It was to no purpose that he associated the lord of Lumbres in the chief command with Dolhain.

Their subordinates, William de Blois, lord of Treslong, and William de la Marck, lord of Lumey, were bold, unscrupulous adventurers who found it to their interest to allow their unruly crews to burn and pillage, as they lusted, not only their enemies' ships in the open sea, but churches and monasteries along the coast and up the estuaries that they infested.
The difficulty was to find harbours in which they could take refuge and dispose of their booty.

For some time they were permitted to use the English ports freely, and the Huguenot stronghold at La Rochelle was also open to them as a market.

Queen Elizabeth, as was her wont, had no scruple in conniving at acts of piracy to the injury of the Spaniard; but at last, at the beginning of 1572, in consequence of strong representations from Madrid, she judged it politic to issue an order forbidding the Sea-Beggars to enter any English harbours.

The pirates, thus deprived of the shelter which had made their depredations possible, would have been speedily in very bad case, but for an unexpected and surprising stroke of good fortune.