Note (Back to Main Text) — Chapter V · CALAIS.
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"I advertised your grace," Lord Grey wrote to the queen, "how I purposed to make a journey to a church called Bushing, strongly fortified by the enemy, much annoying this your majesty's frontier. It may please your majesty, upon Monday last, at nine of the clock at night, having with me Mr. Aucher marshal of Calais, Mr. Alexander captain of Newnham Bridge, Sir Henry Palmer, my son,[619] and my cousin Louis Dives, with such horsemen and footmen as could be conveniently spared abroad in service, leaving your majesty's pieces in surety, I took my journey towards the said Bushing, and carried with me two cannon and a sacre, for that both the weather and the ways served well to the purpose, and next morning came hither before day. And having before our coming enclosed the said Bushing with two hundred footmen harquebuziers, I sent an officer to summon the same in the king's highness' and your majesty's name; whereunto the captain there, a man of good estimation, who the day before was sent there with twelve men by M. Senarpont, captain of Boulogne, answered that he was not minded to render, but would keep it with such men as he had, which were forty in number or thereabouts, even to the death; and further said, if their fortune was so to lose their lives, he knew that the king his master had more men alive to serve, with many other words of French bravery. Upon this answer, I caused the gunners to bring up their artillery to plank, and then shot off immediately ten or twelve times. But yet for all this they would not yield. At length, when the cannon had made an indifferent breach, the Frenchmen made signs to parley, and would gladly have rendered; but I again, weighing it not meet to abuse your majesty's service therein, and having Sir H. Palmer there hurt, and some others of my men, refused to receive them, and, according to the law of arms, put as many of them to the sword as could be gotten at the entry of the breach, and all the rest were blown up with the steeple at the rasing thereof, and so all slain."[620]