France and the Channel Islands

Situated within view of the coast of Kent, Calais under English rule was a town of strategic, diplomatic and commercial importance. The later Plantagenet and Tudor monarchs thought of Calais and its pale, an area amounting to about 150 square miles, as a prestigious barbican to their kingdom and a bridgehead for the reconquest of France. Its part in the Crecy and Agincourt campaigns made it an object of veneration, contemporaries describing it as a jewel. No sovereign could contemplate its loss.

Tournai capitulated to Henry VIII on 23 Sept. 1513 after a short siege. Before departing the King named as governor Sir Edward Poynings, who with a council modelled on that for Calais was to rule the city in conjunction with the existing civic government for a year and a half: Poynings was succeeded by the 4th Lord Mountjoy, and Mountjoy in 1517 by Sir Richard Jerningham. There were four civic councils.