The staggering cost of warfare, perhaps £700,000 a year, soon necessitated another Parliament. The fighting had gone well enough: Henry himself did spend the summer of 1544 in France, as he had promised, and his forces did secure the surrender of Boulogne, a town which the King very reasonably said he would rather have than Paris. But by the time Henry returned to England he had been abandoned by Charles V, who opened independent peace negotiations with the French. The spectre of a Catholic league united against England loomed once more. By October 1545 Henry was ready to treat for peace too, but the settlement could not be concluded until the following June. Meanwhile the warfare dragged on, desultory and fruitless but no less costly for all that.

The conflict in Scotland continued as well. Still hoping to create an English party in the Northern realm, Henry contrived the marriage of Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of his sister Margaret Tudor and her second husband the Earl of Angus, to the Earl of Lennox. Lennox proved ineffective in battle, and the English army itself was routed at Ancrum Moor in February 1545; its commander, the former MP Sir Ralph Evers, was slain. Retribution was indicated, but that, too, would be costly.

Before the end of 1544 councillors had convinced the King that there was no way out of the financial crisis precipitated by these wars without a Parliament.