My most dreadful and sovereign liege Lord, I, Richard York, your humble subject and very liege man, beseech you of grace of all manner offenses which I have done or assented to in any kind, by stirring of other folk egging me thereto, wherein I wot well I han ill offended to your Highness; beseeching you at the reverence of God, that you like to take me into the hands of your merciful and piteous grace, thinking ye well of your great goodness. My liege Lord, my full trust is that ye will have consideration, though that my person be of no value, your high goodness, where God hath set you in so high estate to every liege man that to you longeth plenteously to give grace, that you like to accept this mine simple request for the love of Our Lady and the blissful Holy Ghost, to whom I pray that they might your heart induce to all pity and grace for their high goodness. Henry having taken every precaution for the preservation of his people at home, as well against foreign designs as against disturbers of the peace within the realm, left Porchester Castle on the 7th of (p. 142) August, with the intention of superintending in person the embarkation of his troops. This seems to have occupied him to the 10th, when he went on board the "Royal Trinity," and immediately gave signal for the ships to join him from the different stations in which they were awaiting his command. The fleet consisted of about thirteen hundred vessels of very different sizes, varying from twenty to three hundred tons' burden. Probably, reckoning servants, attendants of every kind, as well as fighting men, this fleet transported to the shores of France not less than thirty thousand persons. Of these there were only about two thousand five hundred men-at-arms, four thousand horse-archers, four thousand foot-archers, and one thousand gunners, miners, masons, smiths, with others. The whole amount of fighting men, according to this calculation, does not exceed eleven thousand five hundred. The expedition sailed with a favourable wind on Sunday, August 11, 1415.[114] [Footnote 114: It was shortly before he left London on this expedition that Henry made that grant (to which reference was made in the early part of our first volume) of 20_l._ per annum on Joan Waring, his nurse.--Rol. Pat. 3 Henry V. m. 13. It is dated June 5th.] Every document, probably, now known relative to this expedition, has been examined by Sir Harris Nicolas; and to his able digest of the facts relating to this part of Henry's proceedings the reader is referred for the more minute details. CHAPTER XXII. (p. 143)