In the year 1544, upon the expedition to Boulogne in France, he was made field marshal of the English army, and after taking that town, being then knight of the garter, he was in the beginning of September 1545 constituted the King's lieutenant, and captain-general of all his army within the town and county of Boulogne[1]. During his command there in 1546, hearing that a convoy of provisions of the enemy was coming to the fort at Oultreaw, he resolved to intercept it; but the Rhinegrave, with four thousand Lanskinets, together with a considerable number of French under the de Bieg, making an obstinate defence, the English were routed, Sir Edward Poynings with divers other gentlemen killed, and the Earl himself obliged to fly, tho' it appears, by a letter to the King dated January 8, 1548, that this advantage cost the enemy a great number of men. But the King was so highly displeased with this ill success, that from that time he contracted a prejudice against the Earl, and soon after removed him from his command, and appointed the Earl of Hertford to succeed him. Upon which Sir William Page wrote to the Earl of Surry to advise him to procure some eminent post under the Earl of Hertford, that he might not be unprovided in the town and field. The Earl being desirous in the mean time to regain his former favour with the King, skirmished with the French and routed them, but soon after writing over to the King's council that as the enemy had cast much larger cannon than had been yet seen, with which they imagined they should soon demolish Boulogne, it deserved consideration whether the lower town should stand, as not being defensible; the council ordered him to return to England in order to represent his sentiments more fully upon those points, and the Earl of Hertford was immediately sent over in his room. This exasperating the Earl of Surry, occasioned him to let fall some expressions which favoured of revenge and dislike to the King, and a hatred of his Councellors, and was probably one cause of his ruin, which soon after ensued. The Duke of Norfolk, who discovered the growing power of the Seymours, and the influence they were likely to bear in the next reign, was for making an alliance with them; he therefore pressed his son to marry the Earl of Hertford's daughter, and the Dutchess of Richmond, his own daughter, to marry Sir Thomas Seymour; but neither of these matches were effected, and the Seymours and Howards then became open enemies. The Seymours failed not to inspire the King with an aversion to the Norfolk-family, whose power they dreaded, and represented the ambitious views of the Earl of Surry; but to return to him as a poet.