As every schoolboy used to know, Calais fell to the French in January 1558. It was an event of international importance. To Mary Tudor it was a disaster, trumpeting stark evidence of the failure of her policies and especially the alliance with Spain. Whether or not the queen really declared that the word ‘Calais’ would be engraved on her heart for ever we shall never know, but the loss of the town and marches was a bitter blow to her regime politically and to the English national psyche generally. Moreover, for Protestant contemporaries and later observers, the fall of Calais became synonymous with the national decline caused by Mary's rejection of her father's religious policies. To more rational observers, the town's capture still illustrated the decline in English martial abilities during the sixteenth century and the futility of a geopolitical policy based on the continental mainland. The loss of a town which had symbolised the conquests of Edward III and Henry V was, in reality, no loss at all. By forcing English monarchs to abandon their pretension to the French throne, it opened the way to the exploration of the New World and the development of an oceanic outlook in which lay the origins of England's status as a ‘Great Power’.

As will have become clear from the arguments presented thus far, this view is overly simplistic. Militarily there was no reason why the French should have automatically triumphed over the English garrison of the Pale.