Hostilities having been thus fairly commenced, the French government was in some embarrassment.  The Duke of Guise, with the most available forces of the kingdom, having crossed the Alps, it became necessary forthwith to collect another army.  The place of rendezvous appointed was Pierrepoint, where an army of eighteen thousand infantry and five thousand horse were assembled early in the spring.  In the mean time, Philip finding the war fairly afoot, had crossed to England for the purpose (exactly in contravention of all his marriage stipulations) of cajoling his wife and browbeating her ministers into a participation in his war with France.  This was easily accomplished.  The English nation found themselves accordingly engaged in a contest with which they had no concern, which, as the event proved, was very much against their interests, and in which the moving cause for their entanglement was the devotion of a weak, bad, ferocious woman, for a husband who hated her.  A herald sent from England arrived in France, disguised, and was presented to King Henry at Rheims.  Here, dropping on one knee, he recited a list of complaints against his majesty, on behalf of the English Queen, all of them fabricated or exaggerated for the occasion, and none of them furnishing even a decorous pretext for the war which was now formally declared in consequence.  The French monarch expressed his regret and surprise that the firm and amicable relations secured by treaty between the two countries should thus, without sufficient cause, be violated.  In accepting the wager of warfare thus forced upon him, he bade the herald, Norris, inform his mistress that her messenger was treated with courtesy only because he represented a lady, and that, had he come from a king, the language with which he would have been greeted would have befitted the perfidy manifested on the occasion.  God would punish this shameless violation of faith, and this wanton interruption to the friendship of two great nations.  With this the herald was dismissed from the royal presence, but treated with great distinction, conducted to the hotel of the English ambassador, and presented, on the part of the French sovereign with a chain of gold.

Philip had despatched Ruy Gomez to Spain for the purpose of providing ways and means, while he was himself occupied with the same task in England.  He stayed there three months.  During this time, he “did more,” says a Spanish contemporary, “than any one could have believed possible with that proud and indomitable nation.  He caused them to declare war against France with fire and sword, by sea and land.”  Hostilities having been thus chivalrously and formally established, the Queen sent an army of eight thousand men, cavalry, infantry, and pioneers, who, “all clad in blue uniform,” commanded by Lords Pembroke and Clinton, with the three sons of the Earl of Northumberland, and officered by many other scions of England’s aristocracy, disembarked at Calais, and shortly afterwards joined the camp before Saint Quentin.