[Footnote 178-3: Letter 369. Compare Fabyan. Whethamstede, who writes with some confusion in this part of his narrative, speaks of a great naval victory won by Warwick on St. Alban's Day, the 22nd June 1459, over a fleet of Genoese and Spanish vessels, in which booty was taken to the value of £10,000, and upwards of a thousand prisoners, for whom it was difficult to find room in all the prisons of Calais. It is not impossible that this may have been a different action, which took place on the very day, month, and year to which Whethamstede refers it; but the silence of other authorities about a second naval victory would lead us to suppose he is simply wrong in the matter of date. It must be observed that Whethamstede immediately goes on to speak of the Legate Coppini's arrival in England, which took place in June 1460, as having happened _circa idem tempus_, and as if it had been in the same month of June, only a few days earlier. This shows great inaccuracy.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1459.] In the year following, the fire that had for some time smouldered, burst once more into a flame. About Candlemas, according to Fabyan--but an older authority says specifically on the 9th November preceding[179-1]--a fray occurred between one of the king's servants and one of the Earl of Warwick's, as the earl, who had been attending the Council at Westminster, was proceeding to his barge. The king's servant being wounded, the other made his escape; but a host of retainers attached to the royal household rushed out upon the earl and his attendants, and wounded several of them before they could embark. With hard rowing they got beyond the power of their assailants and made their way into the city; but the queen and her friends insisted on imputing the outrage to the earl himself, and demanded his arrest. The earl found it politic to retire to Warwick, and afterwards to his former post at Calais. On this the queen and her council turned their machinations against his father, the Earl of Salisbury, whom Lord Audley was commissioned to arrest and bring prisoner to London. Audley accordingly took with him a large body of men, and hearing that the earl was on his way from Middleham in Yorkshire, journeying either towards Salisbury or London, he hastened to intercept him. [Sidenote: Civil war renewed.] The earl, however, had received notice of what was intended, and having gathered about him a sufficient band of followers, defeated Lord Audley in a regular pitched battle at Bloreheath in Staffordshire, where he attempted to stop his way, on Sunday the 23rd of September.[179-2]