famous afterwards by the name of Admiral
Coligny; and he gave him orders to form the siege early in the spring.
The active disposition of this general engaged him to make, during
the winter, several attempts against the place; but they all proved
unsuccessful.

Strozzi, who commanded the French fleet and galleys, endeavored to
make a descent on Jersey; but meeting there with an English fleet, he
commenced an action, which seems not to have been decisive, since the
historians of the two nations differ in their account of the event.[***]

* Thuanus, lib. vi. c. 6.

** Hayward, p. 300.

*** Thuan. King Edward's Journal. Stowe, p. 597.

As soon as the French war broke out, the protector endeavored to fortify
himself with the alliance of the emperor; and he sent over Secretary
Paget to Brussels, where Charles then kept court, in order to assist
Sir Philip Hobby, the resident ambassador, in this negotiation. But that
prince had formed a design of extending his dominions by acting the part
of champion for the Catholic religion; and though extremely desirous
of accepting the English alliance against France, his capital enemy,
he thought it unsuitable to his other pretensions to enter into strict
confederacy with a nation which had broken off all connections with the
church of Rome. He therefore declined the advances of friendship from
England, and eluded the applications of the ambassadors. An exact
account is preserved of this negotiation in a letter of Hobby's; and
it is remarkable, that the emperor, in a conversation with the English
ministers, asserted, that the prerogatives of a king of England were
more extensive than those of a king of France.[*] Burnet, who preserves
this letter, subjoins, as a parallel instance, that one objection which
the Scots made to marrying their queen with Edward was, that all their
privileges would be swallowed up by the great prerogative of the kings
of England.[**]

Somerset, despairing of assistance from the emperor, was inclined to
conclude a peace with France and Scotland; and besides that he was not
in a condition to maintain such ruinous wars, he thought that there no
longer remained any object of hostility. The Scots had sent away their
queen; and could not, if ever so much inclined, complete the marriage
contracted with Edward; and as Henry VIII. had stipulated to restore
Boulogne in 1554, it seemed a matter of small moment to anticipate a few
years the execution