returning with his troops to England, and at once sat down before Calais.  It was an arduous and prolonged siege.  Calais was girt by double walls and ditches of exceptional strength and was bravely defended by John de Vienne and a numerous garrison.  Moreover the yielding soil of the sands and marshes around the town made it impossible for Edward to erect against the fortifications the cumbrous machines by which engineers then sought to batter down the walls of towns.  The only method of taking the place was by starvation.  At first Edward was not able to block every avenue of access to the beleaguered fortress.  Winter came on; the troops demanded permission to go home; the sailors threatened mutiny, and the French were actively on the watch.

Amidst these troubles, Edward III showed a persistence worthy of his grandfather.  He remained at the seat of war, transacting much of the business of government in the town of wooden huts which, growing up round the besiegers’ lines, made the winter siege endurable.  In the worst period of the year sufficient forces to man the trenches could only be secured by wholesale charters of pardon to felonious and offending soldiers, on condition that they did not withdraw from service without the king’s licence, so long as Edward himself remained beyond the seas.[1] A parliament of magnates met in March, 1347, and granted an aid.  Instead of summoning the commons, Edward preferred to raise his chief supplies by another loan of 20,000 sacks of wool from the merchants, by additional customs dues voted by a merchant assembly, and by considerable loans from ecclesiastics and religious houses.  In April and May all England was alive with martial preparation, and gradually a force far transcending the Crecy army was gathered round the walls of Calais, while a great fleet held the sea and prohibited the access of French ships to the doomed garrison.  Northampton, ever fertile in expedients, discovered that, even after the high seas were blocked, boats still crept into Calais port by hugging the shallow shore.  He ran long jetties of piles from the coast line into deep water, and thus cut off the last means of communication and of supplies.  By June the town was suffering severely from famine.

    [1] See for this, Rotulus Normannice in Cal.  Patent Rolls,
    1345-48, especially PP. 473-526.  For the vast force gathered
    later, see Wrottesley and Morris, U.S.

The French made a great effort, both by sea and land, to relieve Calais.  On June 25 Northampton went out with his ships as far as the mouth of the Somme, where off Le Crotoy he won a naval victory which made the English command of the sea absolutely secure.  A month later Philip, at the head of the land army, looked down upon the lines of Calais from the heights of Guines.  The two cardinals made their usual efforts for a truce, but the English would not allow their prey to be snatched from them at the eleventh