9 - The end of the story: the loss of Calais to the French

Summary

Despite the extravagant remark of Phillippe de Crèvecœur in 1489 that he would happily spend two years in Hell if he could have the pleasure of chasing the English out of Calais, the English in the Pale usually felt secure behind their defences. The Celys and the Johnsons displayed greater concern in their letters over events in the Low Countries and the Empire than in France. It has been suggested, however, that, after the French had recovered Boulogne in 1550, there was in fact much to fear from France, and that French attention definitively moved away from Italian adventures towards the northern frontier and expansion in that area. This, inevitably, would focus attention on the question of Calais and the Pale.

In the 1540s two incidents had, perhaps, given an early indication that the attitude of the French was changing from that expressed by Louis xi, who had told his son on his death-bed not to make any attempt on Calais for fear of disturbing the English. The first was a dispute over an area of pasture on the border between Guisnes and Ardres called the Cowswade. In the spring of 1539, French farmers were found to have built a bridge over a stream, which allowed their cattle easy access to this grazing, to the fury of the English, who saw it as part of the Pale. The dispute escalated over the summer of 1540, after the arrival of Lord Maltravers as deputy.