he tension became more severe, and
in May Edward denounced the truces, though he still kept up the
pretence of negotiations, and so late as June appointed ambassadors to
treat with Philip of Valois. The real interest centred in the hard
fighting which at once broke out at sea between the rival seamen of
England and Normandy. At first the advantage was with the Normans. Not
only were many English ships captured, but repeated destructive forays
were made on the coasts of the south-eastern counties. Portsmouth was
burnt; the Channel Islands were ravaged; and so alarming were the
French corsairs that, in July, 1338, the dwellers on the south coast
were ordered to take refuge in fortresses, or withdraw their goods to a
distance of four leagues from the sea.

At last the army and fleet were ready. On July 12, 1338, Edward
appointed his son, the eight-year-old Duke of Cornwall, warden of
England, and a few days later sailed from Orwell on a great ship named
the _Christopher_. A favourable wind quickly bore the royal fleet to
the mouth of the Scheldt. Thence the king and his army sailed up the
river to Antwerp, the chief port of Brabant, where they landed on July
16. There, on July 22, Edward revoked all commissions addressed to the
King of France, and withheld from his agents all power to prejudice his
own pretensions to the throne of the Valois. He passed more than a
month at Antwerp, holding frequent conferences with his imperial
allies, and thence proceeded through Brabant and Juelich to Cologne.
From that city he went up the Rhine to Coblenz, where on September 5 he
held an interview with his queen's imperial brother-in-law. Their
meeting was celebrated with all the pomp and stateliness of the heyday
of chivalry. Edward was accompanied by the highest nobles of his land,
the emperor by all the electors, save King John of Bohemia, who, as a
Luxemburger, was a convinced partisan of the French. Louis received his
ally clothed in a purple dalmatic, with crown on head and with sceptre
and orb in hand, surrounded by the electors and the higher dignitaries
of the empire, and seated on a lofty throne erected in the Castorplatz,
hard by the Romanesque basilica that watches over the junction of the
Moselle with the Rhine. Another throne, somewhat lower in height, was
occupied by the King of England, clothed in a robe of scarlet
embroidered with gold, and surrounded by three hundred knights. Then,
before the assembled crowd, Louis dec