at Flodden Field on September the 9th.[4] In the following year, the Lord High Admiral, for his various services, was created Earl of Surrey.
In 1514, Prégent again made a descent upon Sussex, and burnt Brighton, or, as it was then and long afterwards called, Brighthelmstone. Sir John Wallop was entrusted with the duty of carrying out the retaliatory measures, and he did it thoroughly, landing in Normandy and burning twenty-one towns and villages ere he withdrew. This was one of the last operations of the war of the
