After Henry was excommunicated, and Ireland rebelled, and England itself threatened disturbance, the King had to look to his security.  He made little noise about it.  But the Spanish ambassador reported him as silently building ships in the Thames and at Portsmouth.  As invasion seemed imminent, he began with sweeping the seas of the looser vermin.  A few swift well-armed cruisers pushed suddenly out of the Solent, caught and destroyed a pirate fleet in Mount’s Bay, sent to the bottom some Flemish privateers in the Downs, and captured the Flemish admiral himself.  Danger at home growing more menacing, and the monks spreading the fire which grew into the Pilgrimage of Grace, Henry suppressed the abbeys, sold the lands, and with the proceeds armed the coast with fortresses.  ‘You threaten me,’ he seemed to say to them, ’that you will use the wealth our fathers gave you to overthrow my Government and bring in the invader.  I will take your wealth, and I will use it to disappoint your treachery.’  You may see the remnants of Henry’s work in the fortresses anywhere along the coast from Berwick to the Land’s End.

Louder thundered the Vatican.  In 1539 Henry’s time appeared to have come.  France and Spain made peace, and the Pope’s sentence was now expected to be executed by Charles or Francis, or both.  A crowd of vessels large and small was collected in the Scheldt, for what purpose save to transport an army into England?  Scotland had joined the Catholic League.  Henry fearlessly appealed to the English people.  Catholic peers and priests might conspire against him, but, explain it how we will, the nation was loyal to Henry and came to his side.  The London merchants armed their ships in the river.  From the seaports everywhere came armed brigantines and sloops.  The fishermen of the West left their boats and nets to their wives, and the fishing was none the worse, for the women handled oar and sail and line and went to the whiting-grounds, while their husbands had gone to fight for their King.  Genius kindled into discovery at the call of the country.  Mr. Fletcher of Rye (be his name remembered) invented a boat the like of which was never seen before, which would work to windward, with sails trimmed fore and aft, the greatest revolution yet made in shipbuilding.  A hundred and fifty sail collected at Sandwich to match the armament in the Scheldt; and Marillac, the French ambassador, reported with amazement the energy of King and people.

The Catholic Powers thought better of it.  This was not the England which Reginald Pole had told them was longing for their appearance.  The Scheldt force dispersed.  Henry read Scotland a needed lesson.  The Scots had thought to take him at disadvantage, and sit on his back when the Emperor attacked him.  One morning when the people at Leith woke out of their sleep, they found an English fleet in the Roads; and before they had time to look about them, Leith was on fire and Edinburgh was taken.  Charles V., if he had ever seriously thought of invading Henry, returned to wiser counsels, and made an alliance with him instead.  The Pope turned to France.  If the Emperor forsook him, the Most Christian King would help.  He promised Francis that if he could win England he might keep it for himself.  Francis resolved to try what he could do.