They bound themselves to supply for the expedition four thousand men-at-arms and twenty thousand foot, whom they promised to maintain for ten weeks, and even a fortnight beyond, if, when the Duke of Normandy had crossed to England, his council should consider the prolongation necessary.

The conditions in detail and the subsequent course of the enterprise thus projected were minutely regulated and settled in a treaty published by Dutillet in 1588, from a copy found at Caen when Edward III.

became master of that city in 1346.

The events of the war, the long fits of hesitation on the part of both kings, and the repeated alternations from hostilities to truces and truces to hostilities, prevented anything from coming of this proposal, the authenticity of which has been questioned by M.Michelet amongst others, but the genuineness of which has been demonstrated by M.Adolph Despont, member of the appeal-court of Caen, in his learned Histoire du Cotentin.
Edward III., though he had proclaimed himself King of France, did not at the outset of his claim adopt the policy of a man firmly resolved and burning to succeed.

From 1337 to 1340 he behaved as if he were at strife with the Count of Flanders rather than with the King of France.