The late Dr. James Gairdner read a paper before the Royal Historical Society on November 15, 1906, upon a sixteenth-century drawing in the Cotton collection which depicts the burning of the town of Brighthelmstone in the reign of King Henry VIII. It will be remembered that Dr. Gairdner came to the conclusions that the accepted accounts were not reliable; that the raid depicted really took place in the spring of 1514 and not in the summer of 1545; and that the French did not burn the town on the latter occasion.