War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 9781526130839

Table of contents :
Front matter
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: War and the Elizabethan state
Constructing a Protestant regime: The machinery of the Elizabethan war effort in the counties
Government and people during the Elizabethan wars
Defending the Protestant state: The militia and invasion threats
Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies from the counties
The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance
Conclusion
Appendix: Troop levies from the counties, 1585–1602
Bibliography of primary souces
Index

Citation preview

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties War and politics in the Elizabethan counties

The book The book examines The book examines government examines government government in wartime in wartime inin wartime a wide-ranging in a wide-ranging in a wide-ranging set of set contexts, ofsetcontexts, of contexts, dealingdealing firstdealing with firstthe with first political the withpolitical the problems: political problems: the problems: structure the structure theofstructure the of wartime theofwartime the state, wartime popular state, state, popular popular attitudes attitudes toattitudes theto war theto and war the the and war government’s the andgovernment’s the government’s effortsefforts to influence efforts to influence tothem, influence them, resistance them, resistance to resistance to to demands, demands, and demands, the and problems the andproblems theofproblems governing of governing ofagoverning country a country divided a country divided in religion divided in religion and in religion a regime and aand regime a regime deeplydeeply fearful deeply fearful of the fearful of future. theoffuture. Itthe then future. Itassesses then It assesses then theassesses machinery the machinery the in machinery practice, in practice, in looking practice, looking at the looking at theat the work of work thework of central theofcentral the regime central regime under regime under the Queen under the Queen herself the Queen herself alongside herself alongside the alongside local themachinery local the local machinery machinery of lordoflieutenancies lord of lieutenancies lord lieutenancies whichwhich carried which carried the carried demands the demands theofdemands theofcentre theofcentre into the centre the intocounties, the intocounties, the counties, townstowns and towns parishes and parishes andofparishes England. of England. ofThese England. These mechanisms These mechanisms mechanisms of ruleof were rule of were crucial rule were crucial to the crucial to theto the success success of the success of war theeffort, ofwar theeffort, by warproviding effort, by providing bytroops providing troops to fight troops tooverseas, fight to overseas, fightrunning overseas, running therunning militia the militia the militia whichwhich defended which defended against defended against Spanish against Spanish invasion Spanish invasion attempts invasion attempts and attempts paying and paying and for paying them for them both for them both both through through local through taxes. local local taxes. The book taxes. The book draws The book draws evidence draws evidence and evidence case and studies case and studies case from studies across from from across the across the the country country andcountry from and politics from and from politics andpolitics government and government and government at all levels, at all at levels, from all levels, the fromcourt from the court and the Privy court and Privy and Privy Council Council to Council thetocounties thetocounties the and counties parishes, and parishes, andbut parishes, it but seeks itbut seeks to examine it seeks to examine to England examine England as England a single as a single as a single polity.polity. In this polity. Inway thisIn itway ranges this itway ranges much it ranges much moremuch widely more more widely thanwidely the than war the than alone war thealone and warprovides alone and provides and a provides a a new assessment new assessment new assessment of the of effectiveness theofeffectiveness the effectiveness of the of Elizabethan theofElizabethan the Elizabethan state as state a whole. as state a whole. as a whole.

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties

War and War politics and War politics and in politics theinElizabethan theinElizabethan the Elizabethan counties counties assesses counties assesses theassesses English the English the national English national war national war war effort effort during effort during the during wars the against wars the wars against Spain against Spain (1585–1603). Spain (1585–1603). (1585–1603). Drawing Drawing onDrawing a mass on a of on mass hitherto a mass of hitherto of hitherto neglected neglected source neglected source material source material from material both from central from both both central and central local and archives, local and local archives, it challenges archives, it challenges it many challenges manymany existing existing assumptions existing assumptions assumptions about about the weaknesses about the weaknesses the weaknesses of theofstate theofin state the thestate inface theinofface the military of facemilitary of military change, change, finding change, finding a political finding a political system a political system in much system in much better in much better health better health thanhealth has thanpreviously has thanpreviously has been previously been been thought. thought. thought.

This book This book will This be book will of be interest willofbe interest of to interest historians to historians to of historians early of modern early of early modern English modern English politics English politics andpolitics and and government government government at bothatnational both at national both andnational local andlevels. local and levels. local levels.

War War War and and and politics politics politics ininthe inthe the Elizabethan Elizabethan Elizabethan counties counties counties

Neil Younger Neil Younger Neil is Lecturer Younger is Lecturer inisEarly Lecturer inModern Early in Modern Early History Modern History at theHistory University at the at University the ofUniversity Essex of Essex of Essex

Politics, Politics, Culture Politics, Culture and Culture Society and Society and in Society Early in Modern Early in Early Modern Britain Modern Britain Britain

YOUNGER YOUNGER

Jacket design: Jacket River design: JacketDesign, design: River Design, Edinburgh River Design, Edinburgh Edinburgh

YOUNGER

Jacket image: Jacket The Jacket image: Arrival image: The Arrival of The Queen Arrival of Queen Elizabeth of Queen Elizabeth I (1530-1603) Elizabeth I (1530-1603) Iat(1530-1603) Tilbury; at Tilbury; andatthe Tilbury; and Defeat theand of Defeat the the Defeat Spanish of the of Spanish the Spanish Armada,Armada, left hand Armada, leftpanel, hand leftby panel, hand English by panel, English School, by English School, (17th century) School, (17th century) (17th (oil on century) (oil panel), on(oil St. panel), Faith’s on panel), St. Church, Faith’s St. Faith’s Church, Gaywood, Church, Gaywood, Gaywood, Norfolk,Norfolk, UK/The Norfolk, UK/The Bridgeman UK/The Bridgeman Art Bridgeman Library Art Library Art Library

ISBN 978-0-7190-8300-6

9 780719 083006 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

N ENI ELNI EY L IOLYUOYNU OGNUEG NREGRE R

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties

.

Politics, culture and society in early modern Britain Politics, culture and society in early modern Britain General editors General editors professor ann hughes p r o f e ann hug hes p r o f e s ssosro ranthony milton p r oprofessor f e s s o r anthony milton peter l ake professor peter l ake This important series publishes monographs that take a fresh and challenging look This important series publishes monographs that take a fresh and challenging look at the interactions between politics, culture and society in Britain between 1500 and at the interactions between politics, culture and society in Britain between 1500 and the mid-eighteenth century. It counteracts the fragmentation of current historiography the mid-eighteenth century. It counteracts the fragmentation of current historiography through encouraging a variety of approaches which attempt to redefine the political, through encouraging a variety of approaches which attempt to redefine the political, social and interconnectionininaaflexible flexibleand and creative social andcultural culturalworlds, worlds,and andto toexplore explore their their interconnection creative fashion. All the volumes in the series question and transcend traditional interdiscifashion. All the volumes in the series question and transcend traditional interdisciplinary political history historyand andliterary literarystudies, studies,social social plinaryboundaries, boundaries,such suchas asthose those between between political history Theythus thuscontribute contributetotoa broader a broader historyand anddivinity, divinity,urban urbanhistory history and and anthropology. anthropology. They understanding early modern modernBritain. Britain. understandingofofcrucial crucialdevelopments developments in in early Already in the the series series Already published published in Black davidj.j.appleby appleby Black Bartholomew Bartholomew david The1630s 1630s ian ian atherton atherton and The and julie juliesanders sanders(eds) (eds) Readingand andpolitics politics in in early modern Reading modern England: England:the themental mentalworld world seventeenth-century Catholic Catholic gentleman ofofaaseventeenth-century gentleman geoff geoffbaker baker Literatureand andpolitics politics in in the the English English Reformation Literature Reformation tom tombetteridge betteridge ‘No historie so meete’ jan broadway ‘No historie so meete’ jan broadway Republican learning learning justin Republican justinchampion champion This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth This England: Essays on the English Nation and Commonwealth patrick patrickcollinson collinson Cromwell’s major-generals christopher durston Cromwell’s major-generals christopher durston The spoken word adam fox and daniel woolf (eds) The spoken word adam fox and daniel woolf (eds) Reading Ireland raymond gillespie Reading Ireland raymond gillespie Londinopolis paul griffiths and mark jenner (eds) Londinopolis paul griffiths and mark jenner (eds) Brave community john gurney Brave community john gurney ‘Black Tom’: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution andrew hopper ‘Black Tom’: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution andrew hopper Impostures in early modern England tobias b. hug Impostures in early modern England tobias b. hug The boxmaker’s revenge peter lake Theofboxmaker’s revenge peter lakeEngland The politics the public sphere in early modern peter andsphere steven (eds) England The politics of thelake public in pincus early modern peter lake and stevenculture pincus (eds) Henry Neville and English republican gaby mahlberg Henry Neville and the English republicanjason culture gaby mahlberg Royalists and Royalism during Interregnum mcelligott and david l. smith Royalists and Royalism during Interregnum jason mcelligott and david l. smith The social world the of early modern Westminster j. f. merritt The social world ofpolemic early modern Westminster j. f. merritt Laudian and Royalist in Stuart England: anthony milton Laudian and Royalist polemic in Stuart England: anthony milton Courtship and constraint diana o’hara The Courtship origins of the Scottish Reformation alec ryrie and constraint diana o’hara Catholics and the ‘Protestant ethanalec shagan (ed.) The origins of the Scottishnation’ Reformation ryrie Communities early modern England alexandra shepard Catholics andinthe ‘Protestant nation’ ethan shagan (ed.) and philip withington (eds) Communities in early modern England alexandra shepard Civic portraiture and political the English local community robert tittler andculture philipinwithington (eds) Aspects of English Protestantism, c. 1530–1700 tyacke Civic portraiture and political culture in the English local nicholas community robert tittler Charitable hatred alexandra walsham Aspects of English Protestantism, c. 1530–1700 nicholas tyacke Crowds and popular politics in early modern England john walter Charitable hatred alexandra walsham Deism in enlightenment jeffrey r. wigelsworth Crowds and popular politics in early modern England john walter Deism in enlightenment jeffrey r. wigelsworth

. War. and politics

in theWar Elizabethan counties and politics in the Elizabethan . counties

.

NEIL YOUNGER NEIL YOUNGER

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York Manchester University distributed exclusively in the USAPress by Palgrave Macmillan Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan

Copyright © Neil Younger 2012 The right of Neil Younger to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available ISBN 978 1 5261 0668 1 paperback First published by Manchester University Press 2012 This edition first published 2017 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or thirdparty internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

. list of figures—vii list of tables—viii acknowledgements—ix list of abbreviations—x Introduction: War and the Elizabethan state The historiography of the Elizabethan wars

1

Constructing a Protestant regime: the machinery of the Elizabethan war effort in the counties

1 11

The revival of the lieutenancies in 1585 Deputy lieutenants and the wider Elizabethan regime County government and religious division Conclusion

2 Government and people during the Elizabethan wars

58

Popular attitudes to the war Resistance from the counties The internal organisation of the lieutenancies

3 Defending the Protestant state: The militia and invasion threats

102

The origins of the trained bands Preparations against invasion, 1585–88 The Armada crisis After the Armada The nature of compliance in the militia Equipment Training The council’s achievement in militia policy

4 Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies from the counties

160

The extent of the burden The recruits Equipping the troops The counties and the military authorities The quality of the outcome Assessing the Elizabethan military system

v

Contents 5 The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance

200

The burden on the counties Local finance in action Managing lieutenancy finances Conclusion

Conclusion

232

Appendix: Troop levies from the counties, 1585–1602

246

bibliography of primary sources—249 index—259

vi

List of figures

. All figures are derived from the tables 4.1 Troop levies from the counties, 1585–1602

163

5.1 The decline in the yield of the subsidy in selected counties

203

5.2 Cheshire lay subsidies and military costs, 1585–1603

206

5.3 Norfolk lay subsidies, fifteenths and tenths and local military taxation, 1585–1603

208

5.4 Kent lay subsidies, fifteenths and tenths and local military taxation, 1585–1603

209

vii

List of tables

. 4.1 Troop levies from the counties, 1585–1602

162

5.1 The yield of the subsidy in selected counties, grants of 1585–1601

202

5.2 Cheshire lay subsidies and military costs, 1585–1603

206

5.3 Norfolk lay subsidies, fifteenths and tenths and local military taxation, 1585–1603

208

5.4 Kent lay subsidies, fifteenths and tenths and local military taxation, 1585–160

209

5.5 Summary of taxation of Cheshire, Kent and Norfolk, 1585–1603

viii

210

Acknowledgements

. It is a great pleasure to be able to record my debts to colleagues, friends and family, which are many. Richard Cust supervised the doctoral research on which this book is based, and has continued to provide invaluable help and advice for longer than any supervisor could be expected to do. I am deeply grateful to him. I am also grateful to Peter Lake for enabling me to spend a year at Vanderbilt University, where this book was completed, and to him and Sandy Solomon for making me so welcome in Nashville. Janet Dickinson has been an invaluable source of support and advice, an occasional colleague and a true friend over many years. Simon Healy has been extremely generous in sharing both references and his own work, particularly his research into the Elizabethan lay subsidy. Simon Adams very kindly read chapter 4 and Peter Lake read the entire manuscript; I am indebted to both for their comments. I am also grateful to Manchester University Press’s readers and the editors of this series for their very valuable comments, and to the Press for permitting me to exceed the contracted word limit for this book by a considerable margin. I also wish to thank the many friends and colleagues who have exchanged ideas and references and generally made historical research enjoyable over the past ten years: Michael Braddick, Alan Bryson, Louise Campbell, Tom Cogswell, Alex Courtney, David Crankshaw, Pauline Croft, Ailish D’Arcy, Anna French, Alexandra Gajda, Sylvia Gill, Helen Good, Steve Gunn, Richard Hoyle, Natalie Mears, Mary Partridge, Alec Ryrie, Sue Simpson, Malcolm Smuts, David Trim, Tim Wales, Philip Williamson and Katie Wright. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own responsibility. Parts of chapters 1 and 3 have previously appeared as articles in History and Historical Research; I am grateful to the editors of both journals for permission to reuse this material here. I thank the staff of the various archives and libraries in which this book was researched for their professionalism. I also wish to acknowledge my receipt of research funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy and the Society of Antiquaries. Among friends and family, James Schrödel and the members of WBESU, both warranted and unwarranted, should be mentioned. My parents, Alex and Andrea Younger, and my brothers Stuart and Ross, have supported me in numerous ways; it hardly needs to be said that I could not possibly have done what I have without their love and support. I am also very grateful to my wife’s parents, Alan and the late Sue Bree, who were extremely generous towards an apparently unpromising prospective son-in-law. Finally, my wife Kathryn has been more supportive than I ever had the right to expect; this book is, of course, dedicated to her.

ix

List of abbreviations

. APC

J. R. Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council of England, new series vols I-XXXII (1890–1907). BIHR Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research BL British Library Add. Additional Manuscripts Harleian Harleian Manuscripts Lansdowne Lansdowne Manuscripts Boynton, Militia Lindsay Boynton, The Elizabethan Militia 1558–1638 (1971). Braddick, M. J. Braddick, ‘“Uppon this instant extraordinarie occasion”: military mobilization in Yorkshire before and after the Armada’, ‘Uppon this Huntington Library Quarterly 61 (1998), 429–55. instant’ Cambridgeshire E. J. Bourgeois (ed.), A Cambridgeshire Lieutenancy Letterbook, LL 1595–1605 (Cambridgeshire Records Society, 12, 1997). Chamberlain Sarah Williams (ed.), Letters written by John Chamberlain During Letters the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Camden old series 79, 1861). Cheshire LB Lieutenancy book of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley: Cheshire RO, DDX 358/1. Clark, English Peter Clark, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Provincial Society Revolution (Hassocks, Sussex, 1977) CP Cecil Papers, Hatfield House CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series of the Reign of Elizabeth I, 1547–1603, ed. R. Lemon and M. A. E. Green (6 vols, 1856–70). CSPF Calendar of State Papers preserved in the Public Record Office, Foreign Series. Elizabeth I. 1558–1589 (23 vols, 1863–1950). CSP Spanish Calendar of Letters and State Papers relating to English Affairs Preserved in … Simancas III: Elizabeth, 1580–1586, ed. M. A. S. Hume (1896). ‘Derbyshire’ W. A. Carrington (ed.), ‘Papers relating to Derbyshire musters Musters temp. Q. Elizabeth …’, Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological and Natural History Society, XVII (1895), 1–48. EHR English Historical Review FSL Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC Gloucester LB Gloucester Lieutenancy Book: Gloucestershire RO, GBR H2/1 Hammer, Paul E. J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars. War, Government and Society Elizabeth’s Wars in Tudor England, 1544–1604 (Basingstoke, 2003). Hasler, P. W. Hasler (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603 (3 vols, 1981). Commons Herts Musters A. J. King (ed.), Muster Books for North and East Hertfordshire

x

List of abbreviations 1580–1605 (Hertfordshire Record Society 12, 1996). Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Historical Manuscripts Commission List and Analysis of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I, ed. R. B. Wernham (7 vols, 1969–2001). Lancashire J. Harland (ed.), The Lancashire Lieutenancy under the Tudors and Stuarts (2 vols, Chetham Society 49 and 50, 1859). Lieutenancy Leveson Papers Staffordshire Record Office, papers of Sir John Leveson, D593/S/4 Loseley Surrey History Centre, Loseley manuscripts LPL Lambeth Palace Library Nathaniel Bacon The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey vols III, IV, ed. A. H. Smith et al. (Norfolk Record Society, 53 (1990), 64 (2000)). Papers Northamptonshire J. Goring and J. Wake (eds), Northamptonshire Lieutenancy Papers and Other Documents 1580–1614 (Northamptonshire Record LP Society 27, 1975). ODNB Colin Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). RO Record Office RS Record Society Smith, County A. Hassell Smith, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603 (Oxford, 1974). and Court Smith, ‘Militia A. H. Smith, ‘Militia rates and militia statutes 1558–1663’ in P. Clark, A. G. R. Smith and N. Tyacke (eds), The English Commonrates and wealth 1547–1640. Essays in Politics and Society Presented to Joel statutes’ Hurstfield (Leicester, 1979). SP The National Archives, State Papers STC A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, compiled by A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, revised and enlarged by W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson and K. F. Pantzer (3 vols, 1986–91) Surrey LB Surrey History Centre, LM/2046 TNA The National Archives of the UK (Public Record Office) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Tudor Royal P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin (eds), Tudor Royal Proclamations (3 vols, New Haven and London, 1969). Proclamations Twysden LP G. Scott Thomson (ed.), The Twysden Lieutenancy Papers 1583– 1668 (Kent Records 10, 1926). Wernham, After R. B. Wernham, After the Armada. Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe 1588–1595 (Oxford, 1984). Wernham, R. B. Wernham, The Return of the Armadas. The Last Years of the Elizabethan Wars Against Spain, 1595–1603 (Oxford, 1994). Return Younger, Neil Younger, ‘William Lambarde on the politics of enforcement ‘Lambarde’ in Elizabethan England’, Historical Research, 83 (2010), 69–82. HEHL HMC L&A

xi

List of abbreviations CONVENTIONS Unless otherwise stated, all places of publication are London. Quotations are given in the original spelling, but standard contractions are silently expanded, and the use of i/j, u/v and y are all modernised, as are capitalisation and (where necessary) punctuation.

xii

Introduction War and the Elizabethan state

. F

rom July 1585 until the end of Elizabeth I’s reign, England was at war. These eighteen years of continual warfare dominated the final period of the Queen’s reign, presenting one of the most severe political and governmental challenges faced by the regime, testing the Elizabethan state perhaps almost to its limits. This book argues that the impact of the wars is a vital component of our understanding of later Elizabethan England in several different contexts. The wars of 1585–1603 were a complex, interlinked and multifaceted conflict involving all of the major powers of western Europe, yet they are not well known; they have never attained an overarching identity as a canonical ‘war’, have no all-encompassing name or an accepted decision as to who won. From the English point of view, they can be seen as turning on two primary conflicts. Firstly, this was a war with Spain, in which Elizabeth’s regime sought to counter a Spanish threat to England. This was manifested most obviously in various Spanish invasion attempts (most famously in 1588), but it was also played out at sea and in English attacks on Spain itself. As an extension of this strategic imperative, England also sought to prevent Spanish control of territory within its immediate geopolitical region, from where attacks on England itself might be launched. To this end, England provided military support to the Dutch rebels, later the United Provinces, in their war for independence from the Spanish crown, and to Henry of Navarre, later Henry IV, in his successful bid to win the French throne against Spanish-backed ultra-Catholic forces. English strategy on the Continent was at heart defensive, seeking primarily to guarantee its own security. It was also essentially reactive, driven by responses to Dutch or Huguenot crises, Spanish or Leaguer offensives, in an effort to prop up allies whilst limiting the extent of its commitment. This was never a strategy of conquest, but one of support to allies, and in particular of defending strategic points in allies’ territory.1 Thus the war was entered into largely to preserve the Dutch from collapse in 1585, and to prevent an aggressive Catholic regime being established throughout the Netherlands; the aid to Henry of Navarre, from 1589 to 1597, had the same aim with regard to France. The war-effort was always perceived in terms of immediate and short-term needs, rarely as a long-term commitment.2 There was a continuing readiness

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties on the English part to discuss peace – in 1588, 1593–94, 1598, 1599–1600 and 1602.3 The second conflict was an attempt to put down rebellion in Ireland, which began in response to the uprising led from 1595 by Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, supported at times by Spain. Here there was a more definite goal: the crushing of rebellion, the ejection of Spanish troops, and the pacifying of the whole island under restored English authority. This objective required the regime to take the initiative decisively, and by the climactic years of 1598–1602, with the commitment of what were by Elizabethan standards huge resources, this was done. These two conflicts were linked in several ways: firstly, by Spanish intervention in Ireland, notably at Kinsale in 1601–02; secondly, by the threat of other such landings, potentially as a first step to an attack on England itself; and, thirdly, by the belief that a comprehensive peace could not be made with Spain until Ireland was settled, something which deferred the end of the war until shortly after Elizabeth’s own death in March 1603. The essentially defensive aims of the war notwithstanding, Elizabeth was several times persuaded that the best form of defence lay in taking the war to the enemy. The various offensive operations against Spain – Drake’s attack on Cadiz in 1587, the Portugal voyage of 1589, and the Cadiz and Islands voyages of 1596 and 1597 respectively – had a mixed record of success, but at their best were extremely good value for money.4 Most of these demanded large numbers of troops. Aside from these ventures, the war was always played out with reference to the geopolitics of England’s immediate surroundings, to prevent hostile powers from controlling territory from which England itself might be threatened or harried: primarily the north coast of France and the Netherlands. Although some, such as the second earl of Essex, favoured more aggressive strategies, even dreaming of bringing the Spanish monarchy to its knees, this view never commanded a majority of support on the council and certainly never persuaded the Queen.5 Elizabeth never sought to defeat Spain – merely to fend it off. This was the very antithesis of strategic overreach. To a large extent, these circumstances and tendencies dictated both the choices made in foreign policy and the domestic responses. This war was always a reluctant war, and there was always a hope that its end was on the horizon; in no sense did Elizabeth’s regime plan in 1585 for eighteen years of warfare. Consequently there was little effort to prepare the country for a long conflict, nor was any point reached at which such a decision was made. Whereas rulers with consciously aggressive foreign policies such as Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden or Louis XIV of France, or rulers who, like Philip II of Spain, were resigned to effectively continual warfare, naturally sought to shape their states accordingly, the Elizabethan state’s default mode was always peaceful. This goes a long way to explaining the nature of the domestic war effort, in the same way that the ongoing assumption that England’s primary

2

Introduction defence was the navy dictated that body’s professionalised organisation and central funding. Naturally, the war demanded considerable expenditure of resources. Some of these were raised in what is regarded as a ‘modern’ way, through imposing taxation granted by Parliament on the people, collecting the money and then disbursing it through professional royal officials. However several significant parts of the war effort, primarily the provision of troops to serve overseas and the defence of the realm by the militia, were entrusted to civilian-run methods of government, most notably the lord lieutenancies in the counties. Thus whilst much of the state’s military machinery was professional, at the points where the demands of war touched the population, administration was local and amateur. The response to these tasks form the principal matter of this book. These are often regarded as being purely administrative, technocratic issues; yet such administration was deeply political. It was the stuff of parliamentary uproar, of protest and persuasion, and potentially the cause of rebellion; ultimately, under Elizabeth’s successors, it contributed towards the breakdown of the relationship between crown and people which resulted in civil war. This book seeks to analyse these essentially military problems within the contexts of the wider political world in which they were played out and of the wider problems faced by the regime, especially the problem of religious division. Thus chapter 1 examines the regime’s creation of structures for the running of the local war effort, notably the lord lieutenancies, whilst placing them within the broader context of the political, religious and governmental challenges faced by the regime. Chapter 2 explores the issue of running the war as a political problem, primarily in terms of the need to maintain broad national support for the war, and examines the extent of resistance or opposition faced by the regime. In chapters 3–5, these overarching themes are applied to the practical realities of the war effort, through case-studies of the three most important elements of the counties’ contribution towards the war: the militia, troop levies and the funding of this work through local taxation. The coverage, inevitably, is dictated primarily by the availability of sources. The sources for this study derive from two principal archives. The archives of central government contain tremendous amounts of material on local affairs: as well as the formal records of government, there are vast quantities of correspondence, reports and petitions from the counties. Secondly, the sources generated by local government itself have been explored as fully as possible, most importantly the records of the lord lieutenancies, the central institution used by the regime to run local military affairs and extract resources from the counties. However, the lieutenancies, like many of the local structures involved in the war effort, were very ad hoc in their operation, and had no formal record-keeping practices. The survival of records therefore depended

3

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties on the initiative of individual local governors (or, sometimes, towns), and consequently the survival of these records is patchy and uneven. Thus, while sources have been taken from wherever they are available, certain counties are covered more fully than others. Amongst these, Kent should be singled out; the archive of Sir John Leveson is uniquely full and rich both in the ‘formal’ records of local government – letters and warrants from Queen, council and lord lieutenant, muster rolls and certificates, accounts and so on – but also in the informal or semi-formal correspondence between local officials which is often much more revealing about the reality of government on the ground.6 Therefore, whilst this study seeks to range as widely as possible, Kent is more fully represented than anywhere else. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ELIzABETHAN WARS Although the later part of Elizabeth’s reign has always tended to be neglected by comparison with the earlier, the war has been widely regarded as significant in several different historiographical contexts: those of both national and local politics and government; of military practice and development; of the development of the state; and of the long-term factors which led, in the seventeenth century, to the English Civil War. Along with perennial problems over religion and the succession, the war was the most prominent issue in national politics from 1585 until the end of the reign. The decision about whether to intervene in the Netherlands at all had been a major debate for many years prior to 1585, and the Queen had almost been persuaded to approve a formal intervention in 1576; Lord Burghley, for one, knew that to enter the war would mean that England would have to ‘sustayn a gretar warr, than ever in any memory of man it hath done’.7 Furthermore, the decision as to whether to continue with war or make peace dominated much of the political debate of the period, more than ever during the ascendancy of the earl of Essex in the mid- to late 1590s. Ministers had to balance the demands of the international situation and the threats to England with the strain being placed on the nation’s finances, its resources, and – above all, perhaps – its resolve to continue. Yet the impact of the war was surely felt most heavily in the local context. During this period, military business was perhaps the most time-consuming and expensive aspect of county affairs, only rivalled by the maintenance of social order.8 The war had a real impact on every level and every sector of society: nobility and gentry, yeomen and cottagers, clergy and lay; whether they served or commanded in the militia, were recruited to fight overseas, or merely contributed towards the costs. The military system affected more Elizabethan people than any other sphere of government, more than the taxation system, more even that the justice system. A reconstruction of how it did

4

Introduction so is therefore necessary to a complete picture of Elizabethan government and society. As such, military administration is an important way into the world of governing the Elizabethan counties and presents important opportunities to assess local as well as national government and how well it worked. It is argued in this book that in most ways the local end of the war effort worked much better than it has usually been given credit for. A re-examination of these issues changes our picture of the period significantly and has relevance for ongoing debates concerning the nature of relations between the centre and the localities, the political culture of early modern local society and questions of localism and the county community, and the capability – even viability – of the English state, as we will see. The military context of the war effort is also crucial; this was a very long period of warfare, by far the longest fought by a Tudor monarch, and it came in a period of rapid change in military practice, one which is sometimes regarded as a military revolution. England’s engagement with these changes was always limited by its isolation from European land borders and its focus on the navy, but it could not ignore them entirely. The struggles of the regime to accommodate its military structures to these changes represented a major challenge. These latter perspectives are both relevant in a further current of research, since the wars – indeed, war in general – is seen as a key driver of ‘state formation’, as a force pushing the state towards greater development, centralisation and ‘modernisation’. This approach has an uneasy relationship with more avowedly political approaches to the period, particularly with reference to the problems of the early seventeenth century, but it has provided an important new way to examine the wider impact of warfare in early modern polities.9 Furthermore, it is above all in the integration of these national, local and military contexts that the impact of war is most relevant, since of course all three were in reality part of a single society, a single state, and a single political community. This book seeks to integrate the war into our understanding of all of these aspects. It presents a less negative picture of the war than many historians have traditionally painted. Elizabethan military history (though not naval history) has until recently suffered from what Paul Hammer has called a ‘small and consistently negative’ literature, and the study of warfare remains a neglected and unfashionable topic, although not to the extent it once was.10 This is especially the case with regard to those elements of the military machinery which were the responsibility of the counties. Thus Cruickshank, McGurk and Braddick have argued that troop levies for service overseas were almost invariably badly chosen and poorly equipped, composed of the dregs of the counties. Boynton and Hassell Smith painted a picture of a militia which, while not without some successes, notably through the creation of the trained bands,

5

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties was equally badly equipped, little trained and in Smith’s words, a ‘pathetically small achievement’. The overall military effort is regarded as having fallen short in almost every way.11 This picture of the military outcomes of the counties’ efforts is matched and explained by assumptions about the nation’s attitude to the war in general. These focus on the attitudes of county gentry, which, it is argued, were deeply hostile to the war, primarily because it forced the regime to lay heavy and expensive burdens on the counties for troop-raising, musters and so on. Thus, when the gentry, in their roles as local officials, were called upon to administer these duties, their responses were at best lacklustre, reluctant and penny-pinching. These attitudes are seen as growing more pronounced as the war continued and became, as the 1590s progressed, yet more demanding, such that war-weariness in the counties severely restricted the ability of the regime to prosecute its policies and the council found it increasingly difficult to manage the country. Such an argument is made with varying force and nuance, but, reflecting the interpretation presented in Hassell Smith’s highly influential study of Elizabethan Norfolk, has for many years been taken to be the dominant note of the public’s response to the war. Thus we read that in Kent ‘grievances were now two-a-penny’; ‘continuous requests for men to serve abroad drained the patience of deputy lieutenants’; ‘the strain on the counties led to administrative breakdowns and opposition to central government’s demands’.12 This interpretation can be traced to a confluence of several streams of historiography. One is the poor historical reputation of the Elizabethan armed forces. A second is the ‘county community’ school of early modern English historiography, which argued (especially with reference to the early seventeenth century) that the English gentry had intensely local political horizons and were little interested in national concerns; the demands of a foreign war, in this context, were irrelevant and unwelcome intrusions in the local communities of England, and the gentry’s response focused on minimising the war’s impact on their communities.13 A third is the influence of those who have looked at the late Elizabethan period in search of the origins of the civil war, an approach which is not necessarily very helpful for studying the Elizabethan polity on its own terms. Many historians have identified elements of breakdown in the functioning of the English state under James I and Charles I, so it is logical to see how far these have Elizabethan origins. This is especially the case since Hassell Smith, for example, saw the emergence of a divide within the Norfolk gentry between those who supported the court and those who sought to defend the county, with the latter employing arguments about the constitution to resist government demands.14 Here, the 1590s provide an important point of comparison with periods of warfare in the 1620s and indeed the late 1630s and 1640s.

6

Introduction To an extent, these perspectives feed off each other; thus, if the county community school saw increasing alienation between court and country during the war, then this both explains and is supported by claims that English government was showing signs of incipient breakdown in the same period. Indeed, the war period is often seen as the beginnings of the breakdown of the early seventeenth century; historians have pointed to ‘the disintegration of the Elizabethan settlement, c. 1595–1612’, or ‘the breakdown of the Elizabethan system 1585–1642’.15 In a different perspective again, Conrad Russell saw the 1590s as the beginnings of the impact of the ‘military revolution’ on England and in particular English government finance, in which Elizabeth ‘failed to get her income to keep up with new patterns of warfare … two of her main sources of income, the crown lands and parliamentary subsidies, were near the point of collapse’, a problem which had a direct impact on the deeply problematic relationships of James I and Charles I with their Parliaments and on subsequent wartime political crises in the 1620s and 1640s.16 Finally, many of these streams come together in the notion, popularised by Peter Clark, of a ‘crisis of the 1590s’ in England (and indeed in Europe) caused by the stresses of war combined with social problems such as poverty, disease and dearth and political problems such as an ageing Queen and a government divided by faction.17 This has all contributed to the tendency on the part of historians to regard the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign with a certain amount of distaste, as a confusing, troublesome and ill-tempered period of local, national and international strife. As twenty-five years of peace came to an end, taxes rose, ministers aged, wearied and died and Elizabeth herself grew old, the period has been seen as a twilit fin-de-siècle, overshadowed by factional struggle at court. That certain of these years (though by no means all of them) coincided with outbreaks of plague and deteriorating living standards brought on by poor harvests, whilst coincidental, has been conflated with political difficulties to create a myth of the ‘nasty nineties’. The occasionally melancholy writings and speeches of the Queen and certain of her ministers, notably Burghley, have provided plenty of meat for historians who choose to emphasise this aspect of the reign. Yet this is inevitably a caricature, and has always been difficult to reconcile with other important aspects of these years: the notable victories at home and abroad, the continuity of effective government, and above all the remarkable stability of the polity. Indeed many of these very negative assessments are in some ways problematic. They fit somewhat awkwardly with the fact that, in an age in which warfare prompted bankruptcy and governmental collapse all over Europe, Elizabethan England not only survived this remarkably long war intact, untroubled by rebellion and fiscally solvent, but emerged having achieved the various aims which drew it into the war in the first place. The insistence on an almost unremittingly negative attitude to the war is also

7

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties surprising, since historians of other periods have often seen foreign wars as occasioning patriotism and support for the government. Historians of the Elizabethan wars, however, emphasise instead the burdens of war and the weariness of the people. It is argued below that this is an incomplete picture of the national mood of the period. In response to some of these difficulties, many of the perspectives described above have more recently shifted in significant ways. The ‘county community’ interpretation has been largely discredited by historians’ recognition that early modern English people were in fact intensely interested in affairs beyond their own counties.18 The reputation of Elizabethan military capacity has also improved, with recent historians often pointing out that shortcomings in the Elizabethan system, whilst glaring by modern standards, were often replicated in contemporary European armies.19 The conclusions reached here find much to support these views. There is no doubt that the Elizabethan system had many flaws and often produced poor quality results, but equally, I argue, those shortcomings are often exaggerated or generalised. This book does not seek to claim that there were no complaints, no problems or no war-weariness in the counties; there clearly were. The question is whether the period was dominated by such problems, and it is argued here that they should not be taken to represent the whole story, either of popular attitudes to the war or of the work of the Elizabethan military system. Many of the achievements of the Elizabethan system were impressive, and indeed the picture described above begs the question of how, in the face of such supposed weakness, the council managed to keep the war effort running for so long without large-scale and widespread suspensions of cooperation, something which no historian has been able to identify. The time is ripe for a reassessment of the Elizabethan war effort more broadly. Therefore, whilst this is fundamentally a study of processes which were carried out locally, on the level of county and below, this book aims to offer as complete and wide-ranging a picture of the domestic impact of the war as possible. To a large extent, this is intended to be an account of the Elizabethan war effort, and central to this account is the question of how the regime, as ramshackle, underdeveloped and underfunded as it often seemed, managed to conduct a war which was broadly successful in its objectives for so many years with so little domestic unrest. The ways in which Elizabeth’s regime responded to these problems reveal a great deal about the regime itself: how it worked, how well it worked, and how the political nation operated in a context which involved all of the Queen’s subjects.

8

Introduction NOTES 1 See R. B. Wernham, ‘Elizabethan war aims and strategy’ in S. T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield and C. H. Williams (eds), Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays Presented to Sir John Neale (1961), 340–68, at 340–7. 2 Cf. Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603 (Oxford, 1995), 329; Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I: War and Politics 1588–1603 (Princeton, 1992), 568. 3 On 1588, see Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy 1572–1588 (Princeton, 1981), 391–99; Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (1960), 396–407. On 1593–94: Wernham, Return, 8–15. On 1598: Read, Burghley, 542–5. On 1599–1600, Wernham, Return, chapter 20; Pauline Croft, ‘Rex Pacificus, Robert Cecil, and the 1604 peace with Spain’ in Glenn Burgess, Rowland Wymer and Jason Lawrence (eds), The Accession of James I: Historical and Cultural Consequences (Basingstoke, 2006). On 1602, H. S. Scott (ed.), ‘The journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham, solicitor-general in Ireland and master of requests for the years 1593–1616’, Camden Miscellany 10 (Camden 3rd series, 4, 1902), 49–50. 4 Wernham, ‘Elizabethan war aims’, 361–7. 5 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 1–2. 6 Staffordshire RO, D593 and D868; the main section of lieutenancy papers, D593/S/4, is referred to as ‘Leveson Papers’ throughout. 7 Simon Adams, ‘Elizabeth I and the sovereignty of the Netherlands 1576–1585’, TRHS, 6th series, 14 (2004), 309–319. SP 103/33/58, fol. 147r. (quote). 8 This is based on an admittedly impressionistic survey of the papers of officials closely involved in military business such as Leveson. 9 For these perspectives, see Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c.1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000); Braddick, ‘State formation and the historiography of early modern England’, History Compass 2 (2004), 1–17; Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500–1660 (2002). 10 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 7. 11 C. G. Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army (2nd edn, Oxford, 1966); Smith, County and Court; John McGurk, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: The 1590s Crisis (Manchester, 1997); Braddick, State Formation, chapter 5; Boynton, Militia; Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’, 93 (quote). This is also reflected in broader surveys influenced by this research, such as Robert Ashton, Reformation and Revolution 1558–1660 (1984), 127–33. These perspectives are also considered in more detail below. 12 F. C. Dietz, English Public Finance 1558–1641 (2nd edn, 1964), 57–8, 65–6, 95–6; Smith, County and Court; Clark, English Provincial Society, 221–6 (first quote at 223), 249; Penry Williams, ‘The crown and the counties’ in Christopher Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 1984), 129–31 (second quote at 130); John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), 387–8 (third quote at 388); MacCaffrey, War and Politics, 68; Wernham, Return, 207, 211; John Guy, ‘Introduction. The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?’ in Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Oxford, 1995), 1; Williams, Later Tudors, 382–3; McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, esp. 99–100. An assumption of the gentry’s reluctance to implement government demands also underpins the analysis of the militia in Boynton, Militia.

9

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 13 This interpretation is summarised and critiqued in Clive Holmes, ‘The county community in Stuart historiography’, Journal of British Studies 19 (1980), 54–73. 14 Smith, County and Court, esp. chapters 6, 13. Smith’s ‘country opposition’ has, however, been treated with more scepticism than his overall assessment of the local responses to government policies: see Williams, ‘The crown and the counties’, 138–9; Guy, Tudor England, 388–9; Guy, Reign of Elizabeth, 10. 15 Chapter titles in Robert Ashton, Reformation and Revolution 1558–1660 (1984) and Alan G. R. Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State: The Commonwealth of England 1529–1660 (Harlow, 1984). 16 Conrad Russell, James VI and I and His English Parliaments: The Trevelyan Lectures Delivered at the University of Cambridge 1995, ed. Richard Cust and Andrew Thrush (Oxford, 2011), 2. 17 Clark, English Provincial Society, chapters 7–8; Clark (ed.), The European Crisis of the 1590s (1985); an essentially similar case is made in Guy (ed.), Reign of Elizabeth. 18 See Holmes, ‘The county community’. 19 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars; John S. Nolan, ‘The militarization of the Elizabethan state’, Journal of Military History 58 (1994), 391–420.

10

Chapter 1

.

Constructing a Protestant regime The machinery of the Elizabethan war effort in the counties

I

n December 1591, the privy council issued letters to the county commissioners responsible for detecting Jesuits and Catholic priests ‘coming of malicious purpose to seduce divers of her Majesty’s subjectes from their duties and due obedience to God and her Majestie, to renounce their alleageance, and to adhere to the Pope and King of Spaine’. The council asked whether any existing commissioners were ‘not so sownde in dutie and religion towardes God and hir Majestie as is to be required’, and whether they could suggest others more suitable for the task.1 Writing to a fellow JP in response to this, William Lambarde, the antiquary and Kent JP, laid out his views on the sort of people he thought would be appropriate commissioners. Such men, he said, ought to be, not only no papistes, but no Libertines or Atheistes, whoe are (next to the papistes) the most daungerous; by cause as the Rommistes desyre a chaunge, so theise Epicureans care not for the present estate, persuading theim selves that by that even hand which they beare, all mutations (I meane touching religion) will beare with theim. They must be protestantes therfore, and the same so zelous, that may thynk theim selves to be in daunger of squysing, by the ruine of the present government, if it should fall upon theim.2

‘The ruine of the present government’ was an appalling prospect indeed: the collapse of the Elizabethan regime, potentially the extinction of English Protestantism – this was the fate Lambarde was referring to. As historians are increasingly becoming aware, the vulnerability of the political-religious dispensation in operation under Elizabeth I was a preoccupation of many within the higher levels of her regime.3 As Lambarde makes clear here, these concerns were shared by many of the Elizabethan local elites too. It is easy to regard Lambarde as a quintessentially local figure: a diligent Kent JP, committed to the welfare of the local society which his papers reveal him to have known and supervised with extraordinary care and detail.4 But Lambarde was also a part of a wider political community; a correspondent of Burghley and Archbishop

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Parker, he held minor office within the central government and appeared in the London law courts. He straddled the gap between London and his county better than most, and his letters show how far he held similar views to those at the centre of the regime.5 As Lambarde knew, the Elizabethan regime was in a very deep sense a Protestant one; Patrick Collinson has referred to it as ‘the Protestant state’, ‘for that is what it was, and in a partisan and prejudicial rather than consensual sense’.6 It operated on the assumption that its position was weak and its future far from secure. The country was deeply divided in religion, and the Elizabethan settlement was accepted by only a proportion of the population. In the wake of the collapse of two short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful regimes in 1553 and 1558, events which Elizabeth’s leading ministers had lived through and participated in, the possibility that the same fate could befall their regime hung over much of the period. The conditions for such an eventuality were essentially similar to those of the previous regimes: a childless, female monarch ruling over a country polarised in religion, with counsellors and a regime of the same brand, whose presumptive successor was liable to bring about a revolution in the policies and personnel of government. At any moment, it seemed, the death (or worse, the assassination) of Elizabeth could bring Protestant England to an immediate end, and return to Catholicism under Queen Mary II.7 This was an outcome which, the regime knew, was deeply desired by many Englishmen; some even worked to engineer it. Even those loyal to the presently constituted government of Henry VIII’s daughter would, it was feared, flock to the next rightful heir – surely Mary Stuart – after Elizabeth’s death, just as they had done in 1553. In many ways, the regime’s future depended on averting a repeat of 1553, and to do so the regime needed both loyalty in the present and loyalty to their version of the future. It needed, as Lambarde pointed out, representatives who ‘may thynk theim selves to be in daunger of squysing, by the ruine of the present government, if it should fall upon theim’. And as Lambarde wrote in 1587, the regime did not fully trust the mass of the people for this reason, either within the elite or the populace as a whole: The daies (my good Lord) be nowe thought verye dangerous: and her Majesty (next the protection of Thalmightie) shall find her naturall subjectes her most assured strength: and (of all her subjectes) those that love the present state of religione and pollicye, and that desyre to be disolved [i.e. to die] with the determination of the same: the which, whether they be the greater numbre or noe, I dare not define, but I suspect they be not.8

This book is a study of government: of the institutions, practicalities, aspirations and realities of the exercise of political power. In early modern England, as Lambarde’s words make clear, the choice of local governors was an issue of great importance, and because of the regime’s fears for its future, it was of more than usual significance for the Elizabethan regime. Throughout the

12

Constructing a Protestant regime period, the regime struggled with twin problems in local government: on the one hand the question of effectiveness and compliance, on the other that of trustworthiness. Traditionally, historians have highlighted the former, functional problem, and seen the lord lieutenancy, on which much of this book focuses, as a response to it. There is no doubt that this was a major problem. The context of the Elizabethan state’s war-making was such that local elites were crucial to success. National defence was dependent on the militia, which was run by local nobility and gentry. Troops for service overseas were raised by the same men, and the local taxes to pay for these functions were rated, levied and spent by them. Nothing could be achieved without the cooperation of the county elites. Furthermore, this cooperation was not a simple binary question of ‘yea or nay’: local elites usually sought to appear cooperative and willing, a symptom of the habits of deference to monarchical and conciliar authority deeply ingrained in the mindset of early modern people, so an outright refusal to comply with demands was rare. Success or failure was a matter of degree, not of absolutes. It mattered deeply how much effort local elites put into the discharge of their duties. A recruit for the wars (for example) could be young, strong, able, well-clothed, well-armed and well-equipped, ready to serve his Queen; alternatively, he could be a troublemaker taken from the county gaol, with second-hand or broken equipment, a cheap coat and no shoes, of very little use to the regime. Local compliance was required not only in letter, but in spirit. For this reason, a good working relationship with leading members of local society was vital to the regime: the more willing and responsive local elites were, the more likely they were to live up to the council’s aspirations in the conduct of local government. There is, however, a second important context here, and that is the ideological. The work of local government, especially during wartime, was not politically neutral. The Elizabethan wars were driven by religious motivations, and those with a personal stake in England’s success in war had more cause to be motivated into action. Furthermore, the unsettled succession meant that an English religious conflict like those occurring in Ireland, Scotland, France or the Netherlands was always perceived as possible – in such circumstances the control of force by supporters of the regime might be crucial. Thus those institutions responsible for mobilising and deploying the use of force, notably the lieutenancy, were politically highly charged. A Protestant regime seeking to rule a religiously polarised population and to safeguard its future had an obvious interest in seeking to appoint local representatives as sympathetic as possible to their objectives. As Lambarde suggests, the central motivating fact was that ‘the present government’ might ‘fall upon theim’ at any time, so loyalty to the presently constituted state was not enough: loyalty to the Protestant cause both present and future was called for. It was not sufficient to passively accept the state, to not oppose it – one

13

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties had to be actively in favour of it. Any Catholic in local office was a problem, a danger, a threat, and any local governor without firm Protestant views was problematic. The regime employed a tripartite classification of allies, opponents and those indifferent – something very much in evidence in, for example, the 1564 reports by the bishops on JPs, which tended to divide gentry into ‘earnest’ or ‘favourers’, ‘indifferent’, and ‘enemies’ of true religion.9 Thus not only did conservatives or Catholics need to be removed from positions of authority, they needed to be replaced with Protestants, and preferably with active, zealous supporters of the regime. The regime and its local allies actively sought to institute a national Protestant regime, in which Catholics or conservatives would be removed from power and the threat they posed neutralised, and keen Protestants brought forward into positions of power. Thus this chapter deals with the council’s response to these two problems: the functional and the ideological. Much of the focus is on the institution which was developed specifically to deal with the problems of warfare, the lord lieutenancy, and the men who filled the offices of lord lieutenant and deputy lieutenant. This can only be properly understood, however, with reference to the wider picture of Elizabethan local government, and so later in the chapter a broader focus is used. THE REVIVAL OF THE LIEUTENANCIES IN 1585 On 3 July 1585, chancery issued ten commissions of lieutenancy to senior members of the peerage and privy council. The earl of Bedford was made lieutenant of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset; the earl of Pembroke lieutenant of Somerset and Wiltshire; the marquess of Winchester and the earl of Sussex joint lieutenants of Hampshire; Lord Howard of Effingham lieutenant of Sussex and Surrey; Lord Cobham lieutenant of Kent; the earl of Leicester of Hertfordshire and Essex; Lord Hunsdon of Suffolk and Norfolk; the earl of Rutland of Lincolnshire; the earl of Derby of Lancashire and Cheshire; and the earl of Shrewsbury of Derbyshire and Staffordshire.10 These commissions were never rescinded: all of these men continued to hold their lieutenancies for the rest of their lives, and when they died, most were replaced. Unplanned, almost accidentally, the office of lord lieutenant became in effect a permanent element of the English constitution. Nor was there ever a formal declaration of war between England and Spain, but it became clear at almost exactly the same time that this had taken place. The year 1584 had seen the termination of diplomatic relations, and increasing concern in England over the situation in the Netherlands. The Dutch rebels seemed in danger of collapse, threatening to leave the entire Netherlands in the hands of an aggressive Catholic government, whose next target would surely be England. After the death in 1584 of both the duke of Anjou and the

14

Constructing a Protestant regime prince of Orange, the Dutch offered their sovereignty to Henry III of France. He refused, and from early March 1585, it became clear that Elizabeth would take on the protection, if not the sovereignty, of the Dutch: she would, in fact, send an army to Philip II’s sovereign territory to assist his rebels. In April 1585, Elizabeth suspended English trade with the Spanish Netherlands. In May, Philip embargoed foreign ships in his ports, an action aimed at the Dutch but interpreted by the English as a move against them. In response, several aggressive moves were taken in England against Spanish interests. By a warrant of 1 July 1585, Sir Francis Drake was given permission to attack Spanish possessions around the North Atlantic; on 8 July, the vacancy in the lord admiralship of England was filled by Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham. As a result of negotiations with the Dutch, an English army was despatched to the Netherlands; the Queen’s orders to raise troops were dated 18 July. In August and September, the various elements of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of Nonsuch were agreed.11 The cumulative outcome of these moves was the beginning of open hostilities with Spain, and the commissions appointing lieutenants were issued in the midst of these developments. The year 1585 has often been regarded as a landmark moment, for several reasons. It brought to an end nearly thirty years of peace. In recent historiography it has been seen as marking a break in the history of Elizabeth’s reign, between her so-called ‘first’ and ‘second’ reigns.12 In the history of English government, the lieutenancy’s coming of age as a permanent institution has also been regarded as a significant turning-point. In this context, the chronological coincidence between the decision to go to war and the commissioning of lieutenants seems to suggest unavoidably that there was a causal link between the two: the lieutenancy, quintessentially a military institution, was a natural recourse for the state in time of war. But in the context of a state in transition from ‘medieval’ to ‘modern’ forms of warfare, the decision to revive the lieutenancy system at this juncture merits some closer consideration to assess exactly what the lieutenants were expected to do, what they were for, and how 1585 fits into the development of this institution and into the wider picture of the regime’s efforts to prepare the country for war. The office of lieutenant was a Tudor creation, but it had a long pedigree; there was nothing new about monarchs delegating power to trusted subordinates in the counties, often noblemen.13 There is an obvious parallel in English administration in the office of sheriff. This said, the two major reasons why monarchs should wish to delegate power in this way are substantially distinct in nature. One was to mobilise resources such as troops or sometimes taxes or loans. This was always a potentially tricky task, which was often made easier if the local representative of the state had close contacts with both the centre and the localities – hence the choice of noblemen. Historically, these resources had been mobilised by the nobility through feudal or bastard feudal approaches,

15

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties but this approach was in decline by the sixteenth century: Henry VIII, for example, found it increasingly unequal to his needs.14 The second reason was to provide leadership within the county: keeping order in a crisis, either internal (rebellion or unrest) or external (the threat of foreign invasion). Early modern monarchies were seldom certain of their support in the provinces, and the presence of a representative of the centre tended to ease their concerns. These two linked but separate functions can be traced throughout the early history of the lieutenancy, back into the reign of Henry VIII. Henry made use of a number of systems similar to the lieutenancy, issuing commissions to senior nobles as ‘king’s lieutenant’ and as ‘captain general’. These were used primarily for maintaining order, for example during the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, when commissions of lieutenancy were issued to noblemen to keep order in the localities. Troops to combat the rebels were raised separately, however, by royal letters to nobles, clergy and gentry.15 This was clearly an unsystematic approach, with two approaches operating side-by-side. There was a similar degree of flexibility during the first years of Edward VI’s reign. For the purposes of the Scottish campaigns of 1547, two ‘lieutenants and captains general’ were appointed, dividing the entire country between them, whilst at the same time other nobles were commissioned to levy men and supervise defences in smaller groups of counties.16 These moves were very ad hoc, with considerable variation in the titles used, in the powers conferred, and in the areas covered. The lieutenancy moved much closer towards a recognisable form later in Edward VI’s reign, as the unstable regimes of the dukes of Somerset and Northumberland made use of trusted supporters as lord lieutenants to supervise the counties, maintain central control and preserve order. There is a reference in June 1548 to the appointment by Protector Somerset of lieutenants ‘for the repulse of thennemies and defence and good order of the country’ (although it is unclear whether these took office in any real sense), and lieutenants were appointed in response to the 1549 risings.17 In the wake of the disturbances, Parliament recognised the status of the lieutenancies: a 1549–50 act ‘for the punishment of unlawful assemblies’ stated that ‘if the king shall by his letters patent make any lieutenant in any county or counties’, they were to have authority over JPs and other officers.18 This was significant, and emphasises the lieutenancies’ role in maintaining public order and even administering justice, functions expressed at length in the lieutenancy commissions of those years and which clearly recommended the office to the wider political community.19 For the remaining years of Edward’s reign, in 1550–53, lieutenants were appointed annually to conduct musters across the country, and as necessary to suppress threatened rebellion.20 Thus the lieutenants seemed set to become a permanent part of the roster of local officials, as agents of the centre to maintain order in the counties.

16

Constructing a Protestant regime Mary I’s accession in 1553 brought an end to this, however. Mary discontinued the practice of annual appointments and issued commissions only when there was an immediate necessity, such as Wyatt’s rebellion in 1554, a threat from Scotland in 1555, and, in 1558, the French war, and only in those parts of the country where it was deemed necessary.21 In 1558, for example, the marquess of Winchester was appointed lieutenant in sixteen English counties, from the home and Midland counties to the Marches, Wales, London and other cities.22 The lieutenancy commissions were considerably more circumscribed than their Edwardian equivalents, omitting any mention of giving justice.23 Furthermore, commissions were specifically terminated and not merely allowed to lapse.24 When no lieutenant was commissioned, the military affairs of the counties were handled by commissions of array composed of the sheriff and JPs. By the time of Elizabeth’s accession in 1558, then, the lieutenancy had become a fairly common recourse of government, but it would be a mistake to regard it as a well-established institution. It was instead a tool which could be employed when necessary in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes: for keeping the peace, raising troops and invasion defence. Like her sister, Elizabeth used the office only sporadically, when there was a compelling need to do so. These occasions included the first years of the reign, 1558–60, the Northern rising of 1569–70 and an invasion scare in June 1574, when the earl of Bedford was made lieutenant in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, others were appointed in Norfolk and Lincolnshire, and possibly throughout the maritime counties.25 There are scattered hints and suggestions that lieutenants were appointed elsewhere at other times, but they seem to have been ephemeral at best, and there is no clear evidence that they were in active operation.26 On most of these occasions, commissions appear to have been, or been regarded as, temporary. There is no evidence for Thomson’s claim that ‘examining … the first thirty years of the reign, it will be found that except only for the year 1561, during which no Lieutenants were apparently appointed at all, there were always some Lieutenants in some counties’.27 This has led to widespread confusion and a belief that the lieutenancies were in fact continuous over the early part of the reign, but all the evidence for the existence of the office derives from the periods mentioned. There may have been odd isolated examples at other times, but there was certainly no systematic use of the office: it was a temporary expedient, used by Elizabeth primarily to deal with internal instability. It was for this reason, in fact, that the lieutenancy had not been more widely used: for most of the reign the realm had been internally fairly tranquil, and there had been no sustained period of foreign warfare, so the crown had demanded relatively little from the counties. There was little for lieutenants to do. Added to this, it seems clear that Elizabeth was not especially keen on the institution – certainly less keen than some of her councillors, since we find

17

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties notes in Burghley’s papers suggesting that he would have liked to see lieutenants appointed more frequently than they were; presumably if Burghley broached this with the Queen, he was rebuffed.28 (This would also fit an interpretation in which members of the council were rather more concerned about security and the strength of the regime than the Queen herself, as suggested by, for example, the fate of the interregnum plans of 1563 and 1584–85, for which see below.) This decision to go to war in 1585 made it obvious that this would change, although the extent of that change, and the scale and duration of the war then beginning, cannot have been obvious. Troops were needed at once to fight in the Netherlands, and many more would be required in the years and decades that followed. Given that England’s invasion of Philip II’s territory in the Netherlands was widely expected to provoke a retaliatory invasion attempt, troops would be needed to defend England too. As England had no standing army, and financial considerations precluded creating one, these troops were to come from the counties, and some means of organising and mobilising these resources was called for. This was to be the function of the lieutenancies. The form of authority exercised by the lieutenancy was somewhat unusual in Elizabethan local government. The key institution of local government for most of the period was the commission of the peace, a group of senior gentry, collectively commissioned to keep the peace, administer low-level local justice and carry out such administrative functions as were delegated to them. Such military functions as were carried out in the counties prior to 1585 had mostly been discharged by muster commissions which bore a close resemblance to the commissions of the peace: large bodies of local gentry and nobility, operating in an essentially consensual fashion, in effect government by committee. This approach was widely regarded as being unsuitable to the heavier demands of a war. As a council paper of 1585 put it, ‘without lieutenantes, in respect of the faction and equalitie betweene the comissioners in the severall counties, the service wilbe greatlie hindred’.29 The lieutenancies, instead, were based on a hierarchical model of authority: each county had one lieutenant (or occasionally two) drawn, usually, from the nobility. The lieutenant was assisted by a number of deputy lieutenants: senior members of the resident gentry, men of wealth and worship within their counties. The deputies could in turn call upon the services of other magistrates and lesser officials, who ultimately carried the royal writ into every community in England. It was a model with an obvious appeal to the early modern mind. These functional reasons gave the lieutenancy much to recommend it to a state embarking upon war. This was reflected in the instructions with which the new lieutenants were issued in July 1585, which make clear that they had important functions to carry out, primarily focussed on the exercise of the militia for national defence.30 Also in July 1585 many lieutenants received

18

Constructing a Protestant regime orders from the council to oversee the raising of troops for the expeditionary force which the earl of Leicester led in the Netherlands later that year.31 These orders, harbingers of a long stream of similar instructions despatched to the lieutenants over the next eighteen years, can be seen as marking a significant change in the Elizabethan regime’s relations with the counties. For the first three decades of the reign, the government had largely lived of its own, but it would not be able to do so in the future. Thus the expectation of this shift in the relationship between court and county added to the rationale for reintroducing lord lieutenants in 1585. Indeed this shift has been seen by historians as constituting the significance of the changes of 1585: an administrative development which would last for many years. And of course as events developed, this was indeed the case. Yet the constitutional significance of 1585 as a turning-point cannot be divorced from its political context: these issues were inevitably political, turning as they did on the deeds of the greatest in the land and the government of millions of people. This had always been the case in the history of the lieutenancy: whilst the duke of Northumberland’s use of lieutenancy commissions in 1550–53 represented good administration, they had an obvious role to play in bolstering the security of an unstable minority regime, and indeed buttressing the duke’s own power within it. Likewise lieutenancy commissions were part of power-games within regimes: according to John Guy, Mary’s appointment of the marquess of Winchester to a lieutenancy commission in 1558 was a tactical move intended to remove him from council meetings and perhaps replace him as lord treasurer.32 So it is insufficient to examine these changes purely as developments in the machinery of government, to see the council simply trying to create a more effective system. Aside from the fact that political motives are seldom so pure, this clearly neglects a crucial aspect of the context for these developments: the ongoing political debate over the future of the national religio-political dispensation. Thus whilst the council was well aware of the practical needs to be served by the lieutenancy, it can hardly have been unmindful of the political implications of creating such powerful offices. The lieutenancies were, after all, revived in July 1585 in the aftermath of one of the most intense political crises of the reign, the so-called ‘Elizabethan exclusion crisis’. During the autumn of 1584 and the first months of 1585, the political nation engaged in an extended fit of nerves over the possibility that Queen Elizabeth might be assassinated, like William of Orange in 1583, thus bringing the Protestant regime to a sudden end. This eventuality was both so appalling and so plausible that, as Patrick Collinson has famously shown, leading members of the regime were provoked to think surprising thoughts about the nature of the English constitution, to imagine it as quasi-republican, conceivably doing without a monarch, temporarily at least.33

19

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties The fears raised by the ‘exclusion crisis’ underline how insecure the regime continued to feel at this date. Their concern turned on the problem of how crucially the entire edifice of Protestant England rested on one woman’s life, and the consequent need to preserve that life to prevent a repeat of 1553. The primary concern of Elizabeth’s ministers (if not Elizabeth herself) during late 1584 and early 1585 was internal security, not external threats. It was the Queen’s safety, not the threat from Spain, that preoccupied Parliament during those months. Thus whilst the revival of the lieutenancies has customarily been linked with the years of warfare which we now know followed it, most obviously with the Armada of 1588, this second chronological coincidence merits exploring: how far can the lieutenancies be linked with the ‘exclusion crisis’? In terms of dating, the revival of the lieutenancies is very close to the crisis, much closer than to the Armada of 1588, or indeed any plausible invasion threat: such an attack, demanding as it did preparations on a colossal scale, was not to be expected imminently. Furthermore, there was little to choose between the gravity of the threats, for whilst an invasion attempt might overthrow the regime (although in the end that launched in 1588 did not), the assassination of the Queen quite certainly would. Thus it is worth examining the revival of the lieutenancies as a response not only to the administrative demands of war, but also to the security crisis which had gripped the nation just months prior to 3 July. A number of aspects of the move suggests that there was a close connection. Firstly, the fact that not all counties were provided with lieutenants at this point is revealing. Eighteen counties were placed under lieutenants: the maritime counties along the south and east coasts, from Somerset round to Lincolnshire, along with inland counties such as Wiltshire, Surrey and Hertfordshire rounding them out. This makes perfect sense from the perspective of invasion defence. The last two commissions issued at this time are more puzzling, however: the earl of Shrewsbury became lieutenant of Derbyshire and Staffordshire and the earl of Derby was given Lancashire and Cheshire. These were of course their ‘countries’, the territorial powerbases of these grandest and most oldfashioned of Elizabethan noblemen, but in the context of the commissions of 3 July 1585, they stand out: why would these comparatively remote counties be more in need of lieutenants to supervise their defence against the Spanish than home counties such as Berkshire, Oxfordshire or Northamptonshire, which were left without? A number of possibilities suggest themselves. For one thing, since lieutenancy commissions were being distributed amongst many members of the council, it would be something of a snub to Derby and Shrewsbury, those most honorary of privy councillors, to be passed over. This is possible, although the fact that Lord Burghley himself received no commission at this stage casts some doubt upon it. The inclusion of Lancashire and Cheshire might reflect concern about the potential for invasion from Ireland,

20

Constructing a Protestant regime and certainly all of these counties were extensively infected by popery. But the most convincing solution for Staffordshire and Derbyshire needing a lord lieutenant was that these counties were playing host to the woman at the centre of the Elizabethan regime’s blackest fears, Mary, Queen of Scots.34 Surely it was felt that should Elizabeth be assassinated, and an attempt to rescue Mary be launched (as was envisaged by, for example, the Babington plot), military force would be needed to secure her whilst a more acceptable monarch was put in place, as per the ‘interregnum plan’. With this in mind, we can look back at the lieutenancies in the south and east. Certainly the threat of invasion here was real, but these areas were also the heartland of Tudor power, the most thoroughly Protestant area of the country. Again, if an interregnum arose, control of these areas would be decisive in determining the outcome of any conflict, so the lieutenancies had a very clear potential function here. This is underlined by an alternative, apparently abortive plan for the appointment of lieutenants, which proposed a very different approach to reviving the institution to that put in place in 1585. The state papers, domestic contain a document entitled ‘The Lieutenants for the Marityme Countyes’, a single sheet of paper, unsigned and undated but evidently from the first half of 1585.35 The paper has three columns of text: down the middle the names of a number of maritime counties, with, on the left, the names of the lieutenants appointed in those counties in 1569, when the lieutenancies had last been systematically used, and on the right those appointed in 1585. Curiously, however, those lieutenants listed under ‘1585’ are not those that we have seen were actually appointed. The plan lists Burghley as lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire, Leicester of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, Hunsdon of Berkshire and Hertfordshire, Howard of Effingham of Surrey and Sussex, Bedford of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, the earl of Warwick of Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire, and Lord Cobham of Kent. Its presence in the state papers suggests it originated in the office of either Secretary Walsingham or Lord Burghley.36 It therefore presents a counterfactual, significantly different from what was executed in reality, which must have been considered at a high level and may, therefore, reveal what was hoped or intended by ministers. This ‘alternative plan’ differs from the real appointments in important ways. Firstly, it arranges counties into coherent groups of coastal and secondline counties, suggesting almost a series of regional military governorships without precedent in Elizabethan government. The projected lord lieutenants themselves are also surprising. Although some of the appointments suggested are the same as those which were in fact made (those for Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Devon and Cornwall), most are different. All of the proposed lieutenants were privy councillors, for example, most of them in high office; a number of men with military experience are given prominence; and significantly, all of them

21

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties were close to the Protestant core of the regime.37 One particularly striking nomination is that of the earl of Warwick to Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. Warwick was a significant figure – Leicester’s brother, a privy councillor, master of the ordnance, and an old soldier – and this command was coherent and strategically important. These were counties, however, where Warwick had few if any lands and little local influence, and his appointment would have required passing over local noblemen such as the marquess of Winchester, England’s highest-ranking peer, and the earl of Sussex. A number of the other suggested appointments are also unexpected: Leicester’s in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, Burghley’s in Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, and Hunsdon’s in Hertfordshire and Berkshire, although in these cases the nominee, whilst not necessarily the obvious candidate, had some influence in at least one of the relevant counties. The peculiarity of this approach in the context of Tudor government scarcely needs emphasising. The almost invariable practice was to appoint county officials from within the pre-existing elite of the shire. For a senior office like the lieutenancy, the customary choice would of course be the leading nobleman. These, it was thought, would supplement the crown’s commission with their own local power derived from land-holding, clientage, local knowledge and contacts: royal, noble and gentry power all pulling in the same direction. As the Queen’s instructions to the earl of Bedford as lieutenant in the south-west put it, ‘the creditt of hir said cosen shall serve to make a good augmentation of power and strength within his rule’.38 When this approach was eschewed, and ‘strangers’ appointed, the outcome was typically local resentment, which hampered the effectiveness of the official. The classic example of this problem in terms of the lieutenancy is that of Henry, Lord Hunsdon, lord lieutenant of Norfolk and Suffolk 1585–96. Hunsdon was in many ways a fine candidate as a lieutenant – a councillor, the Queen’s cousin, a high office-holder, with extensive military experience. He was, however, largely a stranger to East Anglia, with no substantial power-base of his own: his appointment was a result of the collapse of Howard power following the fourth duke of Norfolk’s execution in 1572. As an outsider, Hunsdon was deeply resented by much of the gentry and became embroiled in bitter local disputes which made his lieutenancy one of the most troubled and acrimonious of the period. This was not entirely his fault – he was confronted with a independent-minded and fissiparous gentry – yet his lack of local knowledge and sensitivity and his tendency to antagonise leading gentry undoubtedly contributed to the difficulty.39 Thus it is surprising that the ‘alternative plan’ proposed several appointments of this kind. It proposes a lieutenancy system with a distinctly different character to that which emerged in 1585: a more military, practical flavour, and quite clearly an approach which favoured councillors and high office-holders,

22

Constructing a Protestant regime those closest to the centre of the regime – those who could most be trusted to work for the good of the Protestant regime, and perhaps, in the event of an interregnum, to maintain their counties in favour of a Protestant successor. Whereas all of the appointments proposed in the ‘alternative plan’ of 1585 were members of the council (Cobham aside), only six out of ten lieutenants actually appointed in July 1585 were councillors. Thus, given that the lieutenancies were brought back just three months after the final collapse of the interregnum plan (and ministers were considering and planning the appointment of lieutenants in the intervening period40), the ‘alternative plan’ for the reintroduction of the lieutenancy may well have been a continuation of the interregnum manoeuvres by other means. Elizabeth’s councillors had failed to persuade the Queen to institute a statutory mechanism for an interregnum. Instead, under cover of preparations for war, they sought to place their supporters in key positions of power, maximise their strength in the counties and ensure their control over the militia so that, in the event of the Queen’s assassination, an interregnum could proceed regardless. Thomas Digges, one of the key proponents and draughtsmen involved in the interregnum plan, referred in several places to his expectation that ‘the sayde grand councell’ – that is, the interim government – would ‘be armed with a suffycient force in a reddines which they shall comand as occasion shall require’; his own preference seems to have been for a permanent force, but this was impractical, and a well-established network of trusted lord lieutenants with control over the militia was the next best thing.41 At the very least, they could ensure that the regime’s hand would be as strong as possible in determining what followed. In addition to their ostensible function of running the militia, the lieutenants were a skeleton regime in waiting, which could, in the event of the Queen’s sudden death, maintain control in the provinces and act in concord with the council. None of this is to downplay the importance of the lieutenants’ role in defence against the Spaniard; both the internal and external security threats were served by the appointment of lieutenants in 1585. But depending on which threat was seen to take precedence, the lieutenancy could be revived in different ways. If the external threat and the need to mobilise resources for warfare was prioritised, this would suggest lieutenants thoroughly rooted in their counties, who could mediate smoothly between centre and locality. If the internal threat and the possibility of an interregnum was seen as more important, this pointed to lieutenants whose first loyalty was to the Protestant regime. The council, still deeply concerned about the regime’s future, appears to have leaned towards the latter view – hence the ‘alternative’ plan. The Queen (who had vetoed the interregnum plan) apparently preferred the former, given the incipient stresses of war. Her wishes prevailed and this alternative plan was rejected – hence the actual lieutenants appointed in 1585, all of

23

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties whom were entirely suitable in terms of local standing in their lieutenancies. So there was potentially a choice to be made about how to calibrate the new lieutenancies, and the choice made shows very clearly that the final decision on the matter was the Queen’s. The usual process for appointing lieutenants was that the initiative was taken by ministers, who brought the warrants for commissions to her for approval. This was not automatic, as Burghley found on one occasion in September 1586, when she approved seven of the bills brought to her, but rejected three, one of which was to have appointed the lord treasurer himself lieutenant of Essex and Hertfordshire. Burghley’s complaint to Walsingham on this subject extends to more than 500 words.42 Any assumption that Elizabeth’s ministers were foisting decisions on her in this area comes up short against the fact that Burghley repeatedly failed to be appointed to lieutenancies which he deeply coveted.43 And her ministers seem to have relatively little success even in guiding her decisions. The difference in opinion between the Queen and some of her ministers about the approach to be taken in appointing lieutenants was not confined to 1585: the ‘alternative plan’ was not purely a one-off idea. A memorandum written by Burghley on 31 December 1585 shows that he still thought that high office-holders and senior members of the regime were ideal lieutenants, whether or not they had significant local interests: he suggested that the earl of Bedford (who had died shortly after being appointed lieutenant of Cornwall and Devon) be replaced by the Lord Admiral, Howard of Effingham.44 Again, Howard was an eminently reliable figure, a councillor, high office-holder, close to the Queen and council, but with little or no independent standing in the south-west. Again, Elizabeth rejected the idea, and appointed more local figures.45 Broadly speaking, it was this, the Queen’s approach, which governed the rolling-out of the lieutenancies during 1586–88. The lieutenancy system, from covering just eighteen counties in 1585, was extended gradually to cover the whole of England and Wales by 1588. It is not surprising that the policy was introduced in stages in this way. Elizabethan England can be divided into a series of concentric regions, from the heartland of the south-east, through a series of more or less remote peripheries, and so it was quite normal for policies initiated in the south-east to be spread into more remote areas subsequently. As we shall see, militia policy was implemented in the same way. A second round of lieutenants were appointed in autumn 1586. Henry, earl of Huntingdon, lord president of the council in the North, was made lieutenant of the counties under his jurisdiction: Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire. On 12 September there were appointments to counties in the southern Midlands: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, and also Devon, where the earl of Bath replaced the late earl of Bedford. Following the appointment of Lord Chandos

24

Constructing a Protestant regime to Gloucestershire on 17 November, this extended the lieutenancy system to all of the coast (apart from Wales), the North, and the south-east, leaving only Wales and the Midlands without lieutenants. This new batch of lieutenants were distinctly less prestigious than those of the previous year, including councillors without peerages (Sir Francis Knollys and Sir Christopher Hatton) and peers who were not councillors, but who were local magnates and acceptable in terms of religion (the earls of Kent and Bath, Lords Norris and Grey). This was a further move away from a councilcentred, elite lieutenancy which had been prominent in the 1585 appointments, and, even more, in the ‘alternative plan’. A number of the 1586 appointees are better characterised as ‘country’ rather than ‘court’ peers, closer to their counties than the highest level of government. To an extent, this was a result of the lack of suitable candidates. The loss of the earl of Bedford in 1585, for example, left no ideal candidate with standing both at court and in the south-west to replace him, and so it was necessary to use non-councillors: Winchester, Bath and, in 1587, Sir Walter Ralegh. There was no attempt to impose ‘outsiders’ on counties, simply because no suitable councillor was available in a given county, as had been envisaged by the ‘alternative plan’, although where a councillor was available, he was preferred, as in the case of Lord Buckhurst, who was made joint lieutenant with Howard of Effingham in Sussex on 2 September. Buckhurst had been joint lieutenant in 1569, so his omission in 1585 may have been because he was not a councillor, and his inclusion in 1586 because by then he was. The lieutenancies were spread across the remainder of the country during 1587–88, slightly haphazardly. Another periphery was brought into the system in February 1587 when the earl of Pembroke was made lieutenant of the counties in his jurisdiction as lord president in the Marches: the twelve Welsh counties, Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire (in addition to Somerset and Wiltshire, which he already held). Lieutenancies vacated by deaths were filled: Ralegh replaced Bedford in Cornwall (the only lieutenant appointed under Elizabeth who was neither peer nor councillor) and Burghley filled the Lincolnshire lieutenancy vacated by Rutland’s death. More of the Midland counties were brought into the system over the rest of the year: the fourth earl of Rutland was appointed to Nottinghamshire, the earl of Warwick to Warwickshire and the earl of Huntingdon (already lieutenant in five Northern counties) to his home counties of Leicestershire and Rutland. As we shall see, these counties were strategically fairly insignificant (they were too far away from London to be really useful in the event of an invasion), so these appointments may have been partly motivated by the need to satisfy noblemen’s ambition. The final appointments before the Armada brought every English and Welsh county (except Middlesex) under the system on 8 April 1588, when

25

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire were placed under reliable local magnates, Lords North and St John. It is surprising that it took so long for these counties to be given lieutenants. In the case of Cambridgeshire, this was because the obvious candidate, North, had been fighting in the Netherlands: his appointment, proposed in 1586, had been ‘misliked’ by the Queen ‘because of his lordships absence’. In St John’s case, the reason is not obvious.46 But the expected invasion attempt clearly prompted this rounding out of the system: in the words of a council muster book, ‘upon sundry advertisements of the preparations made by the King of Spain … to invade this realm’, ‘the counties wanting Lieutenants were supplied’.47 Indeed, the Armada year marked the high point of the lieutenancies. As is well known, the system underwent a form of decline during the 1590s. Lord lieutenants continued to hold office until their deaths but they were not always replaced afterwards. Warwickshire had a lieutenant for just three years, 1587– 90, and then spent thirteen without; by 1603, eighteen counties lacked lieutenants. This decline, whilst real, can be overstated – in fact there were quite a number of new commissions. When the lieutenants of strategically important southern counties died, as in Dorset, Hampshire, Kent, Somerset and Wiltshire, they were all replaced (Cornwall, Devon, Sussex and Surrey did not fall vacant in this period). The north and Wales were also given new lieutenants: Thomas, Lord Burghley in Yorkshire (though not the four northernmost counties) in 1599, and Edward, Lord zouche in the Marches and Wales, in 1602.48 The county lieutenancy often passed along with a peerage from father to son or brother to brother, especially if there was no obvious rival for the position: successive earls of Huntingdon in Leicestershire, Derby in Lancashire and Cheshire and Shrewsbury in Derbyshire; Lords Cobham in Kent, Chandos in Gloucestershire and St John in Huntingdonshire. Rising stars at court might receive a lieutenancy as a sign of favour – the earl of Worcester’s appointment as lieutenant of Monmouth and Glamorganshire in July 1602, for example, and Lord Mountjoy, joint lieutenant of Hampshire in 1595. In some cases the failure to appoint a lieutenant was the result of the Queen’s reluctance to choose between rival candidates rather than any profound ambivalence about the institution itself. Nottinghamshire had been briefly (1587–88) under the lieutenancy of the fourth earl of Rutland, and subsequently under that of the sixth earl of Shrewsbury (1588–90). Naturally, Shrewsbury’s son, Gilbert, wished to succeed to his father’s offices, especially since his potential rival, Rutland, was at this time a fourteen-year-old studying at Cambridge. No less a personage than Lord Burghley lobbied the Queen on his behalf; he told Shrewsbury in August 1591 that he had secured the lieutenancy of Derbyshire for him, but I have attempted of late to have hir Majesty apoynt yow to be the lieutenant of Nottynghamshy[re] as my Lord your father was, but she is induced to alledg, that

26

Constructing a Protestant regime whan the Erles of Rutland lyved, they war lieutenants ther. I answered that sometyme it was so, and sometymes not and so I cold not obteyn it.49

Elizabeth evidently wanted to avoid deciding which noble house to favour, although her disapproval at Shrewsbury’s vicious conflict with certain Nottinghamshire gentry was probably another factor.50 The office remained vacant for the rest of the reign. Shrewsbury was not able to secure succession to his father’s lieutenancy of Staffordshire either. Here his rival was the earl of Essex; again, both men’s fathers had served as lieutenants. Shrewsbury had the more recent claim but Essex perhaps the stronger, since Staffordshire was where his territorial influence (such as it was) was based. The Queen was well aware that Essex coveted the lieutenancy, but had doubts about his suitability.51 Ultimately, faced with the prospect of having to disappoint one or the other, the Queen chose neither. Indeed, it is interesting that Essex, the pre-eminent military figure of the later years of the war, was never lord lieutenant; possibly it was this conflict with Shrewsbury which prevented it.52 The Queen’s knowledge of, and sensitivity to, aristocratic pride here is striking: she clearly knew well where her nobles’ influences were based, and who might be offended should a rival be favoured. Inevitably, the lieutenancy, as a first-class honorific, was sought by the greatest in the land, and might become caught up in court rivalries, such as that of Essex and the Cecilians in the 1590s, when appointments to offices such as the attorney- and solicitor-generalships caused such controversy. Elizabeth appointed neither Essex nor Sir Robert Cecil to their fathers’ lieutenancies.53 The succession to the lieutenancy of Kent threatened to become a full-blown battle in 1597, when Essex tried to secure the office for his client Robert Sidney against the much stronger claim of Henry, Lord Cobham, the former lieutenant’s son and Robert Cecil’s brother-in-law. Here, in contrast to Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire, the Queen appointed Cobham relatively quickly.54 The decline of the lieutenancy, therefore, can be overstated, but there is no doubt that gaps were left unfilled. Part of the reason for this was probably that the council found that the erstwhile deputy lieutenants (who tended to do most of the day-to-day work anyway) didn’t necessarily need a lord lieutenant to be effective, as we shall see. But it also underlines the still-provisional nature of the office: it was not yet regarded as being permanent, it tended not to be included in the roster of officials listed in proclamations or statutes, it commanded no salary or official perks. It was, in the words of George, Lord Hunsdon, a ‘matter of honor and pleasure not of profitt’, although such prestigious offices were certainly useful tools of local politics too.55 But equally importantly, the lieutenancy remained a response to immediate circumstances: the fluctuating fear of invasion, and the Queen’s reluctance to make decisions such as this.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties DEPUTY LIEUTENANTS AND THE WIDER ELIzABETHAN REGIME Notwithstanding the importance of the lord lieutenants themselves, the Elizabethan wars demanded a much larger and more complex governing mechanism than one or two men in each county. The lord lieutenant had to have assistants, for several reasons. Firstly, the amount of work to be done was far beyond the capacity of one individual. Furthermore, the choice of senior figures in court and council to serve as lieutenants made it inevitable that they would be absent most of the time. Some, indeed, were away for extended periods: Leicester spent much of 1586 and 1587 in the Netherlands. The earl of Warwick’s health cannot have allowed him to take a very active role in his lieutenancy in Warwickshire, and in any case lieutenants such as Lord Burghley were hardly suited to offer active military leadership. This problem was accentuated by the expectation that these lieutenants would be in place for an extended period, whereas in the past, lieutenants had been appointed primarily to deal with short-term crises, such as invasion scares or rebellions. As we have seen, whilst the length of the war could hardly have been predicted in 1585, it was widely expected to last some years. For all these reasons, the lieutenants appointed in this period were almost all provided with deputy lieutenants able to discharge the duties of the office in the absence of the lieutenant himself.56 The exceptions to this rule arose in counties in which the lord lieutenant was very clearly a ‘country’ peer without major office at court, and therefore available to be in his county when necessary; thus Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Huntingdonshire never had deputies under Elizabeth, and nor did the far North, and deputies were appointed in Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire and Hampshire only as the need arose.57 In these cases, the lord lieutenant himself performed the functions which elsewhere were handled by deputies: delegating, coordinating and often taking an active role in musters.58 Nevertheless, most counties received deputy lieutenants, and even where deputies were not formally appointed, some lieutenants used selected gentry as if they were: Sir Henry Cromwell, for example, was very much the lord lieutenant’s man on the ground in Huntingdonshire, and in Cambridgeshire, Lord North used three senior gentry as deputies, but only after his elevation to high office and the council did he procure a commission formally appointing them as such.59 Undoubtedly this illustrates the need for individuals like deputies to bridge the gap between the court and the county. The development of the use of deputy lieutenants was in many ways as significant as the lieutenants themselves. As we shall see, deputies became the real face of the lieutenancy in the counties, wielding considerable power and serving as linchpins of the war effort. The office was not an innovation in 1585; they were permitted as early as 1550 and were used in some places in 1559, and widely in 1569.60 But

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Constructing a Protestant regime the fact that they were now to be semi-permanent constituted a very significant change in their nature: they were to be part of an enduring structure of power, not merely transient. This both enhanced their status and allowed the development of more elaborate and settled organisations. The deputy lieutenancy was an elite position, given to a tiny handful of the most powerful men in each county, drawn from pools of dozens of substantial gentry and hundreds of lesser gentry. They were typically large landowners, magnates in their own rights; under a more generous monarch in the early seventeenth century, many were raised to the peerage, from which, in any case, their outlooks and interests were little different. Given the importance of the position, the choice of deputy lieutenants was, like that of the lord lieutenants themselves, a matter of great importance, and it is highly significant that they were chosen not by the lord lieutenants themselves, but by the crown: their names were specified in the lieutenancy commission issued by the chancery, and to change or appoint new deputies, a new commission was required. In effect this meant that they were chosen by the privy council, and instructions to the lord chancellor or keeper to appoint new deputies are often found in the council register.61 Lord lieutenants undoubtedly exerted influence and often engineered deputies’ appointments.62 In 1598, for example, Lord North in Cambridgeshire ‘procured Henry North [his son] to be putt into commission of lieutenancye’, and Lord Burghley told Lord Willoughby of Parham that ‘I have been bold to make choice of you … to be one of my Deputies’ in Lincolnshire.63 The earl of Essex secured the appointment of several of his followers as deputies in various Welsh counties, and after his fall a purge appears to have been contemplated.64 Indeed, it seems to have been remarkably easy: John Manners, a deputy in Derbyshire, wrote to the lord lieutenant, Shrewsbury, on 14 January 1590, asking for a second deputy to be appointed; on 25 January he wrote again from London, asking Shrewsbury to let Burghley know whom he wished to be appointed.65 In the more remote areas, especially, the council had to rely on local advice: in 1587, for example, the council invited the earl of Pembroke, as lieutenant in the Welsh counties, to choose ‘certain principal gentlemen in every of the said counties (such as are well known to be of sound disposition towards her Majesty and the State) to have chief charge under your Lordship to serve as your Deputy Lieutenants’.66 For all this, however, the council’s decision was final, both because it could overrule lord lieutenants, and because the Queen appears not to have chosen to intervene. The post-1585 deputies were not, therefore deputies in the true sense of the word at all. It was common practice in the sixteenth century for an office-holder to pass his duties along to a deputy, a replacement of his own choosing, as was the practice with deputies under Edward VI and possibly in 1559.67 The 1585 deputy lieutenants were very different: they were not in a real

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties sense the lieutenants’ own deputies, not of their choosing and not necessarily much to their liking.68 They were very much representatives of the state, the council and the regime, not of the lieutenants. The council’s power to appoint deputies, therefore, somewhat made up for the Queen’s apparent reluctance to appoint the sort of ultra-trustworthy lord lieutenants proposed in the ‘alternative plan’. The use of deputy lieutenants was regarded as very effective and successful – or at least, more effective than any practical alternative. Over long periods in office, many of them built up vast reserves of experience and knowledge. In Sussex, Lord Buckhurst told Walsingham, the whole state & procedinges of the shere as toching this lieftenancy having bene managed by them by the space of thes 3 yeres & to me utterly unknowen that had no maner of dealing therin til this present new and to them best & only knowen, it is not possible for me to do her Majestie that servis here which to my duty & this place appertaineth if they shalbe called away out of the shere.69

This being so, the council was reluctant to allow the system to be disrupted, even by the deaths of lord lieutenants and ongoing vacancies in their offices. The lack of lord lieutenants did not mean that military affairs halted: given that the war went on, this was not an option. But clearly men could not be deputies to a dead lieutenant. Thus the council developed a system whereby in effect vacant lieutenancies continued to function in the guise of muster commissions. In the absence of a lord lieutenant, military authority reverted to the sheriff, who was given the assistance of a number of senior gentry – usually the erstwhile deputy lieutenants. These were collectively designated as muster commissioners and entrusted with essentially the same military responsibilities as the lieutenancies had wielded. Like the lieutenancy itself, therefore, the commissions of musters of the 1590s concealed a significantly reformed institution beneath a familiar name: muster commissions or their predecessors array commissions (the two appear to have been effectively the same by the mid-sixteenth century) had a long pedigree. Early in Elizabeth’s reign, muster commissions had been issued from the chancery to named gentlemen in the counties; they were large bodies and included honorary members: a 1580 commission for Lancashire named no fewer than forty-four commissioners, headed by the lord chancellor and lord treasurer, although this does seem to be unusually large.70 These muster commissions were clearly modelled on the commission of the peace, and of course they suffered from the drawbacks of those bodies: diffuse authority, ineffectiveness and potentially untrustworthiness. The muster commissions of the 1590s were quite different.71 Aside from being small groups of senior gentry, they were appointed by council letter, not out of the chancery, and were thus, like the deputy lieutenants, under

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Constructing a Protestant regime close council control. Their legal basis was a commission issued to the privy council, empowering it to commande you [the sheriff] and such others as be joyned with you to take the lyke charge and governemente (as before was commytted to hir [Majesty’s] said Leiftenante) for the order and strengthninge of her people in that countye.72

Technically, then, it was the privy councillors who were the commissioners, rather than those in the counties who were referred to as such (a similar approach had been used during the 1580s for horse musters73). This commission made specific reference to the fact that the relevant county lacked a lieutenant, and that this was the solution adopted. Although there were some moves in the direction of smaller, more reliable commissioners in the early 1580s,74 the practice was used systematically from August 1595, at the start of a renewed period of invasion scares, with further commissions issued as necessary.75 This authority was not viewed as having quite the same legitimacy as a lieutenancy commission: the Lancashire and Northamptonshire commissioners both queried the sufficiency of their authority, with the latter requesting a deputation similar to that they had had under their lieutenant, Hatton.76 Similarly, these commissions did not, unlike the lieutenancy commission, gave specific authority to direct lesser officials, and in 1597 the council had to write to JPs in Kent, ordering them to assist the commissioners regardless.77 Essentially, though, the system seems to have worked effectively, with remarkably little disruption from lieutenancy to muster commission. The commissioners appointed were usually the deputy lieutenants (they are sometimes addressed as ‘late deputy lieutenants’), often with a number of other gentry of similar status. Their numbers tended to grow somewhat larger than the number of deputy lieutenants had been,78 perhaps because, in the absence of a powerful nobleman as lord lieutenant, more commissioners were needed for it to be effective; perhaps because of the inexorable trend of local commissions to grow, in the same way as the commissions of the peace; perhaps because commissions, in the absence of a clear chairman, tended to faction. In institutional terms, therefore, there was a considerable degree of flexibility in legal arrangements; the regime was prepared to respond to the Queen’s reluctance to replace lieutenants by adapting existing institutions. But institutions – deputy lieutenants as well as lord lieutenants – were only as good as the men who staffed them. The men appointed as deputies and muster commissioners merit close examination. This was the most senior local office available to county gentlemen, the most selective and most prestigious. They were, consequently, carefully chosen from amongst the council’s most trusted allies in the counties, not only on their social standing and competence, but on their ideological leanings and the extent of their support for the regime.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Again, alongside the extent of their support for the regime’s war, the issue of the succession and a potential interregnum arises – in such an event, the deputy lieutenants would, as much as the lieutenants themselves, have been crucial in maintaining control over the counties and the country. Deputy lieutenants were almost invariably senior members of the gentry. Given that most of the lord lieutenants were members of the senior nobility or privy councillors, an obvious pool of potential deputies might have been the lesser peerage, but in practice they were almost never used in this way: only Lord Willoughby, in Lincolnshire, served as such, although some heirs to peerages served as deputies. In some ways this seems surprising: it probably has something to do with the inherently subservient nature of the position, but the more significant reasons relate to the characteristics required in a deputy lieutenant. Deputies needed to be effective figures, with considerable administrative competence and energy. They also had to be exceptionally willing to meet the demands of the council: to go out of their way to implement policies (such as militia service, troop levies and raising local taxes) which might be very unpopular with the gentry as a whole. And like the lord lieutenants themselves, they had to be keen supporters of the existing regime, which meant if at all possible zealous Protestants, who would help to prop up the regime in the present and support the transition to a new Protestant regime in the future. This explains why so many members of the peerage were passed over for office in the lieutenancy: the heavily Catholic complexion of much of the nobility made them ipso facto unsuitable. This was a relatively new development in the mid-1580s, since many noblemen had continued to be active in local affairs, including military affairs, well into the 1570s and 1580s. Thomas, Lord Paget, a Catholic who later went into exile on the Continent, took musters in Staffordshire in 1573 and 1574 and Lichfield in 1580; Lord Cromwell headed the muster commission in Norfolk in 1583; Lords Morley, Rich and Darcy of Chiche were all active deputy commissioners for the breeding of horses in Essex (comparable to muster commissioners), as was Lord Abergavenny in Kent.79 None of these became lord or deputy lieutenants; they were, in fact, excluded from the work of the militia. In all of these counties, their influence was replaced by a lord lieutenant of higher rank (whether in the peerage or in the council) who was trusted by the regime; but in practice, since these lord lieutenants were usually absent from their charges, they were in fact replaced by gentry deputies. Unlike many of these noblemen, many or most deputies can indeed be identified as close, active supporters of the regime: men such as Nathaniel Bacon in Norfolk, Sir William More in Surrey, Sir John Leveson in Kent, Richard Bagot in Staffordshire, John Manners in Derbyshire, Sir Richard Knightley and Sir Edward Montague in Northamptonshire, Sir Francis Hast-

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Constructing a Protestant regime ings in Leicestershire and then in Somerset, Sir Robert Jermyn in Suffolk, Walter Covert in Sussex.80 Men such as this – only the best known and bestdocumented are named here – were vital to the war effort, and their relationship with the regime manifested itself in a number of ways. There was, for example, a particularly high level of forward Protestants and Puritans within the ranks of deputy lieutenants. Hastings, Bacon, Jermyn, Knightley are (and were) well-known for this position. Others such as Leveson, Covert and Sir John Cutts, a Cambridgeshire deputy, were signatories of Puritan petitions, spoke in favour of Puritan causes in Parliament, or, like Cutts and the Hertfordshire deputy Sir John Brockett, had links with Puritan preachers.81 In January 1588, at a training session in Hertfordshire, Brockett had a sermon delivered to the troops, on the highly appropriate text ‘Dread not, neither bee afraide of them. The Lord your God which goeth before you he shall fight for you.’82 Thus these men were substantially in accord with those at the centre of the regime: they, too, had a personal stake in perpetuation of Protestantism. In the case of Sir Thomas Fane, a deputy in Kent, this can be traced back to involvement in the Wyatt rebellion.83 Their letters and speeches in Parliament betray an engagement with national affairs, a genuine concern for the future of the regime which echoes the quotes from Lambarde which opened this chapter: Lambarde, whilst never a deputy lieutenant, was a close supporter of the regime. Francis Hastings expressed his deep concerns for the future in the regime in his letters: his worry about the Anjou match, about Catholic missionaries in England, about the Queen’s safety.84 The Queen’s safety, indeed, on which the survival of the regime depended, was a near constant refrain in the public discourse of the time.85 This meant that these men could be trusted, and they had an interest in seeing particular policies succeed. Many of them were active supporters of the war: even an instinctive pacifist like Lambarde wrote to Burghley in 1585 urging the justice of the war.86 ‘The cause which yow have in hande’ wrote the Puritan minister Oliver Pigg to Sir Robert Jermyn, ‘I nothing doubt is the Lordes.’87 Some demonstrated their commitment by military service in person, under Leicester in the Netherlands or elsewhere.88 This did not mean that such gentlemen implemented everything the council asked of them without question (as we shall see), but it made many Puritan-minded local gentry incline further towards the government’s wishes.89 This said, one did not have to be a Puritan to oppose the restoration of Catholicism in England: even more moderate deputies such as Richard Bagot and Sir Thomas Scott demonstrated their support of the regime by, for example, urging the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.90 The high incidence of Puritan deputies may also owe something to their tendency towards ‘busyness’. This can be overplayed, but recent historiography has done much to reconstruct the sense of duty and obligation to their

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties countries of these monarchical republicans.91 Certainly these offices were very demanding, and those who wielded them often worked very hard. Nor is it coincidental that many of these men were assiduous record-keepers, and assumed quasi-official roles as principal record-keepers for their respective lieutenancies.92 Their archives – which are often huge – became important resources for local government, repositories of knowledge and institutional memory, as well as providing central sources for historians of Elizabethan local government.93 It is important to note that they were chosen very much on their merits. They should not be mistaken for men who were appointed because they were the natural leaders of local society, members of those indispensable ‘local elites’ often referred to (rather vaguely) by historians of state formation. In many cases they were not automatic choices. None of them, first of all, were noblemen. Nor were they necessarily eldest sons, heads of the family: Nathaniel Bacon was a second son, but he was a key ally of the regime, far more significant than his rather ineffectual elder brother.94 Francis Hastings, although he came from a leading family in Leicestershire, was only the fifth son of the family, and his elder brother George, who had conservative sympathies, was not especially favoured. Nor were these men necessarily from long-established county families: when Hastings moved to Somerset in the late 1580s, despite being a newcomer to the shire (albeit with landholdings), he was almost immediately promoted to be a deputy lieutenant and served as senior knight of the shire in the 1589 and 1593 Parliaments.95 The Bacons in East Anglia are another classic example: the family patriarch, Elizabeth’s first lord keeper of the great seal, rose from virtually nothing. Edward Montague, John Spencer and Henry Cocke were all new to the top ranks of their counties. These men were raised to high office because the council trusted them, and others of similar status were rejected because the council did not trust them. Another interesting example is Sir John Leveson, whose archive is one of the best surviving sources for late Elizabethan county government and who will reappear throughout this book.96 The Levesons were relative newcomers to Kent, originating in Shropshire and arriving in the county via trade in London, and not of automatic magisterial status. Leveson made two very good marriages, however, to daughters of Sir Roger Manwood, chief baron of the Exchequer, and then Sir Walter Mildmay – a match no doubt helped by Leveson’s deep Puritan tendencies. This probably expedited his inclusion in the commission of the peace, at the rather young age of about thirty. He was an exceptionally active JP (often working alongside William Lambarde), and served as a captain in the militia from 1585. It was in 1589 that he came to greater prominence, leading his militia company in Lord Willoughby’s expeditionary force of trained bandsmen sent to France to prop up the fortunes of

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Constructing a Protestant regime Henry IV. It was an extremely gruelling campaign, during which Leveson probably received his knighthood.97 At the same time, he was raising his standing in the eyes of the lord lieutenant, Cobham, who wrote fulsomely to him in France and commended his work to the Queen. When Cobham received a new commission as lieutenant the following June, Leveson was included as deputy, thus rising to the highest of county offices – past numerous older and betterestablished JPs – at the age of just thirty-five.98 Leveson did not disappoint: over the next few years, it is no exaggeration to say that he was the single most important figure in the war effort in west Kent, organising musters and troop levies and serving as collector for forced loans, commissioner for the subsidy and recusancy, and collector for composition money. In 1593 he was considered as a suitable person to serve as treasurer at war; he was made captain of Upnor Castle, on the Medway (1596–99); in 1599 he liaised between the council and the indisposed lord lieutenant; and in 1601 he was entrusted by the council with overseeing the despatch of a large contingent of troops from Rochester.99 Under James I he became a gentleman of the privy chamber, and gained powerful friends, including Robert Cecil and Henry Howard, earl of Northampton.100 Thus this middling county gentleman became, through his good contacts, talents and exceptional diligence a close ally of the council in Kent. Obviously the council’s policy of rewarding diligence such as this was beneficial for both parties. That the council could entrust the militia and the running of the war to men such as this was a significant achievement. The revival of the lieutenancies was used as a means for the regime to tighten its grip upon local government and to exclude undesirable alternatives; in this case, the practical demands of warfare and the ideological demands of the Protestant state suggested similar solutions. In this way, the lieutenancies can be regarded as having as much significance in their role of providing a valuable buttress of the Protestant regime as in their administrative and governmental capacity. In that sense they provide an example of the long-term constitutional consequences of a move which was intended as a response to a short-term political crisis: the motivation of the council here was not simply the effectiveness of government or the defence against invasion – although clearly these were important as well. COUNTY GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS DIVISION The way in which the lieutenancy was revived in 1585 serves as an example of broader patterns in the management of Elizabethan government. Over the first few decades of the reign, the regime continued to find it difficult to mould local government into forms which satisfied its functional and ideological requirements. Local government was still not doing all that was asked of it

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties (one example described in chapter 3 is the failure of the trained bands scheme in the 1570s), and it was still not purged of Catholics and conservatives and staffed with acceptably zealous adherents of the regime. This problem was most acute in the commissions of the peace, the body always regarded as the quintessential institution of Elizabethan local government. It is a truism that they were central to Tudor local government, and in many ways they were (although it will be argued here that this picture warrants a certain amount of revision). The commission was responsible for local order and low-level judicial work. Tudor councils and parliaments piled ever more responsibilities onto the commission, both as a body and as a collection of individual justices of the peace (JPs).101 Indeed, some historians have seen the commissions of the peace as the authentic voices of the counties and an expression of the ‘county communities’, almost parliaments of the semi-autonomous statelets seen by Everitt, for example, to constitute early modern England.102 Yet the shortcomings of the JPs were manifest, and indeed the development of the lieutenancy was a reaction to this problem. For this reason, some examination of the wider picture of Elizabethan local government is called for. As is well known, JPs were appointed by royal commissions, issued regularly by the crown to a group of the upper ranks of the gentry in each county, in numbers ranging from around ten in Rutland to eighty or ninety in a large county such as Kent.103 If the regime aspired to maintain effective control over local government then controlling the personnel of the commissions of the peace was surely vital. It expended considerable time and energy in trying to do so, albeit sporadically. There were efforts to impose conformity on JPs by demanding they swear an oath to the royal supremacy; this was mandated by statute in 1563, but was widely evaded.104 There were periodic reviews of the commissions and efforts to remove undesirable JPs, when the council sought detailed information on individual JPs from bishops, assize judges and noblemen on which should remain and which merited removal.105 There was a major effort to purge the commissions at the beginning of the reign, which seems to have had some success in removing the more obvious leading Catholics in many counties, but the limitations of that success can be seen in the fact that there were at least seven further purges throughout the reign.106 Historians’ verdicts on these efforts are mixed. There is no doubt that there was some success in removing at least the more open Catholics.107 But as late as 1587, the first item on a memo for ‘the reformacion of the booke for the Justices of the Peace’ was ‘that none be in commission that are recusantes or whose wifes are recusants’. According to Manning, ‘crypto-Catholics, Catholic sympathisers, and an occasional open Catholic … turn up on practically every commission’.108 Furthermore, by relying primarily on a binary model of Catholics and nonCatholics, historians have oversimplified the case. The absence of overt Cath-

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Constructing a Protestant regime olics from the commission did not necessarily amount to a success in the council’s terms: as we have seen, conformists or neuters presented problems of their own, and the council really wanted enthusiastic supporters. It is certainly clear that few commissions of the peace were substantially composed of them. So the council had distinctly limited success in regulating the commissions of the peace. This is not necessarily surprising, however, since they were very difficult to regulate. To begin with, the council was fighting against the tide, since a seat on the bench was increasingly sought by any gentleman with pretensions to significance in his county. Additionally, the process by which JPs were appointed was in practice highly ineffective: the crown office, which issued commissions, could relatively easily be influenced by powerful or persistent patrons. As a result of these two factors, the numbers of JPs tended to grow upwards.109 Theoretically, this is something the council could have remedied, but as in so many aspects of government, the council was simply too busy to monitor the large number of JPs (around 1,500–2,000 at any one time).110 This was not so much of a problem as regarded the core functions of the commission of the peace: maintaining social order was a priority of the landed classes regardless of their views on religion and high politics, and broadly speaking, riot, theft or robbery could be punished just as well by a conservative as by a godly gentlemen, albeit they might go about it in slightly different ways. Similarly, the regime seems to have been relatively unconcerned about appointing conservative gentry as sheriffs.111 But for more sensitive issues like national security and religious regulation, the commissions remained problematic. Furthermore, since these issues were often essentially administrative rather than judicial matters, they tended not to be handled well by a large committee in which authority was dispersed. This problem operated within a broader context in which the implementation of the religious settlement failed to develop as the council had hoped. During the 1570s and early 1580s, it became clear that Catholicism was not gradually fading away to nothing. In many ways the problem appeared to be getting worse, as many of the nobility and gentry remained obstinately recusant, reaffirmed their commitment to Rome or fled abroad, and as the missions of Jesuits and seminary priests developed from the early 1580s. There were very real fears that, in Leicester’s words, ‘the papistes do multyplye & so boldly bragge in open sort now as they be counted the better party & more countenanced then the other’; ‘nothing in this world greveth me more than to se hir Majesty beleaves that this encrease of papistes in hir Realme can be no danger to hir’.112 It became increasingly clear that the gradualist approach to dealing with Catholicism was failing. One well-known outcome of this was the increasingly severe religious legislation promulgated by statute and proclamation during the 1580s and 1590s,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties the raising of recusancy fines, increasing executions of seminary priests and so on.113 A second response, which has not been acknowledged in existing historiography, was a shift in the approach to local government, and to Catholicism in local society, an approach typified by but not restricted to the lieutenancy. Given that Catholicism was not being eradicated either in the commissions of the peace or on the ground, and that the former problem was also contributing to the latter, many of the more sensitive functions of local government were withdrawn from the JPs and transferred to alternative forums of government, apparently in the view that close supervision of the JPs had failed. This did not mean that ministers gave up on the commissions of the peace; they continued to try to manage their personnel, but the focus of many aspects of local government moved elsewhere. Thus national security and defence were handed over to the reformed lieutenancy and later to reformed muster commissions. County commissions for administering the subsidy (the most important form of parliamentary taxation) tended to decrease in size, and compounding for purveyance was also placed in the hands of very small groups of gentlemen.114 The highly sensitive issue of the supervision of the religious settlement was increasingly taken out of the hands of the JPs. The manifold facets of the regime’s campaign against religious dissidents – detecting and proceeding against Jesuits and seminary priests, supervising, disarming and imprisoning recusants, presenting them at assizes, trying and fining them, extracting special ‘contributions’ from them (such as the demands to provide light horse for service overseas in 1587 and 1598115), searching houses for Popish literature and paraphernalia – these constituted a very substantial amount of work, and were handed over to a variety of more specialised bodies. The best known of these is the high commission, but there were in addition diocesan ecclesiastical commissions, sporadically from early in the reign and more systematically from the mid-1580s.116 At times commissions of oyer and terminer were used, and in many cases special commissions were appointed under privy council letters to deal with recusants or seminaries.117 One example of the variety of approaches used is the council’s letters of 1586 to three leading gentlemen in Northamptonshire, Rutland and Leicestershire (Sir Edward Montague, Sir James Harrington and Sir Adrian Nowell respectively) committing to them the principal trust for apprehending Jesuits and seminaries.118 Membership of these commissions, like that of the lieutenancy, was restricted to small groups of trusted Protestant allies of the council.119 Finally, the council took great care that even apparently minor matters of any sensitivity were handled by reliable gentry. This was done by issuing ad hoc commissions under privy council letters to handpicked local gentry, not on the basis of any office they held, but of their status and trustworthiness: instructions to hear both parties to a dispute and resolve the matter, or investigate a complaint and report to the council. This was essentially trouble-

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Constructing a Protestant regime shooting, a sort of looser, more flexible version of the commission of oyer and terminer. Hundreds of such letters appear in the council registers, and many more were never entered in the first place; they have received no serious study. A first glance might suggest that the commissioners appointed in such cases were chosen at random from among the leading local gentry, but closer examination shows that in fact they were appointed from within this same circle of conciliar allies. This tendency to withdraw matters like this from the purview of the official judicial system into more selective hands was a symptom both of the council’s active and detailed supervision of the affairs of local society, and of its limited faith in the commissions of the peace. A sample of these letters is provided by the papers of Richard Bagot and his son Walter Bagot, the council’s closest allies in Staffordshire from the 1570s to the end of the reign. The Bagot and privy council archives contain numerous examples of the council (or in some cases the lord lieutenant, Shrewsbury) calling upon the Bagots, usually with others, to deal with problems as diverse as recusancy, Jesuits, lewd words, private quarrels, attempted murder and piracy – even investigating the possible misdemeanours of another deputy lieutenant, Sir Walter Aston.120 Richard Bagot was also placed in charge of lands confiscated from the recusant Lord Paget after his flight to the Continent, which generated extensive correspondence with Burghley, Mildmay and others.121 Bagot was, therefore, very much the council’s man in Staffordshire, trusted to deal with all sorts of sensitive or important issues which the commission of the peace was not; in Shrewsbury’s words, ‘the continuall exercise of her Majesties affaires hathe bredde greater knoweledge and experience in yow then in anie of those others’.122 This picture is replicated across the country. Between them, these bodies – the lieutenancy or muster commissioners, the commissions for the subsidy and for recusants, and ad hoc commissions – comprehended the most sensitive and controversial functions of local government, and in their makeup they offered a striking contrast to the commission of the peace. All of them tended to be small bodies, often composed of no more than four, six or eight men in each county.123 In most cases, their membership overlapped extensively – the deputy lieutenants, recusancy commissioners, leading subsidy commissioners, and recipients of special errands from the council were the same men. Unlike the commissions of the peace, their membership was extremely stable, and closely supervised – they were wellknown and trusted by the centre. It is also worth noting that these commissions were often appointed by the council itself rather than through the less reliable chancery. The upshot of these moves was that much of the most important work of county governance was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of gentry, carefully chosen by the centre as trusted representatives of the Protestant state – men such as we have seen before as deputy

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties lieutenants. There is no definitive statement of this policy, no master plan, but the coherence of the developments is clear. These moves reflect, for example, Burghley’s well-known preference for smaller commissions (although this preference is usually cited in connection with the JPs). This tendency towards trying to create an elite in local government has not gone completely unnoticed – Hassell Smith pointed it out in 1974124 – but its significance and coherence has not entered the historiographical mainstream. An illuminating illustration of these tendencies is the survival of lists of select groups of gentry within each county, effectively directories of the council’s men in the counties, kept by the centre, often heavily annotated by Burghley or, later, Robert Cecil.125 It is particularly striking that these lists are very short: typically just six to eight men in each county that the council regarded as being outstandingly useful and trustworthy. These lists were presumably compiled from the personal knowledge and clientages of senior members of the regime, and in turn, they could be used to determine the membership of the various commissions described here. The muster commissions of 1595 for Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and Warwickshire, for example, compare very closely with the 1593 list of local gentry.126 Another example is the commissions issued to every county in 1592 to administer the oath of supremacy to all office-holders, a task requiring great reliability and diligence.127 These ad hoc commissions appointed by the council were exactly the sort of task for which highly trusted local gentry were so needed – in which the tendency of the usual run of local gentry to neglect or obstruct policies with which they were not in full sympathy could not be risked. This transition to smaller groups of local governors seems to have taken place primarily from the 1580s onwards, although portents of this approach can be seen earlier. In 1574, the council gave ‘superior & specyall chardge’ in the musters to certain senior JPs, apparently a temporary measure, one of the council’s many abortive bright ideas, but clearly foreshadowing the lieutenancy.128 The rise of the lieutenancy gave the Elizabethan regime opportunity to reshape aspects of local government, not only to bring in more ideologically palatable men but also to exclude many untrustworthy ones. An excellent example is provided by Sussex, a county full of noblemen: the earls of Northumberland and Arundel, Viscount Montague, Lord De La Warr and Lord Buckhurst: ‘more then one Shire can wel bear, specially if ill affected or doubted, & agreeing all together, & having often meetings’.129 Of these, Northumberland, Arundel and Montague were Catholic or crypto-Catholic, De La Warr was a Protestant but unreliable, and only Buckhurst was trusted by the regime. Prior to 1585, when the council had been gradually seeking to increase military preparations, military affairs had been run by the old-style muster commissions, which was dominated by noblemen such as Montague and De La Warr by virtue of their social status and local patronage and power, particu-

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Constructing a Protestant regime larly as they were former joint lord lieutenants.130 Thus, whilst the council sent orders to the sheriff and muster commissioners en bloc, the dominant figures were clearly Montague and De La Warr, who appointed captains for the trained bands in 1583 and drew up the muster certificate in 1584. Decisions may have been made in the forum of a meeting of commissioners, but the peers naturally dominated proceedings. Not without reason did Walsingham address a letter for the Sussex muster commissioners in May 1584 to ‘your Lordships and the rest’.131 This situation became increasingly unacceptable, as a result both of internal security concerns and the start of a confessionally driven war; Montague, particularly, with his military experience, extensive local clientage and favour at court, was a very alarming figure.132 But the revival of the lieutenancies provided a device to remould the governing elite of the county: the Sussex nobility was passed over, and Lord Howard of Effingham, really a Surrey rather than a Sussex magnate, was appointed lord lieutenant. Since he would usually be away at court or attending to his duties as lord admiral, he was provided with three highly reliable deputies, Sir Thomas Shirley, Sir Thomas Palmer and Walter Covert, who would do the real work. These men were also active in many other spheres of government; Covert, in particular, was well-known as an active persecutor of recusants and an indefatigable JP.133 Northamptonshire also had a number of resident peers: Lords Vaux, Mordaunt, Compton and zouche. These had played their proper parts in local government earlier in the reign, serving on commissions for musters, gaol delivery and so on.134 Had any of them been trusted in religion, he might well have been made lieutenant, as minor peers such as Lord Chandos and Lord Grey were in their counties. But they were all too conservative, so instead Sir Christopher Hatton, a native of the county, was made lieutenant, with three trusted local gentlemen as deputies, Sir Richard Knightley, Sir Edward Montague and Sir John Spencer.135 The late Elizabethan lieutenancy was a highly exclusive institution, ruthlessly discarding the nobility, the natural leaders of a hierarchical society, unless they were favoured by the Queen and council; even conformity was not enough to make Mordaunt or Montague acceptable. Naturally, these attempts to reshape local elites did not always proceed without a fight. Diarmaid MacCulloch’s work on Suffolk has shown very effectively not only how the county gentry polarised into rival religious groupings, but how the support of powerful members of the regime was crucial in securing the triumph of the Protestant party and their hegemony within the county during the latter part of the reign.136 The council regarded such men very highly and made efforts to bolster their positions and status in their counties. They were rewarded not only with power in their counties, but with visible symbols of authority: knighthoods,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties elections to Parliament, special commissions under letters from the Queen or the privy council, militia captaincies. The earl of Leicester commented to Nathaniel Bacon in 1587 ‘what nede ther is to gyve countenance to gentilmen of fidelytee’, referring to ‘your self and your godly dispoassed companyons’; a memo on the state of Sussex in the early 1580s stressed the need ‘to give countenaunce’ to loyal gentry to counter the influence of the Catholic nobility.137 The council went out of its way to protect such elite county governors when they got into trouble – often because of their religious zeal. To return to Northamptonshire, the lieutenancy had successfully placed Knightley, Montague and Spencer in power as the council’s closest allies. Spencer was a moderate, but Knightley and Montague were both, in Sheils’s words, ‘the very essence of Puritan godly magistrates’.138 In 1589, however, it emerged that Knightley had sheltered the printer of the radical Puritan Martin Marprelate tracts, outrageous libels against several bishops and opponents of the Puritans. Knightley was temporarily imprisoned and tried in Star Chamber, and had to be removed from the commission of the peace, his deputy lieutenancy and so forth. But for the council he was so indispensable to the war effort and the general governance of the county that within two years he was back in all of his old roles.139 Knightley was punished again in 1605 for his role in a petition in favour of Puritan ministers submitted to the newly acceded James I, along with Montague’s son, another Sir Edward, and also Sir Francis Hastings. This time the younger Montague was ‘censured to be put out of all commissions’ but again he was quickly restored.140 A similar case is that of Sir Robert Jermyn and Sir John Higham, leading Puritan magistrates in Suffolk. They were at the forefront of a group involved in several long-running clashes with Bishop Freke and more conservative elements, incurring the disfavour of the Queen herself in 1583. Under the circumstances the two were publicly humiliated by being removed from the commission of the peace, but at the same time they retained the council’s favour (Leicester tried to intervene with the Queen for both141) and they were regarded as so important to the running of the county that they continued to serve as commissioners for musters and recusancy and later as deputy lieutenants. Furthermore their local standing was such that Jermyn sat in Parliament for the county in 1584, and the two together in 1586.142 Men such as Knightley and Jermyn were too necessary to the regime to be excluded from office for long, and whilst scandals like the Marprelate and Bury affairs made it politically necessary for them to be seen to be punished for a while, once the fuss had died down they were quickly rehabilitated. Needless to say, this contrasts starkly with the treatment of those who transgressed on the Catholic side, people like Lord Vaux and Sir Thomas Tresham, who were consistently hounded by the regime.

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Constructing a Protestant regime These were, then, close allies of the most senior members of the regime, very much the council’s men. They maintained links with senior ministers through personal correspondence, personal meetings and patronage, often coordinating action over issues such as measures against Catholics.143 We find, for example, Francis Hastings writing to Burghley, Leicester, Essex and Robert Cecil; Nathaniel Bacon corresponding with Burghley and Leicester; Walsingham asking Walter Covert to deputise for him at a christening.144 Leicester’s patronage was a particularly important network, as his household accounts and the composition of his ‘Puritan crusade’ in the Netherlands in 1585–86 show: he intervened with the Queen not only for Higham and Jermyn but also for Nathaniel Bacon; he was in close touch with Richard Knightley; his household accounts contain numerous references to many of these men: letters and gifts exchanged, dinners and personal visits, and attendances at christenings and funerals.145 We also find them corresponding with each other, and indeed often linked by marriage: Hastings was in touch with Richard Knightley and John Manners.146 We find these local governors reporting suspected letters to the council.147 They often had links with the court, such as minor offices, relatives at court, or houses in London, or served in the central administration.148 They were regularly elected to Parliament, of course, with men like Francis Hastings, William More and Nathaniel Bacon becoming highly respected Parliament men. In many counties, therefore, the exigencies of the Protestant cause resulted in a substantial turnover in the county elites, as well-established magisterial families were edged out, and new ones such as the Bacons or Cecils rose to power, or existing gentry families came to greater prominence. As we have seen, many of the lesser peerage lost their roles in county affairs as the reign progressed. These were often families which had been raised to power earlier in the sixteenth century, as the result of their wealth, their local power and their ability to run their localities; from the 1580s, however, those whose religious leanings were out of sympathy with the regime found themselves largely sidelined, a striking development.149 Of course it would be simplistic to suggest a straightforward dichotomy between those who were supporters of the council’s objectives and those who were not. There was a spectrum of opinion within the political classes, and the lord and deputy lieutenants who have been examined here represented the most supportive and effective gentry the council could find in their counties. Not all deputy lieutenants were quite such enthusiastic supporters of the regime as the council might have wished; in some counties the men were simply not available, or the most efficient men did not have ideal religious leanings. In Staffordshire, for example, Richard Bagot was regarded as the council’s most trusted ally, but his feelings about those at the centre were somewhat ambivalent. He was happy to take part in manufacturing the

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Babington plot which brought down Mary, Queen of Scots, but much less keen to pursue religious dissidents within the county gentry; when the lord lieutenant, Shrewsbury, sought to have the recusancy laws enforced more stringently, a pained stand-off with the county gentry ensued. Bagot’s distinct ambivalence towards the earl of Leicester – in Bagot’s words, that ‘old excellence’ – is suggestive.150 Similarly, in Northamptonshire, although the leading local officials were enthusiastic supporters of Puritanism and the regime, they were less keen to invest time and money in the militia and, unlike deputies elsewhere, did not serve as captains themselves.151 At the very least, however, these men were the best the council could find, and far more desirable than the likes of (in Staffordshire) Lords Paget or Stafford or (in Northamptonshire) Lord Vaux or Sir Thomas Tresham. It is also the case that the mood of the mid-1580s was unusually fraught even by Elizabethan standards. The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1587 reduced the regime’s fears about the succession, albeit not entirely, and the defeat of the Armada in 1588 reduced the sense of weakness and inferiority in the face of Spain. Probably for these reasons, the ideological conformity of local elites became slightly less pressing a concern thereafter, and this is reflected in the appointment of more conservative lord lieutenants (such as the fourth earl of Worcester and the fourth earl of Huntingdon) and deputies (such as Sir George Fermor in Northamptonshire, Sir John Petre in Essex and Roger Bodenham in Herefordshire). Nevertheless, the mood of those years, and the deputies appointed in response to it, fixed many hot Protestants in place at the heads of county elites for years or decades, even as the complexion of the central regime grew more conservative, a significant legacy. As MacCulloch has noted, ‘the Puritan gentry who were so important in many counties both for local government and for the sustaining of Puritan ministers in the church’s system were becoming isolated from Court politics, an unhealthy development for English political life’.152 Conversely, in many counties – in the south and east, especially – there were many other supportive gentry who played roles in the work of the lieutenancy, as we shall see. But the individuals discussed here stand out as being exceptional. Their singular importance – suggested by their assiduous recordkeeping, their Puritanism, their contacts with the council – can be demonstrated on occasions when the council needed one gentleman in each county for an important but particularly unwelcome task, such as collecting forced loans: in the lists of collectors, virtually all the individuals discussed here are found listed under their counties.153

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Constructing a Protestant regime CONCLUSION The demands of the Protestant state, the demands of war and the increasing administrative burden imposed by the centre on the Elizabethan provinces, therefore, led to a significant shift in the workings of local government. The commissions of the peace remained large, poorly regulated and lacking in continuity. On the other hand, the lieutenancy and other institutions made up of small, select groups of men to carry out especially sensitive tasks were increasingly used by the council, which actively sought to separate out an elite stratum of trusted Protestant gentry with which it could work. In many ways, these can be compared to the conciliar ‘men of business’ in Parliament and the central administration which have attracted much attention in recent historiography: ideologically committed allies of the council, supporting the regime in the counties.154 Inevitably this meant that most JPs became less significant, and instead an elite of magistrates especially close to the council developed. The local roles of much of the nobility were also circumvented. The work of such favoured men extended across the full range of Elizabethan local government – a glance at the papers of someone like Nathaniel Bacon makes that clear – but their significance was particularly great in those spheres of activity which were driven by the centre (such as taxation, warfare and the implementation of the religious settlement) rather than those which arose organically from local society (such as local justice and social regulation). The willingness of the representatives of local society to cooperate with an aggressively Protestant central state arose partly, of course, from the habitual obedience and deference shown by the governed to the governors, but the ‘council’s men’ described here displayed an exceptional diligence underpinned by commitment to the religio-political objectives of the regime. Whilst this was an important development, it was not without precedent, and recalls the earlier construction of a royal affinity in the counties, whereby leading local landowners were tied to the crown by oaths and honorary positions at court, were entered into a special book and often made JPs. This practice goes back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and had more recently been used by Wolsey and Cromwell.155 In the Elizabethan case, the motivating principle was more religious than purely political (a Protestant affinity, as it were), but the similarities are striking in the light they cast on the practical business of supervising local government: in the sixteenth century as in the middle ages, small groups of men in the counties with close links to the centre and a commitment to carrying out its will were key to effective government. This could function as a separate system overlaid on the longer-established system of JPs, dealing with somewhat different activities. There did not necessarily have to be a close connection between these two networks – in most counties the lieutenancy operated largely autonomously without formal regard to the JPs or to the wider community of gentry. It formed an adapta-

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties tion of an existing system to deal with a more demanding and more intrusive central state. The approach described here very much accords with the Elizabethan government’s well-noted tendency to improvisation and adaptation, to constant experimentation with new forms of rule to meet the growing aspirations of the state.156 But whilst this tendency has typically been regarded as a response to the functional shortcomings of the county magistracy, here it is emphasised ideological issues were also at play. Of course, this was not complete change in local government: there was much continuity. Apart from anything else, the men doing the governing were still in most places resident gentry, not outsiders being sent in like intendents in seventeenth-century France.157 They were men with credibility in local society, but they were acceptable to the regime too, and in some ways, if their motivation is seen as being essentially high political (the needs of the Protestant regime) then they might be regarded as representatives as much of the centre, the regime and the council as of the localities. The outcome of this was a significantly different way of doing business in the counties, with power being restricted to narrower groups. Those outside this circle – Catholics, conservatives or even neuters – must have found it increasingly difficult to voice opposition, to be present at meetings where important issues were settled, to even know exactly what was happening. In many ways, the progress of the Elizabethan wars is difficult to explain without recourse to support of this kind. As has often been pointed out, Elizabethan local government had many structural flaws – amateurism, the need for essentially voluntary compliance, the passive resistance of the gentry. The response of the counties to the demands of the centre is conventionally depicted as hostile, reluctant or incompetent. Yet at the same time, Parliament consistently voted ever-heavier subsidies, thousands of troops were raised to fight overseas, and interventions in the Netherlands, France, Ireland and at sea all met with substantial success (on the strategic level if not always the tactical). It is argued here that what allows these pictures to be reconciled is the broadly supportive view of the war within the Protestant elite in court and counties described here. This is not to say that the war was welcomed, but that it was broadly agreed to be just and necessary. The following chapters seek to demonstrate that this system was substantially effective in accomplishing the ends the council expected of it. In that sense this can be regarded as successful piece of state-building: the development of the lieutenancy and similar institutions amounted to a substantial increase in the regime’s power. But this was not a case of war driving the development of the state in straightforward ways. The lieutenancy scarcely grew into an institution, and certainly not a ‘modern’, bureaucratic one. This was a highly specific, highly contingent, rather fragile form of development, more a case of the construction of a network – an alliance, even – to meet short-

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Constructing a Protestant regime term needs than of the deliberate design of new constitutional structures. If Burghley and the others were seeking to build up a network of individuals and institutions, this was because they wanted to preserve the Protestant regime for the foreseeable future, not because they were trying to build a modern state. The lieutenancy was one element in that larger project, and an important one, intended for the purpose of fighting the war which the regime’s pursuit of Protestant interests both at home and abroad had landed the country in. But there is no doubt that the pressures of war drove the state to devise new ways to exercise power. This, then, was the machinery put in place by the Elizabethan regime as it faced the most challenging period of the reign. But this machinery, as effective as it may have been, could only meet the needs of the regime through working with the wider machinery of the state: the gentry, middling sort and commons had to be mobilised in the service of the Elizabethan wars. The question of how this was done, how this network communicated with the wider population, is addressed next. NOTES 1 APC XXII, 138–9. For a similar example, with a reply, misdated to 1592, see A. G. Petti (ed.), Roman Catholicism in Elizabethan and Jacobean Staffordshire: Documents from the Bagot Papers (Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 4th series, 9, 1979), 61–3. 2 Leveson Papers 14/16/14 (Lambarde to John Leveson, 22 December 1591). 3 ‘Regime’ is here used to refer primarily to the dominant grouping within Elizabeth’s government, her senior councillors and their allies, rather than to the enduring structures and mechanisms of government; as recent historiography has made clear, these men were not always fully in agreement with the Queen herself. Cf. Patrick Collinson, ‘The monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ in his Elizabethan Essays (1994), 40. 4 Conyers Read (ed.), William Lambarde and Local Government: His ‘Ephemeris’ and TwentyNine Charges to Juries (Ithaca, NY, 1962). 5 J. D. Alsop and W. M. Stevens, ‘William Lambarde and the Elizabethan polity’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 8 (1987), 233–65; Younger, ‘Lambarde’. 6 Collinson, ‘Monarchical republic’, 49. Peter Lake has recently defined ‘the Protestant regime’ as ‘an amalgam of the Protestant cause, the commonweal and their [ministers’] own political futures’: ‘“The monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I” (and the fall of Archbishop Grindal) revisited’, The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, ed. J. McDiarmid (Aldershot, 2007), 129–47, at 129. 7 This interpretation is laid out and developed in P. Collinson, ‘De Republica Anglorum, or, history with the politics put back’, in Elizabethan Essays; ibid., ‘Monarchical republic’; Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge, 1998); Peter Lake, ‘A tale of two episcopal surveys: the strange fates of Edmund Grindal and Cuthbert Mayne revisited’, TRHS, 6th series, 18 (2008), 129–63.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 8 Leveson Papers 11/1/8 (Lambarde to Lord Cobham, 13 December 1587), printed in Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 13. 9 M. Bateson (ed.), ‘A collection of original letters from the bishops to the privy council, 1564’, Camden Miscellany IX (Camden new series, 53, 1895); cf. the council’s comment on the same, that ‘scantly a thyrd part [of the JPs] was found fully assured to be trusted in the matter of relligion’ (SP 52/10, fol. 149r., quoted in Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 128 n. 37). 10 J. C. Sainty, ‘Lieutenants of counties 1585–1642’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research Special Supplement no. 8 (1970), passim. All further information on the appointments of lord lieutenants is drawn from here. 11 Drake’s warrant: Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, 1998), 356 n. 106. Howard’s appointment: Simon Adams, ‘The Armada correspondence in Cotton MSS Otho E VII and E IX’, The Naval Miscellany VI (Navy RS, 146, 2003), 44 n. 1. On Nonsuch, see Simon Adams, Leicester and the Court (Manchester, 2002), 180 and ‘Elizabeth I and the sovereignty of the Netherlands 1576–1585’, TRHS, 6th series, 14 (2004), 309–19. On the Anglo-Spanish aspects, see Parker, Grand Strategy, chapter 5, esp. 171–7. 12 See John Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge, 1995). 13 For an account of the early history of the lieutenancy, see also G. S. Thomson, Lords Lieutenants in the Sixteenth Century (1923). Some differences between Miss Thomson’s account and my own will be pointed out below. 14 J. Goring, ‘Social change and military decline in mid-Tudor England’, History 60 (1975), 185–97. 15 For mentions of lieutenancies: J. S. Brewer et al. (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, (21+2 vols, 1862–1932), XI, 226, 291, 312–13 (where the earl of Derby is noted to have ‘in commission all Lancashire, Cheshire, North Wales, and Staffordshire, except what Shrewsbury has’, and that ‘no ancestor of his had ever had the like’). For troop-raising: ibid., 232–6, 261–2, 266, 273. 16 APC II, 118–19. Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 22–4. 17 SP 10/4/12 (the council to JPs, 5 June 1548). Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 22–30. SP 12/8/38 (Warwick to William Cecil, 10 August 1549). 18 3o & 4o Edward VI, c. V, XIII (Statutes of the Realm, IV, 104–8). 19 See commissions of 1550 and 1551 to Francis, earl of Huntington: HEHL HA M7/19, M7/15; Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 25–6. 20 APC III, 258–9, 305; IV, 49–50, 71–2, 276–8. Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 30–4, 35. See also M. L. Bush, The Government Policy of Protector Somerset (Montreal and London, 1975), 127 and n. 1; Alan Bryson, ‘“The speciall men in every shere”: the Edwardian regime, 1547–1553’ (St Andrews PhD thesis, 2001), chapter 9, esp. 242–50. 21 Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 36–9. On 1554: Tudor Royal Proclamations II, no. 403 (3 February 1554). On 1558: Calendar of State Papers: Domestic Series of the Reign of Mary I, 1553–1558, ed. C. S. Knighton (Kew, 1998), 335, 345. 22 Tudor Royal Proclamations II, no. 441, 12 April 1558. For a letter and some instructions sent to Lord Morley and the sheriff in Hertfordshire, dated 27 April 1558, see Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies MS 72387–90. 23 HEHL HA M8/1.

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Constructing a Protestant regime 24 Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 35–42. 25 CSPD 1547–80, CSPD Addenda 1547–1565, 1566–79, and 1580–1625, passim. For 1569– 70, see HMC Salisbury I, 443; SP 15/18/80 (the Queen to the deputy lieutenants of Kent, Essex and Hampshire, 30 June 1570). On 1574: SP 12/97/1–2, 12/134, 698–710 (instructions for lord lieutenants, June 1574); APC VIII, 248. This was due to misplaced fear of invasion from a Spanish fleet destined for the Netherlands. W. T. MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–1588 (Princeton, 1981), 197–8. 26 See, for example, SP 12/151/4 (‘The names of the cownties not under the Lieutenants’, 1581). 27 Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 46. 28 He links lieutenants with the musters implicitly in 1568, in SP 12/47, fols 75r.–76v., printed in Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 235–7, and explicitly in 1572: BL Lansdowne 104, fol. 27r.–v. (Memorial 1572): ‘That lieutenants be appointed in every shire; and their power to be limited only to attend to the musters.’ 29 SP 12/176/77 (anonymous paper, Feb.? 1585). 30 SP 12/179/48, and see below, chapter 3. 31 These orders have not survived in the central archives, but see BL Harleian 703, fols 33v.–34v., 37r.; SP 12/180/35–40 are misidentified and date from 1601. 32 John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), 243. 33 Collinson, ‘Monarchical republic’; ibid., ‘The Elizabethan exclusion crisis and the Elizabethan polity’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 84 (1993), 51–92. 34 See Mary’s itinerary in John Guy, My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (2004), 518–19. Sir Christopher Hatton’s appointment as lieutenant of Northamptonshire in November 1586 may be due to Mary’s move to Fotheringhay in September 1586. 35 SP 12/179/54. The significance of this document is not recognised in the calendar nor by Thomson, who references this document (Lords Lieutenants, 51 n. 1). The document is dated only 1585 but must logically predate the appointment of lieutenants in July. 36 The authorship is also unclear, but the hand may be that of Thomas Windebank, a signet clerk whose hand can be found on a number of documents concerning the lieutenancies in their earlier years. This points to the influence of either Walsingham, Windebank’s direct superior, or Burghley, his patron. 37 Cobham was not in fact a councillor until 1586, but he was very close to the Queen and council. 38 BL Egerton 2790, fol. 68r. (1559). 39 Smith, County and Court, 50, 242. 40 In addition to the ‘alternative plan’ itself, Walsingham had been collecting precedents of lieutenancy commissions and drafting lists of potential lieutenants and deputy lieutenants during June, and there is a undated paper considering lieutenants probably from as early as February 1585: SP 12/176/77, 12/179/17, 52–3, 58. A number of documents also erroneously but suggestively misdate the introduction of lieutenants to May 1585: LPL 247, pt i, fols 12r.–14v., pt ii, fols 1v.–3r; HMC Foljambe, 13. 41 Northamptonshire RO, F(M)P, 184 (21 January 1585); see also similar references in other key documents from the interregnum plan, SP 12/176/24, 25, 32.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 42 SP 12/193/28 (9 September 1586). 43 Leaving aside Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, assigned to him in the 1585 ‘alternative plan’, Burghley might have aspired to be lieutenant of Lincolnshire or Northamptonshire, his ‘home’ counties, on the border of which lay Burghley House, or Hertfordshire, where he was also influential. Yet he was disappointed in all three in 1585, and again in 1586; only in 1587, after the earl of Rutland’s death, was Burghley appointed to Lincolnshire, preferred over the notoriously ill-tempered and unpopular earl of Lincoln. He also picked up Essex and Hertfordshire after Leicester’s death in 1588. 44 SP 12/185/36, endorsed ‘Memoryall for order to see the Countrees in strength’, including ‘Devon … The Lord Admyrall to be lieutenant and to place his deputes … Cornwall: The Lord Admiral to do the like.’ 45 These were the earl of Bath in Devon and Sir Walter Ralegh: see Sainty, ‘Lieutenants of counties’, 15, 18. 46 SP 12/193/28. St John was an obscure and not very effectual figure, but his religious credentials were sound; he had been considered in 1585 as governor of Mary, Queen of Scots: ODNB, s.v. ‘Walsingham, Sir Francis’. 47 HMC Foljambe, 25. 48 On Burghley’s appointment, see SP 12/271/144, which notes that it would be preferable for him to be lieutenant of all five counties, ‘for his Lordship shall fynde more contradiccion for want thereof, then otherwyse he should, and by that aucthoritie he maie rule better in the Civill government as President also’. This was not implemented. 49 Nottinghamshire Archives DDSR1/D/14/19; cf. HMC Salisbury IV, 112. 50 This is hinted at later in Burghley’s letter. Cf. W. T. MacCaffrey, ‘Talbot and Stanhope: an episode in Elizabethan politics’, BIHR 33 (1960), 73–85; B. Cobbing and P. Priestland, Sir Thomas Stanhope of Shelford: Local Life in Elizabethan Times (Radcliffe-on-Trent, 2003). 51 LPL 3199, fol. 229r. (John Stanhope to the earl of Shrewsbury, 9 December 1590). 52 Despite the claims of a number of historians, Essex was not lieutenant of Staffordshire: Sainty, ‘Lieutenants of counties’, 32; Paul E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), 272. On Essex’s father and grandfather: Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 32, 49. 53 Cecil became lieutenant of Hertfordshire in 1605. 54 Clark, English Provincial Society, 261. 55 CP 43/23. 56 Certain large cities (Bristol, Exeter and Gloucester) also lobbied successfully to have deputies of their own from within the urban oligarchies – obtained, in the case of Gloucester, at ‘the great cost of the chamber of the City’. Gloucester LB, fol. 3r. BL Lansdowne 48, fols 168–70. CPR 1586–7, item 1278. 57 See Sainty, ‘Lieutenants of counties’, passim. 58 See for example Gloucester LB, containing many examples of Lord Chandos’s active role in his lieutenancy (e.g. fols 4r., 9v., 10r.–v., 11r., 11v., 19r., 20r.–v., 24v.–25r., 33r., 34v., 36r., 49v., 55r., 56r., 59v., 64v.) 59 BL Add. 34394–5, passim. Cambridgeshire LL, 54–76, passim and esp. 69, 76–9.

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Constructing a Protestant regime 60 1550: HEHL HA M7/19, M7/15. 1559: SP 12/4/29 fol. 115r., listing what can only be deputies to the duke of Norfolk in Norfolk and Suffolk. 1569–70: SP 12/74/34, HMC Salisbury I, 445. See also G. S. Thomson, ‘The origin and growth of the office of deputy-lieutenant’, TRHS, 4th series, 5 (1922); Thomson, Lords Lieutenants, 60–7. 61 Sainty, ‘Lieutenants of counties’, 7. James I authorised some lieutenants to select their own deputies. 62 See Sir Walter Ralegh advising on appointments of deputies in Cornwall, recommending one because there were no deputies in the North of the county. HMC Salisbury VIII, 18. 63 Cambridgeshire LL, 136; APC XXVIII, 630. SP 12/206/62 (Burghley’s instructions to his Lincolnshire deputies, December 1587). 64 See HMC Salisbury XI, 106–8. 65 HMC Talbot, 311. 66 HMC Foljambe, 20–2. No deputies are named on Pembroke’s first lieutenancy commission, but a renewed commission of August 1588 named them: CPR 1586–87, 189; CPR 1587–88, 27–8. 67 HEHL HA M7/19, M7/15. 68 As in the case of the profound antipathy between Lord Hunsdon and his Norfolk deputy, Sir Thomas Knyvett (Norfolk RO, KNY 694, Henry Knyvett to Thomas Knyvett, 2 July 1588), the earl of Shrewsbury’s dislike of his Derbyshire deputy Sir John zouche (Hasler, Commons, III, 7), and the fractious relations between the earl of Hertford and his Wiltshire deputy Sir Hugh Portman: HMC Salisbury XII, 478–9. W. P. D. Murphy (ed.), The Earl of Hertford’s Lieutenancy Papers, 1603–12 (Wiltshire RS, 23, 1969), 11–12. 69 SP 12/213/77 (Buckhurst to Walsingham, 31 July 1588). Cf. similar comments by Hatton: Northamptonshire LP, 38. 70 Lancashire Lieutenancy, II, 104–11; see similarly large Lancashire commissions in BL Harleian 2219, fols 41, 53, 59 and a Leicestershire commission in HEHL HA M1/4. The text was in Latin, and closely followed models of Mary’s reign; cf. the ‘Commission de Arraiatione facienda 1557’ in T. Rymer (ed.), Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae […] (20 vols, 1704–35), XV, 456. These commissions may have been unusual, however: see rather smaller commissions in SP 12/136/52; a 1569 commission for Leicestershire contained nine members: SP 12/61, fol. 12v. 71 One of the few sources correctly describing how these worked is Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 72 n. 159. 72 Cheshire LB, fol. 2r.(the council to Cheshire muster commissioners, 20 August 1595). 73 Northamptonshire LP, 7–10; Boynton, Militia, 81; BL Lansdowne 113, fol. 126r. 74 See BL Harleian 474, fols 71–84; Northamptonshire LP, xviii, which show muster commissions of between seven and nineteen men, but often still headed by unreliable members of the nobility. 75 See Cheshire LB, fol. 2r., BL Add. 26886, fols 2r.–3r., HMC Buccleuch III, 36, identical letters from the council to the commissioners in Cheshire, Lancashire and Northamptonshire, laying out these arrangements, all dated 20 August 1595. Other copies are BL Lansdowne 78, fol. 136r.–v., Lansdowne 57, fol. 137r.–v. (where it is misattributed to 1588), and a draft in Lansdowne 60, fols 99r.–100r. (where it is misattributed to 1589); also, for London, SP 12/254/60. For later examples, see Joan Wake (ed.), A Copy of

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons, Subsidies etc. in the County of Northampton A. D. 1586–1623 (Northamptonshire RS, 3, 1926), 34–5; Leveson Papers 46/1, 46/3; Twysden LP, 110; BL Add. 26886, fols 38r.–40r.; Cambridgeshire LL, 186. 76 BL Add. 26886, fol. 3v. (Lancashire muster commissioners to the council, 17 September 1595); HMC Buccleuch III, 37 (this may well have been merely a delaying tactic). 77 Leveson Papers 66/6 (the council to Kent JPs, 5 June 1597). 78 In Cheshire, for example, the two deputy lieutenants who served under the earl of Derby were replaced by six muster commissioners: Cheshire LB, fol. 2r.; SP 12/253/96; HMC Salisbury V, 524. In Northamptonshire, four deputies were replaced by eight commissioners: APC XXV, 157. 79 CSPD 1547–80, 649, 487, 661, 123, 686, 685 (respectively). 80 Biographies of all of these except Bagot can be found in Hasler, Commons, and many in ODNB. 81 In addition to the Northamptonshire examples noted on page 42, John Leveson signed the Kent petition against the subscription crisis of 1584, and Walter Covert signed the puritan petition to James I in 1604; for the 1584 Suffolk petition, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County 1500–1600 (Oxford, 1986), 207–8. BL Lansdowne 43, fol. 7 (Kent petition, 1584); Manning, Religion and Society, 263; Hasler, Commons, I, 690; Albert Peel (ed.), The Seconde Parte of a Register (Cambridge, 1915), I, 225, 228. For speeches see, for example, Hasler, Commons, II, 286. On Brockett and Cutts, see Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Oxford, 1967), 86. 82 Edmond Harris, A sermon preached at Brocket Hall, before the Right VVorshipfull, Sir John Brocket, and other Gentlemen there assembled for the trayning of Souldiers, January 2 and 3 (1588), STC (2nd edn) 12803. Thanks to Natalie Mears for this reference. 83 ODNB, s.v. ‘Fane, Sir Thomas (d. 1589)’. 84 Claire Cross (ed.), The Letters of Sir Francis Hastings 1574–1609 (Somerset RS, 69, 1969), 20, 22–3, 38–40. 85 For a few examples, see Letters of Francis Hastings, 22–3, 38–41, 78; Simonds d’Ewes, The Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1682), passim, esp. January 1581, 277–90, and of course during the 1584–85 and 1586–87 Parliaments; the execution warrant of Mary, Queen of Scots, printed in Peter Beal, ‘Elizabeth’s execution warrants’ in Beal and Grace Ioppolo (eds), Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing (2007), 173–200, at 198. 86 Lambarde’s authorship of this letter has been uncertain (see Alsop and Stevens, ‘Lambarde and the Elizabethan Polity’, 254 n. 17), but a draft, undoubtedly in Lambarde’s holograph, is BL Add. 33924, fols 9r.–10r. (16 July 1585). 87 Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Catholic and Puritan in Elizabethan Suffolk: a county community polarises’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 72 (1981), 232–89, 285. 88 Sir Henry Berkeley (deputy lieutenant in Somerset), Sir John Harington (Warwickshire) Sir Robert Jermyn (Suffolk) and Sir Thomas Shirley (Sussex) all served in the Netherlands, as did Sir Philip Butler, who later sailed with the Portugal voyage of 1589. Simon Adams, ‘Baronial contexts? Continuity and change in the noble affinity, 1400–1600’, in Leicester and the Court, 393; Hasler, Commons, I, 520. Sir John Leveson served in France in 1589–90 (see below).

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Constructing a Protestant regime 89 Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 6–9. 90 ODNB, s.v. ‘Bagot family (per. c. 1490–1705)’; Hasler, Commons, III, 357. 91 Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (1994), 181–4. Richard Cust, ‘The “public man” in late Tudor and early Stuart England’ in Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (eds), The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007), 116–43. 92 Cf. B. W. Quintrell (ed.), The Maynard Lieutenancy Book, 1608–1639 (2 vols, Essex RO, 1993), xlvii and lxxxvii, n. 6. 93 The papers of Bacon, More and Bagot, in particular, are renowned for their extent and value. Leveson’s archive is less well-known but also very valuable. The papers of Manners, Knightley, Montague, Hastings and Covert in Sussex are less extensive but include significant caches of papers relating to military affairs. 94 MacCulloch, Suffolk, 102–3. 95 This rapid promotion caused significant discontent in Somerset, especially as the lieutenant, Pembroke, took the opportunity to displace an existing deputy, Sir Henry Berkeley, who was later reinstated. APC XIX, 71; XX, 25–6; XXI, 159; Letters of Francis Hastings, 53–5. 96 On Leveson’s career, see Hasler, Commons, II, 464; ODNB; Leveson Papers, passim. On his work as a JP, see M. L. zell, ‘Kent’s Elizabethan JPs at work’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 119 (1999), 34. 97 Leveson was ‘Mr John Leveson’ during the preparations for the expedition (Leveson Papers 70/4), but was knighted before the year was out (Hasler, Commons). On the grim conditions, see Leveson’s vivid account in a letter to Cobham, Leveson Papers 22 fols 19–20 (28 August 1591). 98 See Leveson Papers 95/10 (Cobham to Leveson, 29 September 1589); 11/1/14 (same to same, 21 October 1589): ‘Mr Byng infermes [me] of yowr forwarde mynde yn thes actions and yn what good sorte yowr bynd [band] was furneshyd: her highness hath wyllyd me to let yow knoo how graciusly and thankfully she takes yt: nothing dowting but that God wyll gyde yow and protecte yow yn thes yowr actions: with meny mor prynceley wordes thyn I can by pene sett doen’. Staffordshire RO D593/S/3/1, Cobham’s lieutenancy commission, 22 June 1590. 99 HMC Salisbury IV, 461. HMC Foljambe, 75, 78. J. J. N. McGurk, ‘Rochester and the Irish levy of October 1601’, Mariner’s Mirror 74 (1988), 57–66. 100 Staffordshire RO D593/E/3/6/2 (deposition by Northampton, n.d.); HMC Talbot, 245, J. P. Ferris and Andrew Thrush (eds), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629 (Cambridge, 2010), V, 101–6. Leveson played a minor role in the earl of Essex’s abortive rising in 1601, when he was placed in impromptu command of the forces gathered by the earl of Cumberland and the bishop of London and successfully barred Ludgate against Essex’s party. See ODNB, s.v. ‘Leveson, Sir John’, and Leveson’s own account, HMC Salisbury XI, 59–61; CSPD 1598–1601, 561–2. 101 G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge, 1965), 453–6; Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1640 (2000). 102 For a convenient summary of this debate, see Clive Holmes, ‘The county community in Stuart historiography’, Journal of British Studies 19 (1980), 54–73. 103 The procedure for appointing JPs is detailed in T. G. Barnes and A. H. Smith, ‘Justices

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties of the peace from 1558 to 1688: a revised list of sources’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 32 (1959), 221–42. 104 See Smith, County and Court, 80; R. B. Manning, Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex (Leicester, 1969), 241–4. 105 Bateson, ‘Letters from the bishops to the Privy Council’. On the 1587 effort, see memos and reports on JPs in Lansdowne 52, fols 182–99; Lansdowne 53, fols 164–92; Lansdowne 54, fols 178–9. 106 A. H. Smith, ‘The personnel of the commissions of the peace, 1554–1564: a reconsideration’, Huntington Library Quarterly 22 (1959), 301–12; Smith, County and Court, 80–6. This was not only for religious reasons: there was also a strong belief, particularly on Burghley’s part, that small commissions were more effective than larger ones, since they prevented all of the members leaving the work to the others: ibid., 76–9. 107 See, for example, Ronald H. Fritze, ‘The role of family and religion in the local politics of early Elizabethan England: the case of Hampshire in the 1560s’, Historical Journal 25 (1982), 267–87; on Cambridgeshire, which had few Catholics, see E. Bourgeois, The Ruling Elite of Cambridgeshire, England, c. 1520–1603 (Lewiston, NY, 2003). 108 BL Lansdowne 53, fol. 81. R. B. Manning, ‘Elizabethan recusancy commissions’, Historical Journal 15 (1972), 23–36, at 24. 109 See Alison Wall, ‘“The greatest disgrace”: the making and unmaking of JPs in Elizabethan and Jacobean England’, EHR 119 (2004), 312–32; Smith, ‘Reconsideration’, 309–10. 110 For the council’s often counterproductive efforts to do so, see Smith, County and Court, 83–4. 111 Manning, Religion and Society, 246–51. 112 SP 12/155/42 (Leicester to Walsingham, 5 September 1582); see also BL Cotton Caligula C VIII, fols 204–6 (William Herle to Burghley, 23 November 1583; consulted at www. livesandletters.ac.uk/herle/letters/046.html). 113 See, generally, W. R. Trimble, The Catholic Laity in Elizabethan England 1558–1603 (Cambridge MA, 1964); F. X. Walker, ‘The Implementation of the Elizabethan Statutes Against Recusants, 1581–1603’ (London PhD thesis, 1961). On the 1591 proclamation: Tudor Royal Proclamations, III, nos 738–9. 114 Smith, County and Court, 114–16. 115 Manning, Religion and Society, 141; APC XXVIII, 586–9. 116 Recusancy commissions tend to be ill-documented. The only substantial treatment is Manning, ‘Elizabethan recusancy commissions’, though it underplays the variety in approaches used; see also Penry Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), 277–8. On the recusancy commissions of 1591, see Tudor Royal Proclamations, nos 738–9. See also F. D. Price, ‘The commission for ecclesiastical causes for the dioceses of Bristol and Gloucester, 1574’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 59 (1938), 61–184. 117 For commissions of oyer and terminer, see Manning, ‘Recusancy commissions’, 27 n. 19; APC XI, 48. 118 APC XIV, 140. ‘Adrian Nowell’ appears to be an error for Andrew Nowell (or Noel), or possibly Adrian Stokes, a prominent pursuer of recusants in Leicestershire.

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Constructing a Protestant regime 119 See the lists of commissioners for disarming recusants in 1585, BL Harleian 474, fols 86–91. 120 APC IX, 88, 118; XI, 57, 143, 208, 287; XII, 45; XIII, 30–1, 164, 425, 437; XIV, 210–11, 277, 285; XVIII, 430; XIX, 392–3; XXIII, 22, 72, 338–9. FSL, Bagot calendar, nos 713, 727; Roman Catholicism in Staffordshire, 5–6. 121 FSL, Bagot calendar, nos 303–340, passim, 935; see also many personal requests from senior members of the regime. 122 FSL, L.a.811 (Shrewsbury to Bagot, 9 January 1589); see a royal commendation in L.a.920 (William Waad to Bagot, 26 August 1586). 123 For the membership of ecclesiastical commissions in 1585, see BL Harleian 474, fols 86–91. Cf. Manning, ‘The making of a Protestant aristocracy: the ecclesiastical commissioners of the diocese of Chester, 1550–98’, BIHR 49 (1976), 60–79; Price, ‘The commission for ecclesiastical causes’. For muster commissions, see below. 124 Smith, County and Court, 113ff. Clark, too, distinguishes a stratum of ‘county governors’ more significant than the usual run of middling gentry of magisterial status: Clark, English Provincial Society, 128–32. Neither Smith nor Clark link this closely with questions of ideological suitability, however: Smith stresses functional reasons, Clark a more diverse set of factors including links with court and military service. 125 BL Lansdowne 683 (‘May 2 1579. The names of the noble men and principal gentry in every County’); SP 12/244/17 (c. 1593 and heavily updated c. 1597), 12/254/40 (not all counties; 1595) 12/269/46 (1598). Two similar, earlier documents are SP 12/2/16 (1559) and 12/59/14–16 (c. 1569). Cf. P. Williams, ‘Court and polity under Elizabeth I’ in John Guy (ed.), The Tudor Monarchy (1997), 356–79; Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, 177–8. 126 APC XXV, 156–7; SP 12/244/17. 127 APC XXIII, 256–61. 128 BL Harleian 309, fols 177–8 (the council to Suffolk muster commissioners, 29 May 1574); see also the 1573 muster orders: SP 12/93/18, fol. 91v. 129 SP 12/165/22 (‘Information of the presente estat of Sussex touching religion’, dated to ?1583 in the calendar, but 1581 or 1582 suggested by Manning, Religion and Society, 238, n. 1.) 130 Manning, Religion and Society, 222–3. 131 BL Harleian 703, fols 10v. (the council to the sheriff and JPs of Sussex, 8 September 1583), 11r. (‘Articles agreed’ for musters, 23 September 1583), 15r. (Walsingham to Sussex muster commissioners, 21 May 1584), 19r. (Buckhurst to Walter Covert, 20 April 1584). 132 See ODNB, s.v. ‘Browne, Anthony, 1st Viscount Montagu’. 133 On Covert, see Michael C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006), 43, 175; Anthony Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (1986), 38, 147. 134 W. J. Sheils, The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough 1558–1610 (Northamptonshire RS, 30, 1979), 104; Hasler, Commons, III, 76–7; Northamptonshire LP, xviii, 7; CSPD 1547–80, 341. On Vaux, a very close associate of Sir Thomas Tresham, see Sandeep Kaushik, ‘Resistance, loyalty and recusant politics: Sir Thomas Tresham and the Elizabethan state’, Midland History 21 (1996), 42–3.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 135 Northamptonshire LP, 1–3. 136 MacCulloch, ‘Catholic and Puritan’. 137 Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 46; SP 12/165/22. 138 Sheils, Puritans, 107–8. 139 See Hasler, Commons, II, 405–6; ODNB, s.v. ‘Knightley, Sir Richard (1533–1615)’. 140 Sheils, Puritans, 110–12. This time, however, Hastings, who had drafted the petition, never recovered local office: Letters of Francis Hastings, xviii–xix. 141 BL Lansdowne 57, fol. 108 (Leicester to Burghley, 27 August 1588); Hasler, Commons, II, 286; also BL Egerton 1693, fol. 87 (Jermyn to Walsingham, February 1583). 142 MacCulloch, ‘Catholic and Puritan’, 276–80; Hasler, Commons, II, 285–6, 376–7. 143 Nathanial Bacon Papers II, 281, 286. 144 SP 12/150/6 (Hastings to Leicester, 18 August 1581); Letters of Francis Hastings, passim, especially 38–41, a letter to Essex written five days after Leicester’s death, encouraging him to take up Leicester’s role as protector of the godly. Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 44–6. BL Harleian 703, fol. 57v. (Walsingham to Covert, 29 July 1589); the christening was for a grandson of Covert’s fellow Sussex deputy Sir Thomas Shirley. 145 Intervention for Bacon: Nathaniel Bacon Papers I, 183; II, 20. Amongst other links, Leicester helped to fund a lectureship at Towcester organised by Knightley: see Simon Adams (ed.), Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1558–1561, 1584–1586 (Camden Society, 5th series, 6, 1995), 193, 243, 327; for links with Sir Philip Butler (a deputy lieutenant in Hertfordshire), ibid. 223, 311–12, 320–1, 449; Sir Hugh Cholmondeley (Cheshire), ibid., 430, 446, 451; Sir John Cutts (Cambridgeshire), who was knighted by Leicester in 1578 (Hasler, Commons, I, 690), Household accounts, 269, 286; Sir George Fermor (Northamptonshire), ibid. 243, 301; Sir Fulke Greville (d. 1606; Warwickshire), ibid., 168–9, 450; Sir John Harington (Warwickshire), ibid., 214, 225, 298–9, 449; Sir Thomas Lucy (Warwickshire), ibid. 295, 451; Sir John Petre (Essex), ibid., 339, 343–4; Sir Henry Poole (Gloucestershire), ibid., 216, 259, 450, 452; Sir Thomas Shirley (Sussex), 242, 302, 452; and Sir John Spencer (Northamptonshire), ibid. 299 and n. 599. Many of these links were in counties such as Warwickshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Cheshire, where Leicester had lands, houses or office (the standard tools of patronage). There were also links with important JPs who were not deputies, but were active in local military affairs, such as Sir Francis Leak in Derbyshire (ibid., 198, 250) and Sir Thomas Lucas in Essex (ibid., 344). 146 Letters of Francis Hastings, 8, 6, 35, 67. 147 Roman Catholicism in Staffordshire, 68–9; SP 12/230/76 (Lord Cromwell et al. to Walsingham, 18 February 1590); FSL L.b.252 (Sir William More to the council, c. 1580). 148 Sir Henry Cocke, for example, was cofferer to the household; Sir Henry Grey was a gentleman pensioner; and Bassingbourne Gawdy a gentleman-waiter. See also the example of Leveson, above. Serving in the central administration were Sir Thomas Sherley, long-time treasurer-at-wars in the Netherlands; Sir William More was considered for the vice-presidency of Wales: Loseley 6729/7/51 (John Wolley to Sir William More, 3 July 1577). 149 See for example the bitter rivalry between the conservative Lovells and the Protestant Gawdys in Norfolk: Smith, County and Court, 181–92. 150 Roman Catholicism in Staffordshire, xiii, xv, 20, 24–31.

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Constructing a Protestant regime 151 Northamptonshire LP, passim. 152 Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Later Reformation in England, 1547–1603 (Basingstoke, 1990), 60. For a similar phenomenon relating to Leicester’s clerical proteges, see Simon Adams, ‘Eliza enthroned? The court and its politics’ in Christopher Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 1984). 153 APC XX, 186–7; XXVI, 460; XXVIII, 559. 154 See Patrick Collinson, ‘Puritans, men of business and Parliaments’ in Elizabethan Essays; ibid., ‘Servants and citizens: Robert Beale and other Elizabethans’, Historical Research 79 (2006), 488–511; M. A. R. Graves, ‘The management of the Elizabethan house of commons: the council’s ‘men-of-business’, Parliamentary History 2 (1983), 11–38; M. Taviner, ‘Robert Beale and the Elizabethan Polity’ (St Andrews PhD thesis, 2000). 155 John Guy, ‘Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell and the reform of Henrician government’ in Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety (1995), 35–58, esp. 37, 53–7. 156 Hindle, The State and Social Change, 7–10. 157 Such an approach was, of course, employed in the North, Wales and Ireland.

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Chapter 2

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars

A

s we have seen, the Elizabethan regime had considerable scope to mould the structures of local government such that men supportive to its aims were placed in positions of power. But this could only set the stage for the implementation of policy, when the regime had to deal with the political nation at large, a much wider and potentially less committed constituency. Even if they supported the ends to which it was directed, the work involved in running the local end of a national war effort was, broadly speaking, unappealing both to the gentry who had to do it and to the wider county community who had to play their parts. It was troublesome and involved a great deal of often dull work; it produced no tangible benefit to the community; and it was expensive. It did not fall into that category of the work of local government which arose organically from society, such as maintaining local order, enforcing the law, or relieving poverty or hunger. Instead it was imposed from above, and there can be little doubt that, all things being equal, local communities would rather not have had to do it. It was incumbent on representatives of the regime, both centrally and locally, therefore, to generate a situation in which compliance with these unwelcome demands could be achieved. As we will see, this was made harder by the questionable legal status of much of this work. Compliance with the demands of the centre was ultimately dependent on the power of the ideas and information invoked to justify those demands: whether underlying, implicit ideas about obedience to monarchical authority, or more immediate, contingent ideas about the particular needs of the moment. The nature of these ideas, and the ways in which they were communicated, form the central theme of this chapter, which thus provides a backdrop to more detailed examinations of the workings of the Elizabethan military system in the chapters that follow.

Government and people during the Elizabethan wars POPULAR AT TITUDES TO THE WAR We may begin, however, by addressing the issue of popular attitudes towards the war. The difficulties an early modern state might encounter when it engaged in war without popular support are clear: the Bishops’ Wars are an obvious example. The ‘willingness that men have to the warres’1 has, however, received very little scholarly attention. Historians have generally assumed that the nation was negatively inclined towards the war and that securing compliance was a significant and largely insoluble problem as the government strove against ever-growing hostility, lack of cooperation in the country and warweariness, particularly as the 1590s went on. Undoubtedly some evidence can be found to support these views, but the question remains of how typical they were, and it is argued here that this is a considerably exaggerated caricature of the political mood of the war period. Evidence of widespread hostility to the overall direction of government policy is very elusive (except in obvious quarters, such as Catholic polemic), and indeed there are suggestive indications to the contrary. It is worth emphasising the scale of the problem. The late-Elizabethan wars lasted for eighteen years, a very long period of continuous warfare, far longer than the wars of Henry VIII and more intense than the Wars of the Roses. To be sure, the war was not a constant presence in Elizabethan society, but it was a regularly recurring issue which affected each county, each JP, each taxpayer several times a year: at musters, at troop levies, when taxes were due. Furthermore, it is clear that peace – so often mooted over the period – was widely desired by many Englishmen, if a satisfactory settlement could be reached.2 Yet despite this, it can be demonstrated that attitudes to the war were by no means universally hostile, and each aspect of the war had at least some measure of support. National defence, for example, was almost impossible to argue with: there was a clear imperative to defend against an enemy attacking one’s home, and we find regular mentions of the threat to ‘country, liberty, wife, children, lands, life, and … the profession of the true and sincere religion of Christ’.3 This was ideal ammunition for those who wished to demonise the bloodthirsty papist enemy (the king of Spain or the Pope), and in the case of Spain the tyranny and insatiable ambition of the enemy. Popular anti-popery and Spain’s complicity in various plots against the Queen were powerful weapons for the regime.4 The hostility of Spain, demonstrated by the continued possibility of invasion up to the very end of the 1590s, as well as the Spanish raid on Cornwall in 1595 and the landing at Kinsale in 1601, was probably a veritable boon to the efforts to ensure continued support for the war. As we will see, impending invasion crises created perceptible moods of concern and jumpiness in the nation at large, with frequent false alarms; they prompted real increases of effort in the musters; they even appear to have motivated the political nation to up their collective tax payments: the subsidies

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties collected in 1588 and 1599, the years of the two greatest invasion scares, were the only ones of the period to show a halt in the inexorable decline of the subsidy.5 The persuasiveness of national defence was such that it was used to justify actions which were clearly offensive, such as the 1596 Cadiz voyage.6 Sending English troops to fight for foreign allies was naturally harder to sell; the Queen herself noted complaints that ‘they sent Englishmen to die out of their country when they ought to live for the defence of their country’.7 In the case of the support given to the Dutch, support was clearly more narrowly focussed on the Protestant end of the spectrum, but was still real: we have seen how forward Protestants regarded it as God’s work, supporting international Protestantism, and the 1587 Parliament was strongly supportive of the enterprise.8 This may have soured as the intervention there persisted for so long, but there is little evidence that the involvement was markedly unpopular. Aside from some reluctance to abandon a cause which had dominated English foreign policy for thirty years and in which England had invested so much, the arguments for the need to prevent Spanish reconquest of the North retained their force.9 The intervention in France might be expected to have been highly unpopular, owing to the historic antipathy between England and France, the comparative remoteness of the threat and the apparent ingratitude of Henry IV himself. Elizabeth and her ministers certainly found Henry an infuriatingly unreliable ally.10 Yet the French wars were followed very closely in England, with Henry’s cause seen as being closely allied with England’s: ‘God strengthen him’, wrote Buckhurst to Burghley in 1589, ‘if he shold not prosper what shall become of us almighty God by miracles may preserve us but by humane reason we shal fal in to extreme daunger’.11 In 1591, it was noted that ‘men are willing enough’ to contribute to a privy seal loan ‘becawse they apperteine a necessitye of assisting the King of Navarre & are angrye with the pollicye of the cownsell in assisting him no more rowndlye’.12 The pamphlet market also suggests strong support for the Huguenots and a fascination with the heroic figure of Henry IV, with remarkably frequent publications, encouraged by Burghley, covering every detail of his progress (albeit less so after his conversion to Catholicism).13 The various overseas attacks on Spain were especially appealing, since they were glamorous, aimed directly at the enemy, conspicuously heroic, potentially profitable and of short duration. They attracted large numbers (often thousands) of volunteers, and news of them was followed anxiously in the provinces. Attention naturally focused on commanders such as Drake or Essex as it did on such figures as Montgomery or Patton in the twentieth century.14 Drake’s ‘singeing the king of Spain’s beard’ has entered the national memory, but it was hugely admired at the time too: ‘a moste miraculous exploite agaynst a grete navie of Spanishe shipps’, in Henry Knyvett’s words:

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars I beseche our good God to contynewe hys blessings to that good Christian knighte and then I hope the bluddie practises of the tiranous Spanyards shall come to nothinge/ And I beseache God grante us all corage to offer our lyves for the defence of the gospell, oure prince & cuntrie.15

Similar enthusiasm was evinced about all of these voyages, and whilst inevitably much of this cooled when ventures were unsuccessful, as several were, investors continued to be found for new ones. Support for the Irish wars arose from an obvious opposition to rebels in contempt of their lawful Queen. There is evidence in contemporary letters and publications of close attention being paid to the unfolding of events both in London and in the counties, and there was strong support for the government’s efforts: at the very least a patriotic desire to see the rebels defeated and English arms succeed. Essex, again, received much attention.16 The market for cheap printed ballads also suggests a generally positive attitude towards aspects of the war, celebrating English victories, notably against the Armada and at sea.17 Patriotic pleasure in the success of one’s country should not perhaps be surprising, but this all suggests that, if the war was not uniformly popular, it was not necessarily the wedge between crown and country that might be thought (though no doubt there were regional variations within these attitudes; an war with such strongly confessional underpinnings must have appealed more to more thoroughly Protestant areas such as London and the south-east). People paid close attention to the progress of English exploits, hoped that English arms would be successful, and expressed great satisfaction when they were.18 One can adduce a number of reasons for these attitudes. Firstly, for all England’s involvement in war, the actual fighting occurred elsewhere: Elizabethans continued to laud the ‘this longe happy quietnes that we have injoyed, wheras all the countrys about us hath bene in most pittifull sort afflicted with contineuall wares about the contarversis of religion’. That England was peaceful, whilst blood flowed in the streets in France and the Netherlands, not to mention Ireland and Scotland, was a considerable boon.19 Secondly, there were a significant number of successes to celebrate over the period: the defeat of the Armada, the successful support of friendly powers such as the Dutch and Henry IV, the triumphs at Cadiz in 1587 and 1596 and ultimately the defeat of the Irish rebellion; the influence of pro-war politicians such as Essex should also be remembered. It may also be significant that the state of war permitted large sums of money to be made by many influential people from privateering and attacks on Spanish possessions. Thirdly, it should be remembered that many of the elite were prepared for war by their education and background, and in many cases actively enjoyed it. This is attested not only by the interest in military literature, but by the fact that ministers and local governors or their sons and brothers often fought in the

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties wars themselves. Many lost relatives: Walsingham’s son-in-law, Philip Sidney, famously died at zutphen; Essex’s brother Walter was killed at the siege of Rouen in 1591, as was a son of Lord Buckhurst; and Lord Keeper Egerton lost his eldest son fighting with Essex in Ireland.20 Military service, both abroad and in the militia, was a matter of prestige and credit for gentlemen, the loss of a captaincy in the militia, for example, being potentially a significant disgrace.21 Town governments such as Norwich’s often took considerable pride in their military displays, spending significant sums on distinctly inessential items such as sarsenet or taffeta scarves for military officers, lace for a drummer’s coat and in 1588 a gilt cup worth over £10 for Sir Thomas Leighton.22 A final important factor encouraging support for the war was of course the religious issue, which, as we have seen, had particular resonance for many of the council’s allies in the counties: the need to defend co-religionists and ultimately to defend English Protestantism from future attacks. If the regime could rely on some elements of a national mood of resolve and even enthusiasm for the war, it naturally sought to foster such attitudes through its propaganda.23 The debate as to whether there was such a thing as a coherent public opinion in this period is ongoing, but as we shall see in the following chapters, it can be shown that local responses to certain policies responded uniformly to particular circumstances (for example the effort put into the militia clearly increased in line with the fear of invasion). Thus, if there was a developing ‘public sphere’, in which a wider sector of the nation was aware of the doings of central government, responding to it actively and even concerned with influencing it, it was crucial to address this.24 The Elizabethan state was engaged in a war of unprecedented duration and, at times, intensity, and national morale had to be actively maintained. The government’s propaganda machine was fairly ramshackle, dominated by sporadic initiatives by ministers such as Burghley or Walsingham to publicise particular issues. The use of proclamations – surely an obvious resort – was in fact rare, nor were sermons employed, though occasionally special prayers were issued.25 More common was the use of medium length printed tracts, sometimes anonymous or pseudonymously written, laying out the government’s arguments in a fairly sober and reasoned (albeit obviously biased and selective) manner. Special effort was made to defend the dubious legitimacy of foreign interventions in publications and proclamations, with themes including the defence of the liberties of the Dutch and the hereditary right of Henry IV.26 Naturally, English successes, most notably against the Armada, were celebrated extensively; failures were justified or minimised.27 Although this clearly demonstrates the perceived need to maintain support, its effectiveness is impossible to quantify. Even the intended and actual readership is unclear, although it certainly included foreign readers: as many tracts were translated into European languages almost immediately, attempting to

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars belie the notion amongst both Catholic opponents and Protestant allies that England was weak.28 Government propaganda reached a more targeted audience of local governors through media such as speeches by senior ministers in Parliament. These had an important persuasive function in that they provided the government’s case for grants of taxation, and they were accordingly spirited affairs, attacking the malice and tyranny of Spain and the Pope, but they presented the dangers of the war accurately. As Burghley argued in 1589, the war was not like those of Henry VIII, in which peace could be made once everyone lost interest, but a war of survival, in which their religion and their Queen was threatened with destruction.29 The war was also continually presented as defensive, which in some ways it was, yet it began with an English invasion of Philip II’s sovereign territories.30 Preambles to acts of Parliament, especially subsidy acts, were customarily used as public commentaries on the regime’s policies, particularly with reference to the need for money. They praise Elizabeth’s government, ‘the incomparable benefite of Gods true religion planted and publiquelie professed amongst us’, her devotion to peace, her refusal to attempt conquest abroad, the might and ‘implacable mallice’ of her enemies against the country and her own person, the ‘bloodie conquest’ they would have made, the favour of God in repulsing them, and so on.31 The regular speeches delivered to JPs in Star Chamber by the Lord Keeper were further vehicles for reminding local gentry of the blessings of the Queen’s rule and emphasising the threat of Spain. Here, more directly, JPs – many of whom were deputy lieutenants, militia captains and so on – were enjoined to exercise their offices diligently.32 In 1593, for example, they were told that if a man will consyder, the malice of the foreine adversarie … tending no lesse to the extirpation of religion and the destruction of our most gratious sovereigne, then to the verie conquest and overthrowe of our native and dere countrie, he shall see that it is no tyme for officers and men of charge to sleepe, but rather, that (shaking off all securitie) they ought to addresse, and oppose theim selves, for resistance.33

These latter speeches highlight the importance of parlaying generalised acceptance of the necessity and propriety of the war into practical support for individual policies; there is an important difference between supporting the war in principle and being prepared to stump up the resources required to actually fight it. Such a dynamic characterised much of the relations between crown and Parliament in the 1620s, and can be discerned in Protestant supporters of the regime such as Sir Richard Knightley, or Sir Robert Jermyn, who supported the war but were sometimes indifferent to or even obstructive of policies which arose because of it. In every case, then, for every set of orders, a battle had to be fought to persuade local governors out of their habitual lethargy and into effective action.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Since so much of what needed to be done could be done in much more or less effective ways, the government’s case had to be as strong and persuasive as possible. The structures instituted to manage government business (the lieutenancy and so on) were part of this, but structures can only operate within a framework of underlying compliance with the spirit of demands. How did the government persuade local communities who, broadly speaking, would rather have been left alone, to contribute their time, to hand over their money, indeed to send away their sons and neighbours? Ordinarily, the vehicle for managing such transactions was law, particularly specific statute law, as it remained in the case of (most) taxation; each subsidy grant, for example, required a specific act of Parliament. This option was mostly closed off from the Elizabethan regime and its local representatives, since the legal basis of their demands was so vague – a point underlined by the rarity of specific references to the law in council demands. This also presented problems with the resort to another important tool, the ultimate threat of force, of imprisonment, if compliance was not forthcoming. Since infractions of the council’s orders were not (in most cases) contrary to clear statute law, they could not be pursued through the courts, merely enforced by the council, which was usually too busy, or by the lieutenancies, which was again problematic. Instead, the regime based its demands on appeals to a variety of motivating factors, some general, some specific to the case in question or to the recipient: it was a process of persuasion, something often referred to explicitly by both the council and local officials.34 The following section presents an analysis of the strategies adopted for legitimating government demands during the Elizabethan wars, drawing examples from efforts by various political actors to accomplish their ends with various constituencies.35 The most obvious factor which legitimated orders was the ingrained, habitual obedience of early modern people to higher authority, above all to the monarch herself, the properly constituted magistrate, approved by God, obedience to whom was a matter not merely of law, but of morality.36 This is not the place to discuss ideas about the nature of monarchical authority in early modern England; its power was evident and reflexive in early modern societies. Yet obedience was not invariable and could never be taken for granted. Rebellion was always possible; widespread, often tacit, non-cooperation was commonplace. In reality, the universal power of monarchical authority was often honoured more in the breach than in the observance, and many royal orders or proclamations became dead letters through want of enforcement.37 This reflected the way in which the Queen was often involved merely as a legal fiction, whose actual scrutiny (and the consequences of failing to meet her orders) was only a remote possibility. Often the task for the regime was to make the invocation of royal authority as real and convincing as possible.

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars Specific letters signed by the Queen were valuable here: they were invariably deployed when ordering that most troublesome service, a troop levy, and also in moments when a particular crisis demanded a special effort from the counties, as in 1588. These might be read aloud at assemblies of gentry to add weight to demands, and were also physically impressive symbols of authority; that they were signed with ‘her Majesties owne hand’ was often stressed.38 More creatively, courtiers and councillors could deploy the Queen’s authority not only in a formal context, by passing on her letters, but also by referring to their personal knowledge of the Queen herself, her remarks to them and so on, cracking the secrecy surrounding the arcana imperii and linking the royal body politic with the woman herself.39 A similar tactic could be used by deploying the council’s name.40 Letters or messages of commendation from the Queen or council could also help to bridge this gap, and even more powerful was the personal presence of the Queen, as in 1588, when she received the Lord Mayor of London to thank him for the City’s contributions to the Armada defence.41 There was often an effort to publicise widely symbols of authority such as letters from the Queen or council: these might be explicitly made available for consultation by the general run of people, as in Suffolk in the mid-1570s, when muster commissioners noted that ‘the said comysyon [was] to be seene at eny tyme upon your request’.42 A similar tactic was used with lieutenancy commissions, which transferred some royal authority to the recipient; lieutenants were specifically instructed to ‘publish’ their commissions at public assemblies such as markets or assizes, to inform the county that the Queen had appointed a lieutenant and that he was to be obeyed as such.43 Lieutenants often referred to their royal commission or specifically invoked the Queen’s service in correspondence with subordinates, reminding them of the ultimate authority for their orders. On one occasion, the earl of Shrewsbury refused to send letters to various Staffordshire men who were reluctant to contribute to a forced loan, since ‘seinge they have her highnes lettres of privie Seale delyvered unto theyme, and doe make so slender accompte to performe the contentes therof … they neyther will nor shall doe anie thinge therin at my commaundement’ – a somewhat disingenuous attitude, since his support certainly would have been helpful.44 The privy council’s letters, which initiated virtually every piece of military business throughout the period, were similarly powerful tools in securing compliance, both because of the collective authority of the council and because of the individual power of the men whose signatures appeared on the letters – local officials would have thought twice before hazarding the disapprobation of figures such as Burghley or Leicester. The habitual copying of such letters into personal letterbooks by JPs or deputies testifies to their perceived significance. When lieutenants were commissioned in 1585, the council wrote to the sheriff and JPs of each county, requiring obedience to him as the Queen’s

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties representative.45 Cascading down the hierarchy of authority, the deputations issued from lord lieutenants to their deputies, as well as the council letters containing particular orders, performed similar functions in providing royal or council legitimation to lesser office-holders.46 A proper warrant was always sought after by local officials, aware of the difficulties they would encounter with the wider population without one.47 The importance of particular business could also be emphasised by multiplying these techniques: instead of one letter from high authority, two letters, repeating the order, reinforced the demand; similarly a letter from the Queen rather than the council indicated a greater degree of insistence. In practice, much of the council’s effort in the military sphere was based on sheer persistence: the constant reiteration of orders over months and years; lord lieutenants frequently used the same technique with their subordinates. In a situation in which local authorities routinely disregarded some of their orders, these were ways of signalling how serious the regime was about an issue. Royal authority was, in a sense, the baseline legitimation strategy. Yet, since it was possible to obey orders and thus fulfil the letter of one’s obligations to the crown without necessarily doing what the council really wanted, the council’s efforts to generate compliance did not merely rely on royal obedience to secure broad compliance, but sought to add to the legitimating factors in order to encourage the nation to do as much as possible. The personal intervention of a lord lieutenant himself could be very effective, the more so because most counties’ lieutenants had extensive local landholdings, followers and patronage. The different roles filled by local officials strengthened each other: a nobleman or gentleman was obeyed because of his commission from the Queen, but also for his high rank, his economic power in the county, his other offices, even for his personal qualities, and the same applied, to different degrees, at every level down to the yeoman or parish gentleman acting as constable. Local office-holders commanded respect both as royal officials, local landowners, fathers of the country, good neighbours, even good Christians.48 In Wales, these attributes were articulated by reference to the traditional attributes of medieval Welsh princes.49 This, after all, was the original reason for placing men of high social status in the lieutenancy and deputy lieutenancy: it allowed the state to channel the independent power and credit of nobility and gentry towards its own ends. Lieutenants who lacked this independent local standing might find their jobs extremely difficult: the obvious example is Lord Hunsdon in Norfolk and Suffolk.50 Persuasion by such trusted and respected individuals was often more credible to the local community than the abstract, remote authority of the council. The lieutenant’s presence, either in body or by writing, could do much to personalise and make specific and unanswerable the relatively vague and poorly supervised instructions of the council and to dismiss the evasions and

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars obfuscations often resorted to by local governors unwilling to act. The progress of Lord North, on taking up office as lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, was a case in point: his personal enthusiasm and determination, backed by his royal commission and his personal links with the Queen and leading ministers, accomplished a great deal (see chapter 3). The looming threat of a visit from a lord lieutenant was also potentially powerful: the earl of Shrewsbury’s endlessly postponed visits hung over Staffordshire, Godot-like, for months at a time.51 Since many lieutenants tended, like Shrewsbury, to be somewhat remote, they were also invaluable for resolving disputes within the county: in 1590, Richard Bagot asked him to nominate a conductor for a troop levy, pointing out that ‘if your Lordship shall referre it to me I shall therein as in most thinges els minister occasion for somme to take offence and with your Lordships nominacion they must be contented’.52 Of course, the government did not rely solely on the inherent status of the lieutenancy to legitimate demands: it also provided specific legitimation for individual demands based on the circumstances at hand, to persuade the counties that a particular imposition was genuinely necessarily – simply explaining, for example, why troops were needed.53 The regime recognised the need to do this from the very start, and as the war dragged on, this legitimation became ever more extensive, particularly for the seemingly endless demands for expensive troop levies.54 These explanations provide insights into the government’s assessment of the counties’ moods, their attempts to influence knowledge and attitudes in the counties, and, often, the difficulties expected in securing compliance. A number of media were used: a royal proclamation, for example, as in 1599, laying out the reasons for sending troops to Ireland.55 More commonly, the preambles to orders from the Queen or sometimes the council were used, a technique which grew more elaborate as the period went on.56 Whereas early on, little or no explanation for the orders was given, by the height of the Irish conflict, royal letters opened with preambles of several hundred words containing updates on the progress of the war, strategic analysis and other attempts to encourage compliance – clearly a mark of the regime’s concerns about war-weariness in the counties. The lieutenancies thus provided an important conduit of communication between the centre and the localities, used to shape and respond to public opinion. Strategic threats were often emphasised, the most obvious and powerful being the threat of Spanish invasion, ‘the violence and tiranie of our hatefull enemyes the Spanyardes’, the ‘slaughter and servitude’ which it would bring, from the mid-1580s right through to 1599 and even after, when Ostend was threatened.57 During the early 1590s, the defence of Henry IV was justified by stressing the Spanish backing of his internal enemies and the threat posed by Spanish control of France, especially the threat of the enemy being established on the north coast, so close to England, and the threat to the Channel trade.58

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties The Queen appealed to her subjects’ common sense: ‘wee doubt not, but in your owne judgement every good subject of any knowledge, thinketh it both necessary and proffitable for our realme, that wee should geve aide to our good brother the French kinge’.59 Similar appeals were used during the siege of Ostend, a major cause of troop levies from 1601, whose fall would enable the Spanish to ‘annoye our subjectes by ympeachinge theire trades beinge masters of all the coast of Flaunders’.60 Such strategic threats were effective because they appealed to threats which well-informed gentry would already be aware of; rather than simply raising troops for an abstract, formless army, they were raising troops to respond to a specific, often worrying problem. In the case of Ireland, the government stressed the rebels’ perfidy and insolence, their rejection of peaceful approaches, and their ‘unnaturall’ rebelliousness.61 The defence of Protestant religion was invoked, and the rebel O’Neill was demonised as an ‘Archtraytor’, who ‘maketh himself the Pope’s champion’ and ‘doth with more insolencie then ever heretofore pretende the planting of the Romish superstition which in sequell doth drawe after yt the extirpacion of Godes true religion (wherein we purpose to live & dye)’.62 Interestingly, however, a more common refrain was outrage at Spanish interference in the Queen’s sovereign territory, especially when Spanish soldiers landed at Kinsale in 1601, which suggests the Spanish were regarded as a more effective bogeyman than the Irish.63 Recent defeats could be used to justify the need for more troops, as could recent successes and the hope of an imminent conclusion to the war – the ‘one last push’ approach.64 These letters also included appeals to choose suitable men for soldiers, pointing out that better provision of soldiers would require fewer levies. Significantly, both the Queen’s, council’s and lord lieutenants’ own letters insisted that royal honour demanded that the rebels be defeated.65 Two of the most obvious lines of encouragement, however, were used surprisingly seldom. Straightforward appeals to patriotism can be found (a request in 1573 to increase the provision of armour ‘by good perswasion & for the love of their contrye’, for example66), but were rare. More surprising yet, the defence of religion was not consistent stressed, although it was used at times, such as stressing God’s protection of England against invasion.67 This again hints that the regime was not fully convinced that its version of religion was popular enough to be effective (or at least that the non-religious issues had a wider appeal; government propaganda after the Armada made great play of the loyalty demonstrated by Catholic noblemen68). Local officials might, however, use this rhetoric: Henry Cocke, a zealous deputy in Hertfordshire wrote to a militia captain in 1587, requesting his assistance in light of the threat from Spain, saying if wee will shewe our selves faythfull soldiers, no doubt but he will also shewe him selfe our mightie Captayne and delyverer. But now that viperous generation of the

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars papistes (upon the which it semethe the enymye greatlie hopethe) will shewe them selves in their kynde. Yeat God I hope will laughe them all to skorne.69

Naturally both Queen and council often pointed out that they kept demands as light as possible, that the Queen was always reluctant to burden the counties.70 A more surprising approach is the use of the rhetoric of reciprocity. This could come in the form of reminders of the many blessings of the Queen’s rule, how little she had charged them in the past, and so on. In 1583, the council hoped that people will more readily ‘condiscende’ to supply arms for the militia if thei be put in remembraunce of the longe quiet and happye government, of her Majestie, under whom thei have increased in wealth and bene freed from the greate and excesseve burden and chardge of warrs, and other impositions within the government of former princes, her heighnes predecessors, they have bene often subiect unto.71

Similarly, on several occasions, orders note that elements of the burden were being borne by the crown to relieve the counties, and that consequently they should put extra effort into those aspects which they did have to do – for example, that if the Queen was bearing the cost of armour for the troops, the counties should respond by providing better-quality recruits, or should perform future services ‘with the more willingnes and alacrytie’.72 On one occasion in 1585, when announcing the revival of the lieutenancy, reciprocity was offered in personal terms: the council hoped that county JPs would do their duty in working with the lord lieutenant, ‘so shall ye be sure that her Majestie will take the same in gracious part, as wee for our partes wilbe glad to pleasure any of you hereafter as occacion shall serve’.73 Whether this was effective or not (and the experienced local governor Sir Thomas Scott thought it was74), it underlined a sense that the war was not at heart the counties’ problem: that it was the responsibility of the Queen and government to manage these issues, and by contributing to the burdens of the war, the counties were doing a favour for central government. This feeling must have been reinforced by the frequently used rhetorical trope which presented Elizabeth herself as the object of the war. Local honour, and especially the ethos of service to the monarch, was widely used to motivate the gentry. It was implied in 1600 that limited compliance with orders called into question ‘not only the creadite of [the lord lieutenant] … but even the Countrie [i.e. county]’.75 When in 1590 Lord Chandos concluded an agreement to compound for purveyance for Gloucestershire, the city of Gloucester had grave reservations about the rating, but agreed to raise the money ‘in respect his Lordship had geven his creditt for the money’.76 Likewise, whilst comparisons with other counties were a common way for local officials to plead poverty to the council, they might be reversed to encourage

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties a county to come up to scratch, by claiming it was uniquely backward and other counties had complied with a demand, or that other counties had borne similar or greater burdens. In this way, comparisons with other counties could generate competition between counties.77 In the months before the Armada crisis, Sir Christopher Hatton’s letters to his deputies in Northamptonshire twice refer to his concern that the county might be seen as neglectful in its duty, and Howard of Effingham was keen that Surrey’s muster certificate ‘may not be the last that shalbe returned’; the credit of the county (and by extension local officials) was not to be discarded lightly.78 There was a real concern to justify the workings of authority at the county level. Lord lieutenants often placed their personal gloss on orders in covering letters to their deputies, not only adding additional arguments in favour of complying fully with the demands, but also buttressing the abstract, distant authority of the Queen’s and council’s orders with the more immediate weight of their own demands. The third earl of Huntingdon and the seventh earl of Shrewsbury, for example, was great cheerleaders for government policy in letters to their counties.79 When troops were being raised in Sussex for Essex’s expedition to Ireland, the lord lieutenant, Buckhurst, wrote a remarkable encomium of the earl, referring to his ‘honorable and worthy accions heretofore being manifest to all the worlde’ and urging his deputies to provide good quality soldiers, ‘first for her Majesties service, next for his Lordships satisfaccion and thirdly for owre credyt’.80 Deputy lieutenants, too, sometimes echoed the rationales passed down to them from above: in the case of the Spanish in Brittany, in 1591, for example, when two Norfolk deputy lieutenants restated concerns expressed by the Queen.81 The other side of encouragement was to threaten in various ways. Since much of the gentry’s habitual evasion of council demands was predicated on assumptions that they would not be found out, officials sought to countervail this; even the Queen herself noted in 1600 that heretofore the faultes of some that have been used under yow have been passed over & divers particuler persons lefte unpunished in respecte of other wayghtye causes [that] distracted our Councell … yett seinge yt hath bred so ill effectes as the perill of our kingdome & dishonour of our nation, wee are determined from henceforward to … cause it to be punished.82

Lord Cobham, similarly, tried to energise his Kent deputies in 1592 by telling them that faults in their trained bands were well-known at court.83 The gentry’s personal honour could also be exploited: the earl of Pembroke suggested that the ‘proceedings’ of the deputy lieutenants in Carnarvonshire would show ‘howe worthy you are of the authority committed to you, and what hartes you beare to our dread soveraigne’.84 In 1600, in a complex formulation, the council told counties that gentlemen’s contributions towards a levy of horse would be used by the Queen to ‘observe the measure of all their good wills’;

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars these gentlemen, it was expected, would be motivated both by ‘her Majesty’s service & their owne Interest in the comon cause, [and would be] most readie to declare the measure of their affection in the tyme when they perceave so greate a necessitie’, thus appealing to their loyalty and the importance of the issue; finally, they used the gentry’s personal honour to justify the demand for money in lieu rather than horsemen equipped in the counties by invoking the potential for the latter to ‘disgrace the senders’.85 On a similar occasion later the same year, the Queen’s letter promised and threatened contributors to ‘retaine the memory of it towards every one of them, as we shalbe informed of the measure of their good affection’, whilst the council letter flattered them that they were chosen not for ‘any disfavour … but rather for the confidence shee hath in you and good opynion of your willing mynde to do her service … shee will retaine a favourable remembraunce for your good’.86 More pointed threats to gentlemen’s personal interests might also be employed. The danger of being at the receiving end of the council’s close attention was pointedly made over the forced loan of 1589, when the council threatened that, should anyone refuse to lend, enquierie shalbe made … of the true value of their landes and goods and therof retorne shalbe made to the Privie Counsell and allsoe into theschequer to remaine there for subsidies and all other ordinarie chardges … and not by such lowe and favourable rates as nowe be accustomed. 87

All of these added to the legitimating factors: the degree to which those at the receiving end of lieutenancy administration were persuaded to comply with demands. Conversely, there were factors which undermined legitimacy, such as when a county felt that the council was demanding too much of them. After the Kent trained bands had been sent to France in 1589, for example, the lieutenant, Cobham, knew that their store of weapons were depleted, but he told Walsingham ‘how unwilling the countrie semes (I will not saye unhable) to supplie the losses of armour and furnyture &c which yt susteines therby’. Their unwillingness is unsurprising, since it was the council’s requisitioning of the trained bands for overseas service which had caused the loss of the armour, and now the council was demanding its replacement, a demand which could naturally seem unreasonable.88 The lukewarm attitude of local officials could also be a disincentive: when they did not add their endorsement to the government’s demands, but passed them on nevertheless, this would naturally reduce the effectiveness of the centre’s demands, as was the case with the problems over ship money in Suffolk and Norfolk.89 Lord lieutenants actively tried to accentuate the positive where possible, in order to minimise discontent. On one occasion a controversy arose in Kent about a local tax being collected for a troop levy, even after the levy had been

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties cancelled, and when the armour was in fact used for a levy the following year, and Cobham told his deputies to acquaint the constables, and some of every parishe within their devicions, of this resolucion, that they may see, the money then levied in this cowntie, doth now save theim the one haulfe, of the chardges which they should have otherwise ben at this present.90

Cobham took care to extend this attempt to form opinion down to the level of the parish, not merely the magistracy. There was clearly a wider public to be addressed, and in many cases the problem may not have been persuading the gentry, but enabling them to persuade the wider circles of taxpayers. The council’s legitimations were intended to influence local officials, but also to be passed on to a wider audience. Thus when in 1602 the costs of providing equipment for a troop levy had been remitted, the Queen urged officials to ‘make publickly and particulerly knowen to our subjectes that they maye have feelinge of this extraordinary favour of ours at this tyme, as wee have of theire dutifull affections’.91 Just like sessions of the peace or assizes, the lieutenancies could be forums for face-to-face persuasion. Shortly before the Armada crisis, in a fine performance which must have been replicated across England, Sir Henry Cromwell addressed the Huntingdonshire gentry, invoking many of the issues referred to here: the defence of Queen, country and religion, the malice of Spain, the urgency of the case, and the need for extraordinary preparations, before finally encouraging his audience to ‘joyn handes and hartes together in the unviol bandes of amytie & unitie therby the better to dessist those enimyes of ours that have sworne our distrucion’.92 Interestingly, Cromwell also sought to mobilise a less elite audience with an address to constables and trained bandsmen in 1590. He again stressed the defence of their Queen and their religion against the Spanish, who in 1588 had come prepared with ‘halters to hang us, hote irones to burne us in the faces & knyves to gild our childern, meaning therby to work our utter distruction & that we shuld be no more a people of any memory’; then, however, ‘our good god … confounded their devices: & with his mighty & streched out arme did most meraculusly deliver us causing the seas to swallow them’. He segues into admonishments first to show themselves faithful in religion and then to train carefully to resist the Spaniard.93 In 1601, Thomas, Lord Burghley addressed the Yorkshire gentry who had been asked personally to pay for cavalry for Ireland; some were ‘something grieved with it’, but ‘seeing the necessity of the time, which I declared unto them, they are willing to undergo the charge’.94 Local officials were able and willing to act as spokesmen for the government (and no doubt most of their efforts are unrecorded), and all of this expanded the circle of participation in business of national concern so that the

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars legitimacy of the lieutenancy’s actions was reaffirmed in the minds of local taxpayers and a better outcome encouraged. Thus the regime perceived the need to provide detailed and varied justifications for the demands it made on the country, and channelled them through a wide variety of media. At the heart of all of these attempts at persuasion – and this surely accounts for much of the success of the appeals, in contrast to those employed by early Stuart governments – was that the central threat on which they played was demonstrably very real: no-one who had lived through the Armada crisis could doubt the power or the hostile intent of Spain; similarly, the threat of complete Spanish control over the Netherlands or France was palpable. Whilst, as we shall see, the responses to these threats in terms of actual administration varied, the basis of the government’s case was ultimately unarguable. It can be seen, then, that the Elizabethan governing network encompassed quite an intensive web of communication, and the lieutenancies formed an important new channel within it, especially as the lieutenancy also provided a means for the counties to talk back to the council. This tends to be more difficult to trace, but deputies did quite regularly report on their views or impressions of the mood of the counties: in 1597, for example, Sir Francis Hastings asked the earl of Pembroke to appoint additional deputy lieutenants, something that ‘the gentlemen [of Somerset] generallie doe humblie desire’.95 John Leveson was occasionally the recipient of comments or complaints, acting as the lieutenant’s representative, as when in 1598, four Kent JPs wrote to him to express their own mislike and that of other gentlemen on a policy taken.96 William Lambarde seems to have expatiated his views to Lord Cobham quite often, providing the lord lieutenant with a clearer picture of the views of county JPs.97 Meetings of JPs at quarter sessions or assizes provided another forum for venting opinion, as in Somerset in 1591, when the deputy lieutenants and JPs assembled at Chard for the assizes composed a letter to their lord lieutenant, complaining about training, subsidies, purveyance, troop levies, plague and ‘the generall poore estate of our countrye’, and begging for a reduction in their quota of trained bands.98 County officials might also go direct to the council to raise matters of concern or seek clarification on orders, as when Henry Cocke met with Burghley and Walsingham to discuss muster arrangements.99 These responses may not always have had immediate results, but they served a purpose in informing the council about opinion in the counties, and possibly influencing future decisions: the system was based on a degree of negotiation, compromise and cooperation, and this kind of two-way communication helped the smooth running of administration. Ultimately, when legitimation failed, the lieutenancies, supported by the council, resorted to enforcement. This is examined in more detail in chapter 5,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties with particular reference to payment of local military taxes, but here it may be noted that the lieutenancies had a variety of measures at their disposal. These probably tended to begin with local hearings before lord or deputy lieutenants or JPs, encounters which could serve both as efforts at persuasion and more straightforward intimidation; Richard Bagot planned in 1590 to send some recalcitrant constables before the lord lieutenant, Shrewsbury, ‘thinking hereby to terefye them from ther stobbernes and disobedience’.100 Since many attempts to avoid burdens were predicated on evasion rather than directchallenge, direct scrutiny from such powerful men must often have been effective. If not, more formal methods such as prosecution at local sessions and potentially distraint of goods or referral to the council could be used.101 The council also assured lieutenants that their commissions empowered them to commit to gaol those who refused to meet demands, and local orders reiterated this.102 How often this was used is unclear, although it certainly was at times.103 In the final resort, the council could and did use force to enforce compliance, as in the case of Thomas Lovell, who was imprisoned for his alleged refusal to contribute towards burdens.104 RESISTANCE FROM THE COUNTIES Needless to say, the council’s persuasion was not invariably effective; there were occasions when there was protest or non-cooperation from individuals or counties. As we have seen, these are often cited as evidence of increasing war-weariness and growing difficulty in securing compliance. It is argued here that this is an exaggerated picture, so the first task must be to examine the nature and extent of non-cooperation and opposition the government faced, when compliance broke down, or threatened to break down, to look at how widespread it was, why it happened, and why, in other cases, the system worked more effectively.105 Inevitably, the work of the lieutenancies provoked some resistance: in a war of this length, one would expect nothing different. Nevertheless, the overall picture is of less resistance than might be expected. The extent of opposition is very difficult to quantify, not least because it was often not made explicit. It is difficult to disentangle genuine problems from the habitual moaning of the counties, and conversely to identify cases in which complaints about specific, apparently minor issues represented more profound problems with the war. Similarly, criticism of the war may have been too close to disloyalty to be palatable to the political classes. Yet dissent could be, and was, voiced over government policy of the highest importance, notably in Parliament: topics such as the Queen’s marriage and the succession, the fate of Mary Stuart, and (despite repeated specific prohibitions) religion. Opposition to the war cannot be inferred from silence.

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars Opposition could be voiced in a number of ways, and the ways in which it was raised, and the issues around which it coalesced, represented challenges of different levels of seriousness. At the most basic level, unwelcome demands could be met through non-cooperation, or more commonly limited, halfhearted cooperation. There were always individuals who tried to evade paying taxes or contributing to musters or forced loans, pleading poverty or inability, and a steady trickle of these can be found in both central and local sources throughout the period.106 On the level of counties as a whole, as we will see, local governors could employ passive resistance, putting minimal effort into unwelcome tasks, or even simply failing to cooperate, although this was rare. In most cases we know little about the context of the problem beyond the fact that a complaint was made. These responses naturally gave rise to a slightly less passive form of resistance: expressions of reluctance from the counties. Many examples of county representatives manifesting their discontents to the council or to ministers can be found. Requests to be entirely excused from carrying out orders were not especially common; much more often, counties requested mitigations of the demand by delaying implementation or reducing the burden (the number of militiamen required, for example).107 It was naturally difficult to be seen to be defying the royal will by opposing an imposition on principle, but merely asking to modify the demands could achieve the same ends much less controversially.108 Various strategies could be employed here: pointing out either the absolute poverty of the county in question, or its relative poverty by comparison to a supposedly under-assessed neighbouring county, or other specific problems which made implementing the orders more difficult. Thus the earl of Kent, lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire, pointed out to Burghley in 1596 that ‘Buckinghamsheere is better of abilitye by towe partes then this countrye, and yet our chardge is now full out as great as theirs’; in 1589, the Staffordshire gentry protested about their quota for a forced loan, citing not only their military expenses and the poor weather and dearth, but the interesting gambit that many of the gentry were Catholic and consequently impoverished by recusancy fines.109 Every county tended to feel hard done by, whether that was the case or not; a case in point is the complaint of George Owen that Pembrokeshire, where he served as a deputy lieutenant, was continually overburdened because it was depicted on an unusually large scale in Saxton’s 1579 atlas, thus making it appear much larger than neighbouring shires.110 These forms of discontent were relatively unthreatening because they did not challenge the orders as such, but sought to alter them as a result of factors of which the council may not have been aware. In practice they formed part of the ongoing dialogue between centre and localities. In many cases they may have highlighted genuine inequalities which could be remedied; in others they represented a simple and understandable reluctance to pay. Moreover,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties such complaints were also relatively easy to contain, with either more insistent reiteration of orders, possibly with a threat to punish any recalcitrant individuals, or with a real reduction in the demands, or some other concession (such as a temporary exemption from troop levies, granted to Anglesey and Pembrokeshire in 1598–99); occasionally the council even intervened to mediate individual local ratings disputes.111 Such discontent would only become truly problematic and force a change of policy if it became general across the country, as we shall see, and there is no evidence to show that it did at any point, something which suggests a broad acceptance of the demands from the counties. Often, however, such reluctance could blur into problems with the legal status of government demands, which were potentially much more serious. Some legal challenges were relatively innocuous, such as jurisdictional issues raised by corporate boroughs resisting the council’s efforts to treat them as part of their surrounding counties in military affairs.112 Often towns and counties worked cooperatively with only occasional quarrels, as in Gloucester, but elsewhere, tension was endemic, with towns withholding cooperation from lieutenants or muster commissioners, as in Coventry throughout the 1590s (it may be significant that Warwickshire had no lieutenant from 1590 to 1603, and so Coventry was on more even terms with its gentry rivals).113 In general, however, these jurisdictional issues were of fairly minimal significance. More confrontational legal challenges to the lieutenancy were rare, primarily because most of what the lieutenancy did had sound legal sanction, albeit often by prerogative rather than by statute law. Whilst issues of the relationship of these two branches of law became highly controversial in the seventeenth century, this was not necessarily the case at this point. Yet there were certainly challenges which picked at the edges of what lieutenancy commissions authorised and suggest either disquiet at this use of the prerogative or more straightforward reluctance to contribute to the war. The legality of forcibly impressing troops for service overseas was questioned, for example by Sir George Sydenham, a deputy in Somerset, who told the council that people are very muche ymboldened to fynde faulte with the doings of the deputye lieutenants in executing of there servyce, by means of the lawyers that be of the opinion that our commission to leavye men is not effectuall, but in tyme of actuall rebellion or invasion.114

There may well have been some merit to this view. The legal status of impressment was ambiguous, despite the provision of royal warrants for each levy. This uncertainty is also demonstrated by an incident involving the veteran soldier Sir John Smythe. Attending a muster at Colchester in 1596, Smythe, probably drunk, staged an abortive protest in which, having discussed the issue with a

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars number of judges, he denounced forced recruiting for foreign wars as illegal without parliamentary sanction, and accused of Burghley of treason. He was tried and sent to the Tower for his pains, and eventually retracted his claims.115 Similarly, the authority of the lieutenancy to levy rates for a muster-master’s wages was challenged by a Wiltshire deputy, Sir Hugh Portman, in 1602. The lieutenant, the earl of Hertford, reported this to the council, and Portman was removed as a deputy.116 Much more problematic issues arose when the council charged the lieutenancies with tasks beyond what could legally be demanded by lieutenancy or muster commissions or by statute, such as county rates for militia training, upgrades of weapons, or ship money. Some of these demands were legalised by specific royal warrants (notably troop levies), but many were not, and had effectively no legal status: hence the council’s frequent recourse to language of ‘persuasion’. These problems only became real, of course, if someone chose to highlight them and challenge the government, and most of the time, no-one did, although a few examples do survive. In 1577 nine Nottinghamshire JPs wrote to the earl of Rutland, complaining that ‘we doe not knowe that we are chargeable by anie lawe to so great a burthen’ as he had assessed them for provision of horses.117 Less directly, challenges could be presented by highlighting the practical problems, thus allowing local elites to place themselves on the council’s side against a potentially ambivalent wider public. Thus the Hertfordshire muster commissioners pointed out that local taxation for training had no statutory status, but did so to make the point that people would be ‘unwillinge to be drawen to suche newe and unwonted charges without lawe’.118 Similarly, William Lambarde noted in 1587 that the lieutenancy’s efforts to encourage his Kent neighbours to upgrade their weapons by persuasion rather than proper implementation of law was potentially corrosive to their support for the regime: if theise men … finde theim selves, yet more and more charged, and ther free myndes and chearefull readynesse, to be the cause that they are the nearer and more streightlie urged: I feare that they will not only repent theim of that forwardnesse, which they have shewed, but will also stand uppon termes of lawe, requyringe to be charged, as others bee.119

Therefore, there were occasional legal challenges to the lieutenancy, but it is striking how many arose at least partially from personal quarrels amongst local elites, or again from an obvious desire to avoid expense. This was a contributory factor in the Wiltshire muster-master case, since the gentry resented Hertford’s attempt to impose his secretary, not a military man, as muster-master. In 1595, the deputy lieutenants of Anglesey faced a challenge to their power to impose purchases of armour, but the dispute probably originated in resistance to the deputy lieutenant, Sir Richard Bulkeley, the island’s dominant landowner; the council’s letter referred to

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties the backwarde disposicion and stubbornesse of the people, havinge (as you informe us) taken a conceite that your authority doth not reache to compell them to amende the faultes in their armor and furniture, which opinion of theirs doth procede from some evill affected that make those impressions in the common sorte.120

A clash of personalities also underlay two challenges to the legal authority of Lord Hunsdon’s proceedings as lieutenant in Norfolk. The first arose in 1587–88, when Hunsdon’s deputy Sir Thomas Knyvett refused to take part in troop levies, apparently because he believed their social consequences were unacceptable (he seems to have been concerned about impoverished soldiers, which was no doubt an unrealistic attitude; Knyvett seems to have been temperamentally deeply unsuited to be a deputy). The exact details of events are not clear, but attention was certainly being paid to the legal authority of the lieutenancy and warrants examined. The relationship between lieutenant and deputy became extremely rancorous, and the Knyvetts were deeply concerned that Hunsdon might use his influence as a councillor and lord chamberlain to exact revenge. In the event, Knyvett’s removal as a deputy, ostensibly on health grounds, defused the row.121 Ongoing tensions in Norfolk led to a more overt row in 1591, when Hunsdon claimed that Judge Francis Wyndham, a Norfolk man, ‘dyd impugne Her Majesties commissions & other her preregatyves & procedynges in her service in Norfolk … [and] sought to dyscontenans hys Lordship in his liefetenancy in that shyre’. Both of these cases represent tensions in the county which were partly legal and partly personality clashes, but they also reflect some dubious uses of lieutenancy power in the county.122 The atmosphere was clearly rancorous, but the situation in Norfolk, where, Hassell Smith has argued, the lieutenancy itself became very unpopular, does not appear to have been typical: evidence has not been found of widespread animus against deputy lieutenants per se, though within the context of local power struggles there must have been many bitter rivalries. Inevitably some deputies overstepped their authority, and needed to be reined in: a Star Chamber speech from the 1590s admonished deputies to ‘leape not the pale of your auctoritie, as some have adventured to doe, phantasying theim selves to have an absolute power, which was never committed unto theim’.123 These incidents – and they represent all of the legal challenges for which evidence has been found over the eighteen years of war – do not suggest a fundamental breakdown in the legal status of the war effort. In all of these cases, the challenges made against the lieutenancy were essentially shortterm ones, and in none did they result in an ongoing suspension of cooperation. They focused on the sometimes shaky legal status of the lieutenancy, raising points which many must have known were valid: yet none of them was pursued with real persistence or aggression, either because the particular problem which prompted the dispute was resolved, or the complainants were overawed by council disapprobation. In effect, they were expressions of

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars irritation, probably less at the legal issues themselves than at the demands which had to be satisfied: they were at least partially cloaking their reluctance to contribute in legalistic objections. This need not downplay the real irritation at having to pay, or indeed the validity of the tactic (the government itself was quite prepared to utilise convenient technicalities when it suited). Ultimately, however, nobody chose to rock the constitutional boat to the extent of mounting a serious and sustained challenge to the legality of the regime’s proceedings. It is interesting, however, that most of these disputes arose in large and populous counties where many gentry were involved in decision-making, notably Norfolk, Suffolk and Somerset. This is surely more than coincidence – a large county was more likely to generate controversial ideas than a small one, since there were larger communities of gentry and greater scope for debate within the county. Nevertheless, these counties also had in common lieutenants who were either absentee (Pembroke in Somerset) or ineffective (Hunsdon in Norfolk and Suffolk), and this may help explain the exception to this pattern provided by Kent, another large and populous county but a generally cooperative one, possibly because it was handled skilfully by a lord lieutenant, Cobham, who was seldom far from the county. The examples cited in this section have mostly been isolated ones – individual complaints or asides, often arising in part from personal difficulties or simple reluctance to contribute to the war effort. Furthermore the incidents examined thus far did not on the whole challenge the government’s rationale for its demands – one could, after all, oppose policy not because it was illegal but because it was a bad idea, or unnecessary. Evidence of opposition in this form, or of significantly wider opposition to government policy would surely have come, if anywhere, in Parliament, a forum where a forcefully expressed concern from one county might inflame opinion from elsewhere and generate a political crisis. Yet there is little sign that issues surrounding the war were uppermost on MPs’ list of grievances in any of the five Parliaments held during the war. The need to vote multiple subsidies caused some concerns in both 1589 (on the grounds that the crisis had passed) and 1593, yet the readiness to make these unprecedented subsidy grants suggests an emphasis on cooperation, even if the continued decline in their yield tends to undercut this somewhat.124 It was in fact other issues which generated parliamentary storms: aside from the perennial religious debates, in 1589 the main complaint was about purveyors, and in 1597 and especially 1601, monopolies dominated the sessions.125 Perhaps this is unsurprising: purveyors and monopolies were fairly unrelieved blights on the commonweal, whereas at least the war had good reason behind it. That none of the potentially contentious issues – ship money, troop levies, mustermasters – arose onto the national stage in this way under Elizabeth suggests

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties that the lieutenancy and its work was, at the very least, not at the top of the list of popular grievances. There were evidently those who had qualms about what was being done, but even in the 1601 Parliament, when the counties were spending so much on troop levies, the issue did not become a national one. Again, this may well be, partly at least, because there was a substantial measure of support for the war itself.126 There may have been a modicum of luck here in that several Parliaments coincided with periods of heightened concern, such as the invasion scare in 1597 and the Spanish intervention in Ireland in 1601, but the surviving evidence from parliamentary debates suggests a generally encouraging tone on the war; in 1587, a petition and speech in support of the Dutch war were prepared for the Speaker to deliver to the Queen, promising annual benevolences from the wealthy should she accept the sovereignty of the Netherlands; in 1589, there was a well-supported move from both houses to petition the Queen to declare open war on Spain.127 If the war was surprisingly uncontroversial in Elizabethan Parliaments, it is instructive that this changed rapidly very early in James I’s reign. One of the earliest acts of the 1604 Parliament was to repeal the 1558 militia act. The circumstances of this move are obscure; the obsolescence of the act can hardly have afforded it many defenders, but the fact that it was not replaced is suggestive of Parliament’s keen desire to put the burdens of war behind them.128 Other aspects of the Elizabethan war effort came under attack in 1606, when the controversy over the Wiltshire muster-mastership, mentioned above, was raised in the Commons. The earl of Hertford’s lieutenancy, and in particular the rate for the muster-master, emerged as the point of departure for a more wide-ranging grumble about lieutenants and their doings. There was talk not only of Hertford’s actions, which certainly seem to have been excessive, but also of ‘other hard measure offered by Lieutenants of Counties to the Countryes’. The issue of ‘taxes sett in tyme of Warr and still continued, namely the Charge of Muster Masters’ was added to the Commons’s list of grievances.129 Obviously this suggests underlying discontent, but it remains unclear how serious, deep or widespread it was. Indeed, rather than seeing these issues purely as expressions of discontent, we might view them in a more nuanced way as reactions to different circumstances. These grievances point less to the unpopularity of the measures in wartime than to their being set in wartime and still continuing in peace. The ongoing state of war made possible many moves which would not otherwise have been justified, and equally the outbreak of peace permitted some expression of irritation with these burdens in both rhetorical and legislative terms.130 Indeed the Wiltshire quarrel may have arisen in 1602 precisely because by then the threat of Spanish invasion seemed remote and therefore a muster-master was unnecessary. Put simply, many people were prepared to bury a degree of unhappiness about these issues whilst the war was going on, but wished to tackle them when peace

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars returned, and quite naturally so, since by then they could reasonably be seen as unnecessary. This point, and the impact it had on the dynamics of protest, is revealed more clearly by the ship money row of 1596, one of the few occasions when there was widespread protest against a demand from the council. This was not ship money in the same sense as in the 1630s, but a demand from the council that the major ports contribute ships to the fleet sent to attack Cadiz under the earl of Essex (although the object of the attack was a closely guarded secret until after the fleet departed). This was a very costly demand, costing Devon £4,000, for example, and Ipswich £1,800.131 The initial reaction from the ports was predictably appalled, so in many cases the council directed that the ports should receive contributions from their members and creeks (subsidiary and dependent ports), from nearby towns that also benefited from their trade, or from the surrounding county at large.132 This in turn was greeted with great displeasure from those asked to contribute, and in most cases the council had to intervene to encourage the counties to contribute or overcome protests.133 After the initial complaints and manoeuvring to pay as little as possible, most towns and counties paid the money, but there were some who stoutly refused, in some cases for a year or more; the council wrote at least 92 letters to numerous recipients about the matter, many of them citing individual taxpayers’ refusals to contribute.134 Unfortunately, since in most cases it is the council’s letters rather than the counties’ that survive, it is not always exactly clear what grounds were cited to attempt to avoid paying, but there was evidently a wide range of excuses possible: complaints of poverty and food shortages, disclaimer of responsibility, appeals to the precedent of 1588 (when ports had borne the costs of ships for defence alone). The Dorset deputies, for example, were absolutely firm that ‘the backewardenes of all sortes to the taxe’, made it impossible to collect the money ‘with contentment of our neighbours’. Even after reducing the demand from £700 to £160, the council had to write three further letters before, presumably, achieving compliance.135 The cloth towns of West Yorkshire also stubbornly resisted contributing towards the ships provided by Hull, which is understandable considering the lack of precedent for the demand and the distance of the towns from Hull. This particular struggle seems to have become interwoven with existing tensions between the cloth towns and the Council of the North, and here, more than anywhere, there are signs that the reluctance to contribute took on constitutionalist overtones: the council mentioned that they complained ‘so much and so farre forthe as it seemeth to have bin doubted by some amongest you by what authority the said contribucion should be leavyed’.136 Even more obdurate than the West Yorkshire towns was Suffolk, which simply refused to cooperate, often passively. It is not necessary to rehearse the full sequence of events here: they have been thoroughly outlined by MacCulloch, and in

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties any case they followed a predictable pattern of demand and resistance. The unexpected element of the exchange was the persistence of the county gentry: even in the face of extremely stern letters and even summonses from the council, their resistance dragged on until 1600, and there is no evidence that the money was ever paid over.137 Three points arise from this analysis. Firstly, in line with what has been said earlier, most of the complaints seem to have focussed primarily on practical problems with the levy rather than legal ones – that is, they sought to avoid direct confrontation. Secondly, despite widespread protest, the council persisted with the demand and got its way in most cases. Probably the counties expected that if they kept quiet, the council would forget about it, but since the council was repeatedly pestered with petitions from the ports still needing repayment, it did not.138 After a certain point, compromise would have been too damaging to the council’s authority to be permitted, and stubborn insistence was the only possible way forward. The cost in loss of goodwill is hard to gauge, but the council probably felt that it could not proceed in this way too often without forfeiting consent. The third and more important point, however, is that this protest did not represent or lead to more general non-cooperation between the counties and the crown: in most other matters, business continued as usual. Why, then, was ship money so troublesome? The problem was not straightforward warweariness (although this was clearly an underlying difficulty), but the specific circumstances of the demand: it was perceived to be wrong for counties to be saddled with costs which belonged properly to the ports. After all, many counties had also contributed very willingly towards the preparation of soldiers for this expedition:139 why should they help to pay for the ships as well? It may also be significant that no royal warrant ever appears to have been produced: the council was attempting to rely on goodwill. Furthermore, the political and strategic context for the expedition was not conducive to these demands: unlike in 1588, when imminent Spanish attack was widely expected throughout England, there was little obvious threat from Spain in 1596. Therefore the council’s efforts to present the expedition as defensive were unconvincing: to provincial aldermen and JPs, however stirring the attack on the arrogant Spaniards, it may well have looked very much like a looting expedition whose principal beneficiaries were the earl of Essex and his cronies. This highlights the importance of proper legitimation: broadly speaking, when a demand was felt to be legitimate, equitable and to good purpose, it was adhered to; when these legitimations did not obtain, compliance was more difficult to achieve. This is underlined by the Suffolk case. Much has been made by MacCulloch and historians following him about the significance of the county’s refusal to pay these charges, pointing out that in the face of sustained lack of cooperation from a unified county magistracy, the

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars council was largely powerless (and also citing the issue as a prime example of war-weariness).140 This is certainly true, but could be said about many early modern governments: without an army to enforce demands, cooperation was always essential. The key question is whether this was achieved, and therefore the ship money dispute must be read alongside the gentry’s continued cooperation with the council over other issues to do with the war. In 1597, Suffolk obediently provided 300 men for the Islands voyage, for example, and it raised further troops for Ireland in 1598; in January 1599, the JPs were earnest in their cooperation when required to provide 25 horse for Ireland, no inexpensive task at around £30 apiece.141 Certainly there is no sign that the council made any effort to spare the county as a result of its earlier obduracy. A. H. Smith’s influential account of Norfolk’s resistance to central demands can be reinterpreted along similar lines. As Smith demonstrates, many within the county resisted the lieutenancy at certain times, notably when it supported efforts to extort money from the inhabitants under royal patents for road repair and so on, but this is not surprising: they were transparently bogus, often fraudulent and not clearly beneficial to the commonwealth, and thus poorly legitimated.142 Indeed, the deputy lieutenant at the heart of many of the conflicts, Sir Arthur Heveningham, put his finger on the nub of the matter when he complained to Hunsdon that ‘we can not nor dare do any thinge but by good aucthoritie’ – hardly a revolutionary position.143 The fact that Nathaniel Bacon, Francis Wyndham and others argued against these impositions in terms questioning the prerogative is essentially incidental here, since they seldom opposed the lieutenancy when it came to vital matters of national security – in fact Bacon later served as a muster commissioner alongside Heveningham, exercising that very prerogative power. It cannot be denied that the county was often grudging in its compliance with demands (including, again, ship money in 1596), but the vast majority, legitimated by war, were in fact met.144 Thus, whilst MacCulloch is right that the council needed cooperation from the counties, the wider point, which explains the rarity of Suffolk’s behaviour, is that the council seldom placed the counties in this position. Most of their demands were perceived as being unwelcome, but not unjustified, thus explaining the high degree of cooperation. There were weaknesses in the system, but the skill lay in minimising them by careful political management, and the council’s success in doing so was crucial. A similar lesson may be drawn from a controversy over a troop levy in Kent in 1593. Here, in what was probably Kent’s most significant protest of the period, there was widespread dissatisfaction and reluctance to contribute; one JP wrote that ‘the people [were] never so unwyllyng to paye (in all my tyme)’. However, once the reason for this feeling is clarified, the opposition seems more reasonable: the levy had been cancelled, but the money was not to be repaid, and instead the armour and equipment was put in storage for a

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties future occasion. Not surprisingly, ‘dyvers of the common people doe thincke it muche to paye theire money, and noe man pressed forthe’. One constable was reported as saying that ‘the Contrie (for so he termeth it without any speciall namyng of any one or mo[re] persons) doe muche grudg at this and suche other paymentes’ because the soldiers ‘went not [i.e. did not go], nor any accompt made unto them of the said charges’, complaints ‘tendynges as it were to some mutynie’.145 The same year, a rare complaint from Lancashire arose when there was (in the earl of Derby’s words) a generall greeffe & mislyke conceaved (and not without good cause if thinformacion be trewe) that notwithstandinge twoe severall assessmentes haue bene made and collected throwghout the Shire, for the furnishinge of twoe hundred sowldiers for Irishe service, & noe imploiment made at all of them, yet her Majestie nowe requiringe but the furnishinge of 138 souldiers; a newe taxacion is made & demaunded.146

Again, there were loud and widespread complaints, and there may have been difficulty achieving compliance, but they were not expressions of general discontent or opposition: they were related specifically to the anomalous circumstances of the levy in question. If, then, the vehicle for the complaint was that this was a waste, this in fact implies a concern for the utility and effectiveness of military policy overall – that people were aware of what the money was being spent on and thought the outcome (in some measure at least) worth paying for, except that in this case that had broken down. As in the Suffolk case, the fact that Kent and Lancashire went on paying military taxation regularly for the next ten years suggests that the discontent was far from crippling. Again, this may be partly a manifestation of underlying grievances which could be vented because there was a legitimate cause to do so, but the fact remains that there was clearly no general breakdown here. The question remains of how far these early expressions of concern about the prerogative represent precursors of the ‘constitutional’ debates of the early Stuart period, and clearly in some ways they do: the central issue of how far the prerogative should be used as an instrument of government was unavoidable and is evident in several of the examples examined above. Debates such as this remained relatively rare, and did not in any sense dominate Parliament, yet certain battle lines were, perhaps, being drawn. Shortly after the end of the war, on the other side of the debate, the earl of Hertford, veteran of the Wiltshire muster-master controversy, wrote a fascinating commentary on the powers of the crown in wartime: All regall prerogative and absolute preheminance and jurisdiccion (and most especially in martiall designes) is inseparably annexed to the imperiall garland, as the chiefe flower thereof, neyther bounded within the lists of usage or custome, nor limitted within the rules and growndes of the common lawes of this realme, soe longe as the same is extended to the preservacion of the publique state and

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars weale universall. … By this prerogative royall onely, without healpe or assistance eyther of the common lawe or any statute or custome, … Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1586 first erected the trayned bands of horse and foote within this kingdome, appoyntinge under the great seale her lieutennants in every county for theyr traninge, musteringe, and well orderinge.147

This sort of high prerogative view of the powers by which royal officials were acting in the localities anticipated the sort of assertions of royal authority which inflamed political opposition over the forced loan and ship money in the 1620s and 1630s. The speed with which aspects of the wartime regime were challenged after 1603, with the abolition of the 1558 act and the 1606 controversy over muster-masters, is also highly suggestive, suggesting that it was only the state of war which restrained more general complaint. This would not, of course, be surprising; legalistic societies are typically prepared to tolerate temporary expansions of government powers in wartime. There can be no doubt that the Elizabethan wars stirred up serious concerns about the proper use of royal power, but, as John Guy argues, it would be nonsensical to see a high road to Civil War beginning in the 1590s.148 It also makes sense, in tracing the continuities between the 1590s and the early seventeenth century, to distinguish between fiscal-military issues (whose importance obviously dropped off after 1603) and wider issues about political and especially religious culture, which did not. The recent historiographical interest in the increasingly ‘authoritarian’ tone of the 1590s may be relevant to issues of religion, but it does not necessarily follow that this should be conflated with political and military issues. Taking the period as a whole, then, there can be no doubt that there was a degree of war-weariness, but this must be qualified in several ways. Firstly, considering the length of the war and the number of counties and individuals involved, the complaints in no way seem overwhelming, even during the most intense period of burdens; indeed in many ways it seems amazing that there were not more complaints. Put simply, the wheels of the war effort continued to turn. There was no occasion on which there was widespread withholding of cooperation from the country, which would surely have been the key test of a genuine crisis. Nor did arguments against the legality of the lieutenancy seriously disrupt its work, although, had its legal status been better founded, it may have resulted in better outcomes. Had the difficulty ever have become genuinely widespread, more positive steps such as new statutes may have been needed. Furthermore, war-weariness or ambivalence towards government policy need not be caricatured as an oppositional position. Resentment at paying taxes has never been uncommon, but the normal outcome of this is not noncooperation: it is somewhat reluctant acquiescence. That people were weary of the war, wished it would end or was not happening, does not necessarily mean that they would not contribute towards the war when patriotism, religion or

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties the rhetoric of obedience to properly constituted authority was invoked, as we shall see. It is argued, then, that the keynote of the period was, broadly speaking, cooperation THE INTERNAL ORGANISATION OF THE LIEUTENANCIES Winning the battle of ideas was of course only part of the work of the war effort; it was equally necessary to ensure policy was implemented effectively, and the way in which business was conducted within the county community often affected the extent and nature of resistance or discontent with policy. For this reason, and to provide background for more detailed analysis of their work in the following chapters, a brief look at the practical operation of lieutenancy machineries is useful. It is a commonplace of early modern English historiography that the political worlds of counties varied widely, and the same is true of the lieutenancies. This variation is apparent on the level of the lord lieutenants themselves. The lieutenancies in the North and Wales worked rather poorly, both because of inherent difficulties of communication and governance there and because the two lord presidents were hopelessly overburdened: the earl of Pembroke had eighteen lieutenancies to supervise (sixteen as lord president, plus his home counties of Somerset and Wiltshire), and the earl of Huntingdon seven (five in the North and his home counties of Leicestershire and Rutland). In both, the lieutenants provided some coordination and avoided conflicts of authority, but their ability to direct events was ultimately limited.149 Pembroke, in particular, often resorted to bluster and threats, and his effectiveness was doubted both in the counties and the centre.150 Huntingdon, meanwhile, was hampered by the absence of deputies in the North, using the resident peerage instead, obviously a concession to political reality.151 At the other extreme, the lieutenancies of Lord Cobham in Kent and Lord North in Cambridgeshire were highly effective.152 Both lieutenants were natives of their counties but had close links to the court (both ended up as councillors and major office-holders); both had only one county to supervise; both chose good subordinates but also kept a close eye on events. The result was perhaps the lieutenancy at its best. Neither county was entirely trouble-free, but the overall result was impressive; Cambridgeshire, in particular, was remarkably responsive to government demands, sometimes, as we will see, even going further than the council demanded. Lieutenants who were less close to the regime, country peers such as the earl of Kent and Lord Chandos, were often more concerned with defending local interests than implementing the orders of the centre, becoming advocates of the localities rather than enforcers of the centre’s wishes. Kent, for example regularly reported Bedfordshire’s complaints to the council, asking for exemp-

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars tions; in 1591, he told the council that recent levies had been ‘verie chardgeable to this poore countrie, therfore my humble suite is that it maye please you hereafter to have such favorable consideracion therof’.153 Lord Chandos was also prone to this tendency: in 1591, when the council harshly reproved him for failing to provide enough money for coats for levied troops, rather than support the council’s case to the county, Chandos merely forwarded their letter, telling the county that ‘it shall sufficiently appeere unto you … how strangely & hardly the lords doe conceave of me for dealinge so sparingly in settinge forth of these late souldiers’. He thus aligned himself with the county, in the position of those chastised (however unfairly), rather than as an advocate for the central government’s policies, in effect abdicating his duty.154 On the other hand, some country peers were very diligent – the earl of Bath in Devon, and the earl of Sussex in Hampshire, for example. Those oldfashioned great nobles, the earls of Derby and Shrewsbury, also acquitted themselves well, ever conscious, perhaps, of the need to demonstrate absolute loyalty to the crown. The depth of their authority as fathers of their counties, the loyalty to their families and their extensive clientage networks adapted well to the new demands of the lieutenancy, particularly as the earls themselves took close personal interests in their lieutenancies and spent a great deal of time there.155 All of this underlines how far personalities determined effectiveness in the system adopted by the Elizabethan regime. This was a limitation of a regime in which officers were appointed only partly on merit; the Elizabethan regime worked with the tools at its disposal. The lieutenancies were not well-regulated or uniform. In this sense the system was far from conventional concepts of modernity. Each lieutenancy operated in its own way, with varying approaches to doing business, traditions and norms, forming a local administrative culture which often impacted on its effectiveness. In Devon, for example, each deputy lieutenant was customarily a colonel in the militia, and the size of his regiment became a point of honour of consuming importance; a similar situation obtained in Norfolk.156 None of this operated in Northamptonshire, where the deputy lieutenants never commanded the militia, and indeed displayed virtually no interest in it.157 This could affect how well individuals did their jobs: those Devon deputy lieutenants had their honour and credit tied up with their militia bands, and were thus more inclined to devote time and money to it.158 The style of conducting business varied widely. Depending on the county and the individual lieutenant, orders received from the council were delegated in various ways: to deputy lieutenants, if any were appointed in the county, or to JPs and so on. In many counties, the lieutenant merely despatched copies of orders to his deputies, with a brief covering note, perhaps suggesting an outline division of responsibility, leaving the deputies on the spot to execute

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties the orders.159 On the other hand, some lieutenants chose to direct matters personally.160 Again, at the county level, decisions could be made in a variety of ways. They might simply be decided upon by deputy lieutenants, with orders passed down through the various strata of officials; the institution was, after all, fundamentally a hierarchical one. This tended to be more common in smaller counties; Huntingdonshire, for example, had a largely absent lieutenant in Lord St John, with a highly active de facto deputy, Sir Henry Cromwell, dominating the county.161 Other counties were much more consensual, with business being agreed at meetings of JPs on a county-wide or a more local level, or even sometimes at meetings in London.162 Devon was one such, since when the earl of Bath was appointed lieutenant in 1586, he was ordered that since ‘by reason of his young years he is not able to exercise and sufficiently discharge his place’, he was to take counsel of his deputies, orders which he followed conscientiously, issuing orders jointly with his deputies, which many lieutenants might well have thought beneath their dignity.163 Norfolk seems to have been unusual in involving many JPs in discussion of military matters at sessions rather than being simply imposed by the lord lieutenant and deputy lieutenants, though this was partly because disputes within the county elite made administration more controversial. Somerset, likewise, involved many of the senior JPs.164 In Suffolk, by contrast, JPs were not generally involved in decision-making, because the deputies tended to work more harmoniously.165 In large counties, it was clearly more effective to have the senior gentry ‘on-side’, if they were to be required to carry out the orders. This naturally became more pronounced when lieutenancies were superseded by muster commissions with less natural authority than noble lord lieutenants. This said, military administration seems generally to have been worked out at a very senior level, in comparison to local purveyance policy, for example, which routinely involved consultation with ‘gentlemen being no justices of the peace, … chief constables, and … some yeomen also of the better sort’.166 However matters were arranged, military administration developed a momentum of its own. Local precedents developed: on one occasion in 1595, a demand for a levy of light horse threw Kent officials into a flurry of uncertainty, with one JP, Thomas Fludd, reporting that he spent two hours among his papers, searching for precedent, but found none. Appropriate expertise was then mobilised: the deputy lieutenants summoned the captains of the light horse bands and JPs who had taken part in collecting the last subsidy, with their muster and subsidy rolls, in order to establish a new procedure.167 Perhaps surprisingly, the lieutenancies seem to have found little difficulty with existing precedents (or in some cases the lack of them) for many of their activities and seem to have been able to exercise a free hand in how they chose to conduct business. Although appeals to older precedent were made against

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars lieutenancy decisions, they seldom seem to have reversed decisions.168 Once decisions had been made, orders were delegated further, so the work could be carried out by subordinates including militia captains, JPs and high and petty constables, all of whom were coopted by the lieutenancies to create local pyramids of officials. In larger counties such as Kent, sub-divisions of the county had unofficial ad hoc committees of the JPs resident in that division, who worked together on government business.169 These structures show considerable sophistication in administrative procedure, as well as a concern to associate local officials with policy making. The case has been made that lieutenancies were developing from temporary expedients into permanent institutions with considerable numbers of people working for them, and there is something in this, but this was no conventional modernisation.170 In many ways the lieutenancy remained highly ad hoc; its officials (such as muster-masters and provost marshals) were very often temporary and transitory and its assistants (such as JPs or constables) were coopted from other spheres of government or, often, from the personal servants of lieutenants or deputies. The lieutenancies existed in what they did, not what they were – but this had a significance of its own, since by the very act of accustoming these officials to work together on a regular basis – deputies receiving orders from lieutenants and passing them on to JPs, then in turn to high and petty constables – habits of authority were formed and reinforced, and chains of command were forged. As Hindle and others have noted, Elizabethan local society increasingly became accustomed to receiving regular and burdensome orders from above and putting them into practice on the ground.171 The lieutenancies, by the sheer frequency of the demands they imposed on local officials and local people, contributed significantly to this process. The response to government efforts at persuasion (as well, of course, as other currents of thinking) can be seen to have been reflected in the rhetoric used by local governors themselves, contributing to a distinct ethos of service in the Elizabethan localities. The rhetoric of obedience, duty and care is stressed in a letter of Francis Hastings’s: what I can possiblie doe for the furtherance of the services … I wilbe most readye to perfourme yt … for as my Care hath ever beene to perfourme all obedience to her Majesties commaunds and to doe every thing in such sort as might stand with yor honor and the credite of my selfe serving under you. … I will never be found to alter from that care which in dutye I owe to all services concerning her Majestie, and therefore (whilest I contynue to serve) yor lordship shall fynde me most readie to perfourme that becemeth me according to my poore strength and abilitie’.172

This culture of service to the state meant that any gentleman was assumed to be an official or governor, and could be coopted into administrative, supervisory or auditing roles.173 There was also a perceptible feeling that it was local

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties JPs who were the experts on the ground, distinct both from higher authorities and lower: in Lambarde’s words, ‘there ys nothing more hardly digested by the comon man then commandments proceeding from absolute authorytye. This we know to well that serve in the contry, and by servis do fynd some the mynds of oure neyghbors’.174 Yet the amateur and part-time nature of local government service was also accepted and manifested (for example) in the acceptance that business often had to be postponed to allow officials to attend to their own affairs (often lawsuits); in the integration of patronage into government structures; probably also that in certain circumstances, low-level corruption was acceptable. A final issue raised by this discussion is what might be called the tenor of local administration: was it a matter of conflict amongst the gentry, or broadly consensual? There can be no doubt that, on a personal level, officials were frequently at odds with each other; as Richard Cust has written, the gentry operated within a ‘highly competitive environment’, and some degree of conflict exists in any group of individuals. One notoriously rancorous situation arose in Hampshire, where the marquess of Winchester and the earl of Sussex were forced to share the lieutenancy. Both were difficult characters (as were the bishop and the governor of the Isle of Wight, Sir George Carey), and the inconvenience caused by their conflict was such that Walsingham and the council had to intervene to make peace.175 Historians such as Smith on Norfolk, Wall on Wiltshire and Clark on Kent, have taken this further, by positing not only county communities characterised by constant conflict, but by conflict between organised factions.176 These efforts are not always wholly convincing, but the more important point here is that conflict within local society did not have to lead to administrative paralysis. Those bitter enemies Nathaniel Bacon and Sir Arthur Heveningham regularly transacted business together as fellow Norfolk muster commissioners; so did Bassingbourne Gawdy and Thomas Lovell.177 The Hertfordshire deputy lieutenants worked well together in spite of their division over an acrimonious parliamentary election in 1584.178 The same may be said of feuds in other counties, such as that described by Peter Clark between John Leveson and Lord Buckhurst: their conflict may have been vicious, but the two men still cooperated in government business.179 It was possible for local governors to disagree on policy, and yet remain amicable, and for them to dislike each other heartily and still work together. This is not necessarily to deny the existence of gentry factions in the counties, but to say that they seldom disrupted the lieutenancy: as John Manners, a deputy in Derbyshire, wrote to Sir Thomas Cockayne, then sheriff, ‘although ther be matters in variens betwixt us yet I trust those will be no hinderans to your good devocion to further Her Majesty’s service’.180 The particular legal and political circumstances of the way in which the Elizabethan regime chose, or was forced, to run the war, therefore, meant that

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars their efforts to encourage cooperation from the counties were of great importance. It is impossible to measure their effectiveness precisely, but, as has been argued here, it must surely have contributed towards the ability of the regime to pursue a war for eighteen years without significant loss of cooperation from the country at large. The instances of non-cooperation noted here must be placed in a context of dozens of counties, hundreds of towns, thousands of parishes and millions of individuals all being asked to contribute to the war in many different ways, several times a year, over a period of almost twenty years. It is hardly surprising to find a few dozen expressions of disgruntlement, but overwhelmingly, the nation cooperated with the regime. If popular attitudes to the war and the effectiveness of propaganda are impossible to measure precisely, the efforts of the counties in particular spheres of government may be more quantifiable. The true test of the regime’s efforts is the effectiveness of the machinery in practice, and in the remaining chapters, this assessment will be made in various ways. NOTES 1 Anthony Martin, An Exhortation to … her Majesties Faithfull Subjects (1588), STC 17489, sig. C3. 2 Alexandra Gajda, ‘Debating war and peace in late Elizabethan England’, Historical Journal 52 (2009), 851–78, 858. 3 HMC Foljambe, 44; SP 12/205/59 (the earl of Sussex to Burghley, 30 November 1587); BL Add. 34394, fol. 25r.–v. (the Queen to Lord St John, 18 June 1588). 4 Gajda, ‘Debating war and peace’, 859; Julian Lock, ‘“How many tercios has the Pope?” The Spanish war and the sublimation of Elizabethan anti-popery’, History 81 (1996), 197–214. 5 See chapters 3 and 5. 6 A Declaration of the Causes Moving the Queenes Maiestie of England, to Prepare and Send a Navy to the Seas, for the Defence of her Realmes Against the King of Spaines Forces (1596), STC 9203. 7 G. B. Harrison and R. A. Jones (eds), De Maisse: A Journal of All that was Accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse … 1597 (1931), 110. 8 Above, 33; Norfolk RO, KNY 686 (Henry Knyvett to Thomas Knyvett, 19 May 1585); on Parliament, see below, 80. 9 Wernham, Return, 239; Gajda, ‘Debating war and peace’, esp. 864, 871. 10 See for example Burghley’s comments regarding Henry’s distraction by ‘l’amour d’une putaine’, Gabrielle d’Estrées, in 1597: Wernham, Return, 152, also 464. 11 SP 12/226/41 (Buckhurst to Burghley, 18 September 1589); see also 12/226/62 (Buckhurst to Burghley, 22 September 1589). For similar sentiments in the counties, see BL Add. 40629, fol. 53r. (Henry Cocke to ?Henry Capel, 18 November 1587); SP 12/240/53 (Thomas Phelippes to Thomas Barnes, 31 October 1591); I. H. Jeayes (ed.), Letters of Philip Gawdy … to Various Members of his Family 1579–1616 (Roxburghe Club, 1906), 38–9, 75,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 123; FSL L.a.261 (Richard Broughton to Richard Bagot, 2 July 1591); Norfolk RO, KNY 695, 702–4 (Henry Knyvett to Thomas Knyvett, 27 December 1588, 15, 28 and n.d. April 1592). 12 SP 15/32/7 (notes by Thomas Phelippes, 12 March 1591); cf. Gawdy Letters, 63. 13 Paul Voss, ‘Print culture, ephemera, and the Elizabethan news pamphlet’, Literature Compass 3 (2006), 1055–6; Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, Good Newes From Fraunce. French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England (Rochester NY, 1996), 29–34; Gajda, ‘Debating war and peace’, 870. Cf. G. B. Harrison, An Elizabethan Journal (1928), 394–5. 14 Volunteers: see Wernham, After, 75 (Portugal); Thomas Birch (ed.), Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1754), I, 481; II, 15 (Cadiz); FSL Bagot Calendar, nos 872–3 (Edward Lord Stafford to Richard Bagot, 12 August and n.d. 1596). 15 Norfolk RO, KNY 693 (Henry Knyvett to Thomas Knyvett, 31 May 1587); also 695 (same to same, 27 December 1588). On support for Essex’s Cadiz voyage from the London merchant community, see Birch, Memoirs, I, 472. 16 Chamberlain Letters, passim, esp. 17, 21, 23, 51, 119, 127 etc.; Gawdy Letters, 108, 113, 115; BL Stowe 150, fol. 112 (Thomas Ferrers to Sir Henry Ferrers, 31 March 1598). Thomas Digges, Humble Motives for Association to Maintaine Religion Established Published as an Antidote against the Pestilent Treatises of Secular Priests (1601), STC (2nd. edn) 3518.3, 29; Thomas Churchyard, The Fortunate Farewell to the Most Forward and Noble Earle of Essex (1599), STC 5234; FSL V.b.214 (a commonplace book containing over 100 folios of material relating to Essex, Ireland and Cadiz). 17 See Conyers Read, ‘William Cecil and Elizabethan public relations’ in S. T. Bindoff et al. (eds), Elizabethan Government and Society (1961), 21–55, at 28–9; Andrew Clark (ed.), The Shirburn Ballads, 1585–1616 (Oxford, 1907), nos xxxi, lxxviii; William Chappell, The Roxburghe Ballads (1869) IV, 8–11; Thomas Deloney, A Ioyful Nevv Ballad, Declaring the Happie Obtaining of the Great Galleazzo (1588), STC (2nd edn) 6557. 18 For some similar points made about early Tudor responses to war, see Steven Gunn, ‘War, dynasty and public opinion in early Tudor England’, in G. W. Bernard and Gunn (eds), Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays Presented to C. S. L. Davies (2002), 136, 137, 141. 19 BL Add. 34395, fol. 16v. (a speech of Sir Henry Cromwell’s: see below, 72); J. E. Neale, Elizabeth I and her Parliaments 1584–1601 (1957), 373. 20 On the military culture of the nobility in general, see Roger B. Manning, Swordsmen: The Martial Ethos in the Three Kingdoms (Oxford, 2003). On personal participation, see for example Simon Adams, Leicester and the Court: Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester, 2002), chapters 9, 12, 16. Deaths in action: Paul E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), 105; ODNB, s.v. Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst; Hasler, Commons, II, 83. 21 See, for example, HMC Salisbury X, 48–9; BL Add. 48591, fol. 126v. (the council to Norfolk muster commissioners, 20 June 1602); Smith, County and Court, 285–6; also John Leveson pleading not to be displaced from commanding his Kent militiamen in active service in France, a move which he described (amongst other things) as ‘this countermaunde of my hope, this overthwart of my joie, and this disgrace of my poore countenaunce’: Staffordshire RO, D868/1/29 (Leveson to Cobham, 13 September 1589). 22 [Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society], Norfolk Archaeology I (1847), 6–7, 15.

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars 23 For a general treatment of this topic see Read, ‘Public relations’. 24 On the ‘public sphere’ in other contexts, see Peter Lake and Michael Questier, ‘Puritans, papists and the “public sphere” in early modern England: the Edmund Campion affair in context’, Journal of Modern History 72 (2000), 587–627, esp. 590–1; Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge, 2005). 25 Read, ‘Public relations’, 27; HMC Salisbury IX, 126–7. 26 A Declaration of the Causes Moouing the Queene of England to give Aide to the Defence of the People Afflicted and Oppressed in the Lowe Countries (1585), STC 9189; Tudor Royal Proclamations III, 77–8; also the 1596 Declaration (see above). 27 See esp. Read, ‘Public relations’, 45–9. 28 Read, ‘Public Relations’, 42, 48, 50–1; Gustav Ungerer, ‘Lost government publications in Spanish and other languages, 1597–1601’, The Library series 5, 29 (1974), 323–9. 29 T. E. Hartley, Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I (Leicester, 1995), II, 411–13. 30 Ibid., 423–4. 31 Statutes of the Realm IV pt 2, 744, 818–19, 867, 937–8, 991–2. 32 See transcripts of two speeches from the 1590s in BL Harleian 6846, fols 224–7; a Star Chamber speech had been used to explain the intervention in Scotland in 1559–60: see FSL V.a.143, pp. 40–45. 33 BL Harleian 6846, fol. 224r. 34 See for example: SP 12/140/32 (Leicestershire muster commissioners to the council, 27 July 1580), 12/205/59 (the earl of Sussex to Burghley, 30 November 1587), 12/208/86 (Sir Edward Stanley to the council, last of February 1588), 12/211/44 (Carmarthenshire deputies to the council, 22 June 1588), 12/211/57 (Lord North to Walsingham, 24 June 1588), 12/212/14 (Essex deputies to Leicester, 5 July 1588) and 47 (the earl of Shrewsbury to the council, 15 July 1588), 12/214/31 (Dorset deputies to the council, 5 August 1588); BL Stowe 150, fol. 9 (Warwickshire muster commissioners to the council, 24 August 1573). 35 For an excellent treatment of this topic in general, see M. J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), 68–85, esp. 68–9. 36 See Penry Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), 351–9. 37 Williams, Tudor Regime, 408; Penry Williams, The Later Tudors (Oxford, 1995), 226. 38 HMC Foljambe, 44–5; BL Add. 34394, fol. 32v. (speech delivered to the gentry by Sir Henry Cromwell, July 1588); SP 12/212/14 (Essex deputies to Leicester, 5 July 1588). On troop levies, see chapter 4. 39 BL Harleian 703, fol. 111v. (Buckhurst to his Sussex deputies, 23 December 1598); Loseley, 6729/4/72 (Howard to his Surrey deputies, 17 July 1594); Leveson Papers 11/1/14 (Cobham to Leveson, 21 October 1589). 40 ‘Derbyshire musters’, 43. 41 Thanks: APC XVIII, 124; XXIX, 398–9; Herts. Musters, 40; Leveson Papers, 66/5/9 (Cobham to Leveson, 13 January 1599), 69/1/7 (the council to Cobham, 21 August 1600); FSL L.b.97 (Leicester to Lord Howard, 24 August 1588). A. Johnson, The History of the Worshipful Company of Drapers (Oxford, 1914–22), II, 148–50. 42 BL Harleian 309, fol. 183 (Suffolk muster commissioners to ?, c. 1574/5). 43 SP 12/179/49 (‘Orders to be observed by the Lords Lieutenants’, July 1585 and reissued

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties at later dates). For lieutenants doing so, see BL Add. 34176, fol. 3r. (Cobham to Roger Twysden, 27 July 1585) and Northamptonshire LP, 10; SP 12/186/70 (Essex deputies to the council, 19 February 1586) and 77 (the earl of Rutland to the council, 23 February 1586); a meeting of Lancashire JPs convened by the earl of Derby in August 1585 ‘for the furtherance of her Majesty’s service of especial importance’ may well have been for the same purpose: BL Harleian 1926, fol. 62r. (Derby to Richard Brereton, 6 August 1585). Cf. F. A. Youngs, jr., The Proclamations of the Tudor Queens (Cambridge, 1976), 270, n. 8. 44 FSL, L.a.812 (the earl of Shrewsbury to Richard Bagot, 7 May 1589); for other examples of his emphasis on royal authority see other letters from Shrewsbury to his Staffordshire deputies: L.a.784 (including five references to the Queen within a short letter), 791–2, 796, 800, 807–8 etc.; BL Harleian 4271, fol. 3v. (the earl of Pembroke to ?his Herefordshire deputies, 2 September 1598). 45 The only surviving example of this letter (which presumably went to every relevant county) is FSL, L.a.714. 46 For deputations of lieutenancy, see for example BL Harleian 703, fol. 33r., Northamptonshire LP, 15–16. 47 E.g. Leveson Papers 36/8/8 (17 January 1595). 48 See Braddick, State Formation, 77. 49 Rhys Jones, ‘Practising state consolidation in early modern England and Wales’, Political Geography 23 (2004), 612. 50 See above, 22. 51 FSL, L.a.785, 786, 807, 817–18 (Shrewsbury to his Staffordshire subordinates, 1585–9); also BL Add. 11050, fol. 56r. (the earl of Pembroke to his Herefordshire deputies, 21 February 1596). 52 LPL 3204, fol. 215r. (Richard Bagot to the earl of Shrewsbury, 18 March 1590). 53 For some comments on this, see also Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 435. 54 SP 15/29/24, ‘such things as are to be done’ for the army sent to the Netherlands in 1585, including ‘What suggestion shalbe expressed in the lettre touching the cause of the levy’. 55 Tudor Royal Proclamations III, 200–2. 56 Unlike privy council letters, few of the Queen’s (signet) letters are in print, and the texts quoted here are mostly taken from local lieutenancy collections, both manuscript and published. These letters were presumably usually written by ministers: see HMC Foljambe, 43, 45; SP 12/245/26 (draft signet letter corrected by Burghley, May 1593), 12/260/8 (draft signet letter by Burghley, 11 September 1596). 57 Surrey LB, fol. 41v. (Lord Howard to his Surrey deputies, 26 December 1588, quote); BL Add. 48591, fol. 20r. (the Queen to Norfolk muster commissioners, 4 August 1599, second quote); APC XVIII, 414; HMC Salisbury VII, 179; Cambridgeshire LL, 229–30; also noted by a lord lieutenant: BL Harleian 703, fol. 74r. (Buckhurst to his Sussex deputies, 7 March 1594). 58 Gloucester LB, fol. 70v.–71r. (the Queen to Chandos, lord lieutenant of Gloucestershire, 18 January 1593); Somerset LB, fol. 13r. (the Queen to Pembroke, lord lieutenant of Somerset, 18 February 1591); SP 12/260/8 (draft signet letter by Burghley, 11 September 1596); Surrey LB, fol. 31r.–v. (the Queen to Howard, lord lieutenant of Surrey, 16 July 1594).

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars 59 Gloucester LB, fol. 56r.–v. (the Queen to Chandos, 22 June 1591). 60 Surrey LB, fol. 73r.–v. (the Queen to Nottingham, lord lieutenant of Surrey, 20 July 1601); Cambridgeshire LL, 228–9. 61 Cheshire LB, fol. 44r. (the Queen to Cheshire muster commissioners, 14 June 1598); Surrey LB, fol. 70r. (the Queen to Nottingham, lord lieutenant of Surrey, 28 April 1601). 62 BL Harleian 703, fol. 117r. (the Queen to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 25 June 1600); APC XXX, 28. 63 SP 12/245/26 (draft signet letter corrected by Burghley, May 1593); APC XXIX, 573–4; Cambridgeshire LL, 208; Surrey LB, fol. 76r. (the Queen to Nottingham, lord lieutenant of Surrey, 6 October 1601); BL Add. 48591, fol. 130v.–131r. (the Queen to Norfolk muster commissioners, 28 July 1602). 64 This was repeatedly used between June 1600 and July 1602: APC XXX, 434–5, BL Harleian 703, fol. 117r. (the Queen to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 25 June 1600); Somerset LB, fol. 81v.–82r. (the Queen to Pembroke, lord lieutenant of Somerset, 5 December 1600); HMC Somerset, 52; Cambridgeshire LL, 243. 65 BL Harleian 703, fols 75v., 116r. (the Queen to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 16 July 1594 and 12 January 1600); Northamptonshire RO, FH5, unfol. (the Queen to Northamptonshire muster commissioners, 29 November 1598); Gloucester LB, fol. 59v. (Chandos to his Gloucestershire deputies, 24 July 1591): ‘These are therfore to instruct and require you ernestly as you tender the honour of her Majesty and her realme …’ 66 SP 12/93/18, fol. 93v. (orders for musters, 1573). 67 APC XXVIII, 303. 68 [William Cecil, Lord Burghley], The Copie of a Letter sent out of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza (1588), STC (2nd edn) 15413, 24–5, 29–31. 69 BL Add. 40629, fol. 51r. (Henry Cocke to ?Henry Capel, 13 August 1587). 70 Cambridgeshire LL, 51–2, 229–30; Surrey LB, fol. 41v. (Howard to his Surrey deputies, 26 December 1588), 51r. (the Queen to Howard, 20 March 1589), 70r. (same to same, 28 April 1601); Northamptonshire RO, FH5, unfol. (the Queen to Northamptonshire muster commissioners, 29 November 1598); APC XXIX, 388–9, 573–4; BL Harleian 703, fol. 116r., 117r. (the Queen to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 12 January and 25 June 1600); Somerset LB, fol. 81v.–82r. (the Queen to Pembroke, lord lieutenant of Somerset, 5 December 1600). 71 Herts. Musters, 5. 72 Loseley, 6729/10/64, 6729/10/110 (the council to Howard, lord lieutenant of Surrey, 8 June 1587 and 7 January 1602); Cambridgeshire LL, 221, 230. BL Add. 40629, fol. 50r.–v. (Leicester to his Hertfordshire deputies, 8 June 1587). 73 FSL, L.a.714 (the council to Staffordshire JPs, 15 July 1585). 74 Leveson Papers 11/9/20 (Thomas Scott to Leveson, 30 October 1593). 75 Somerset LB, fol. 81v. (the Queen to Pembroke, lord lieutenant of Somerset, 5 December 1600). 76 Gloucester LB, fol. 54v. 77 Northamptonshire LP, 95. LPL 3204, fol. 123r.–v. (John Harpur to the earl of Shrewsbury, 4 February 1588, that he had observed trained band preparations in Nottinghamshire,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties and advises Shrewsbury to be as ready in his own lieutenancies). ‘Derbyshire musters’, 30–1. 78 Northamptonshire LP, 48, 55; Loseley, 6729/9/64 (Lord Howard to his Surrey deputies, 23 October 1595). See also Leveson Papers 36/8/1 (Lord Cobham to his Kent deputies, 26 May 1594). 79 Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 443; ‘Derbyshire musters’, 42–5; also the earl of Bath, lieutenant of Devon: HMC Somerset, 55. 80 BL Harleian 703, fol. 111v. (Buckhurst to his Sussex deputies, 23 December 1598). 81 BL Add. 23006, fol. 14r. (Norfolk deputies to JPs, 23 January 1591); see also BL Add. 48591, 48r.–v. (Norfolk muster commissioners to Bassingbourne Gawdy, 18 September 1590). 82 Surrey LB, fol. 64r.–v. (the Queen to Nottingham, lord lieutenant of Surrey, 9 January 1600); BL Harleian 703, fol. 116r. (the Queen to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 12 January 1600). 83 Leveson Papers 22, fol. 29r. (Cobham to Leveson, 2 March 1592). 84 T. J. Pierce (ed.), Clennenau Letters and Papers in the Brogyntyn Collection (National Library of Wales Journal Supplement, series 4, pt 1, 1947), 8. 85 Cambridgeshire LL, 166–8; ‘Derbyshire musters’, 34–5. See also this first threat passed onto to a prospective contributor in Norfolk by the muster commissioners: Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 108–9. 86 SP 12/275/11, fol. 15v. (draft signet letter, 20 June 1600); APC XXX, 434–5. Cf. APC XXX, 28. 87 BL Harleian 703, fol. 55r. (the council to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 13 February 1589); a similar threat was made in 1596: APC XXV, 272, 277. In 1586, the council threatened that any JP refusing to provide a petronel (a mounted pistolier) would be removed: Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 447. It should be said that there is no evidence that these threats were ever acted upon, or even that the council would ever realistically have time to do so. 88 SP 12/230/74 (Cobham to Walsingham, 16 February 1590). 89 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County 1500–1600 (Oxford, 1986), 277–8; Smith, County and Court, 258, 280–1. 90 Leveson Papers 36/3/2 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 17 July 1594). For this unhappiness, see below, 83–4. 91 Cambridgeshire LL, 219–20; they did so in Norfolk: BL Add. 48591, fol. 110v. (Norfolk muster commissioners to the council, 16 January 1602); see also ‘Derbyshire musters’, 43. 92 BL Add. 34394, fols 32v.–33r.; see also HMC Foljambe, 44. 93 BL Add. 34395, fols 16v.–17r. (18 February 1589). For a similar use of ‘good & plausible speches’ to trained bandsmen, see BL Add. 40629, fol. 53r. (Henry Cocke to ?Henry Capel, 18 November 1587). 94 HMC Salisbury XI, 442–3. 95 Somerset LB, fol. 44r. (Sir Francis Hastings to the earl of Pembroke, 27 October 1597); BL Lansdowne 81, fol. 152 (Henry Cocke to Burghley, July 1596).

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars 96 Leveson Papers 66/3a (4 Kent JPs to Leveson, 2 September 1598). 97 Younger, ‘Lambarde’, esp. 71–2. 98 Somerset LB, fols 25v.–26v. (Somerset deputies to Pembroke, 16 July 1591). 99 BL Add. 40629, fol. 57; Somerset LB, fols 22r.–23v. (Sir Francis Hastings to Sir George Sydenham, 12 June 1591). See also SP 12/254/63 (John Brocket to Burghley, 10 November 1595). 100 LPL 3204, fol. 212r. (Richard Bagot to the earl of Shrewsbury, 7 March 1590). 101 Leveson Papers 13/2 (Lord Cobham to the hundred of Shamele, 20 July 1586, that anyone refusing to pay for armour appear before him at Cobham Hall). 102 APC XVI, 218; XXXII, 34; Leveson Papers 12/1 (instructions for defence, July 1585), 38/12 (Cobham to Leveson, 22 August 1595). 103 Leveson Papers 6/21 (petition to Cobham from Richard Glover of Cranbrook to be released from prison for refusal to pay local taxes, 1593). 104 See below, 217. 105 Virtually every survey of the period deals with these issues, and provide a number of examples of problems; all of them, along with others, have been examined here. For under-evidenced assertions about war-weariness etc., see for example Neale, Parliaments, 336. F. C. Dietz, English Public Finance 1558–1641 (1964), 67, 72–3, 78, and works cited in the introduction. 106 E.g. APC XXI, 201–2; XXII, 259–60; XXV, 191–2; XXVI, 76, 251; XXVIII, 115, 132, 176, 194–5; XXIX, 28–9, 502, 601–3, 640–1; XXX, 650–1, 788–9; XXXI, 419–20; XXXII, 33–4, 177–8, 343, 427; BL Harleian 703, fol. 113r. (the council to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 20 May 1599); HMC Salisbury IX, 14–15. There was an ongoing problem in Middlesex of landowners disclaiming liability for local rates on the grounds that they paid elsewhere: APC XX, 320–22; XXI, 319; XXII, 312–13; this problem is discussed more generally in Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’. 107 SP 12/167/49 (the earl of Rutland to the council, 28 January 1584), 12/254/16 (Essex deputies to the council, 9 October 1595); Loseley, 6729/3/15 (Sir William Howard to Sir William More, n.d.); LPL 3204, fol. 112r. (Staffordshire deputies to the earl of Shrewsbury, 12 January 1586); BL Add. 34395, fol. 25r.–v. (Lord St John to Sir Henry Cromwell, 20 September 1590); HMC Salisbury IX, 199, 209, 420; Cheshire LB, fol. 70r. (Cheshire muster commissioners to the council, 25 August 1599); FSL L.a.1040 (petition from Staffordshire to Shrewsbury for reduction of assessments, 25 January, 1589). 108 See below, 214–16. 109 BL Lansdowne 82, fol. 38 (the earl of Kent to Burghley, 28 September 1596); Lansdowne 57, fol. 115 (Francis Wyndham to Burghley, 5 September 1588). A. G. Petti (ed.) Roman Catholicism in Elizabethan and Jacobean Staffordshire: Documents from the Bagot Papers (Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 4th series, 9, 1979), 42. See also Somerset LB, fols 25v.–26v. (Somerset deputies to the earl of Pembroke, 16 July 1591); SP 12/211/44 (Carmarthenshire deputies to the council, 22 June 1588), 12/245/69 (Sir Thomas Fludd and William Sedley to Cobham, 3 August 1593); HMC Salisbury XI, 430; LPL 3204, fol. 198r. (Derbyshire JPs to Shrewsbury, 13 January 1590). 110 George Owen, The Description of Pembrokeshire, ed. Dillwyn Miles (Llandysul, Dyfed, 1994), 4–7. In fact a comparison of troop demands and subsidy payments suggests that Pembrokeshire was rather lightly charged.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 111 APC XXVIII, 223, 301–2. Mediation: APC XXIV, 208. 112 See above, 50, n.56. See for example W. J. Smith (ed.), Calendar of Salusbury Correspondence (Cardiff, 1954), 40. 113 Gloucester LB, fols 77v.–78r. Coventry: APC XXVIII, 178, 560–1; XXIX, 377; HMC Salisbury VIII, 483, 486; Boynton, Militia, 183. By 1602, the council was sufficiently concerned about chartered boroughs trying to evade burdens that it issued a general reproof, invoking the Queen’s displeasure. J. Wake (ed.), The Montagu Musters Book, 1602–1623 (Northamptonshire RS, 7, 1935), 215. 114 SP 12/230/26 (28 January 1590). It is unclear what lawyers these were, but lieutenancy commissions did not provide authority to levy men for service abroad; for this reason a specific signet letter from the Queen provided warrant for each troop levy. 115 M. C. Fissel, English Warfare, 1511–1642 (2001), 91–4; also C. G. Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army (Oxford, 1966), 10–13. Cf. similar doubts in HMC Salisbury XII, 37. 116 HMC Salisbury XII, 478–9; TNA C 231/1, 286. See also W. P. D. Murphy (ed.), The Earl of Hertford’s Lieutenancy Papers, 1603–12 (Wiltshire RS, 23, 1969), 11–12. 117 SP 12/118/77; note that this complaint was not voiced in wartime, however. See also SP 12/206/40 (Sir Walter Ralegh to the council, 21 December 1587, concerning a plan to hold large scale training sessions in the militia). 118 SP 12/112/15 (1577), quoted in Boynton, Militia, 94. 119 Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 81. 120 APC XXV, 36–7. 121 APC XV, 385. Smith, County and Court, 174–5, 242–3. Norfolk RO, KNY 694 (Henry Knyvett to Thomas Knyvett, 2 July 1588). BL Harleian 4712, fols 356–7 (Hunsdon to Knyvett, 28 June 1588). 122 Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 118–19; Smith, County and Court, 176, 264 and see below. On the intensely personal terms in which Hunsdon interpreted these challenges, see his letters to Knyvett and Wyndham: BL Harleian 4712, fols 356–7; NRO AYL 182 (Hunsdon to Wyndham, 25 October 1591). 123 BL Harleian 6846, fol. 227r. 124 Neale, Parliaments, 206–7, 302–12; Geoffrey Elton agrees that the Commons granted multiple subsidies ‘readily enough’: ‘Parliament’, in Christopher Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth (Basingstoke, 1984), 93. It should be noted that debates in Elizabethan Parliaments are relatively poorly documented by comparison with early Stuart Parliaments. 125 Neale, Parliaments, 207ff., 352ff., 376–93. 126 R. Lockyer, Tudor and Stuart Britain 1471–1714 (2nd edn, Harlow, 1965), 309. 127 Hartley, Proceedings, II, 303–10, 398; Neale, Parliaments, 234; see also a similar call in 1593: ibid., 300. 128 Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’, 100; Boynton, Militia, 209–10. 129 D. H. Willson (ed.), The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606–1607 (Minneapolis, 1931), 130, 154–6; on the conflict surrounding Hertford’s lieutenancy, Murphy, Hertford’s Lieutenancy Papers, and A. H. Smith’s review of the same in Archives, 9:44 (1970), 216–18; A. Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (New Haven and London, 1986), 314–15.

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars 130 Cf. Conrad Russell, ‘English Parliaments 1593–1606: one epoch or two?’ in D. M. Dean and N. L. Jones (eds), The Parliaments of Elizabethan England (Oxford, 1990), 196–7, 201–2. 131 HMC Somerset, 27; BL Add. 34564, fol. 7r.–v. (Ipswich to the council, 9 April 1596). 132 For the original orders, see APC XXV, 122–5. 133 No record survives of problems with the ships supplied by the Lincolnshire or Northumberland ports; Cornwall and Essex needed only very mild chiding to (apparently) contribute (APC XXV, 279–80, 292). The Cinque Ports also seem to have been relatively free of difficulty, although there are a few indications of trouble: APC XXV, 374; XXVII, 178–80. 134 See APC XXV-XXVI, passim. 135 CP 39/98 (HMC Salisbury VI, 137); APC XXVI, 265–6, 353–4, 527–8. 136 Hasler, Commons, III, 352. APC XXVIII, 66; also 400. 137 MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors, 274–82. 138 See the many petitions from Ipswich to the council in BL Add. 34564. 139 Neil Younger, ‘The practice and politics of troop-raising: Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex and the Elizabethan regime’, English Historical Review forthcoming 2012. 140 Penry Williams, ‘The crown and the counties’ in Haigh, Reign of Elizabeth, 130–1; John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), 391; Williams, Later Tudors, 382–3. 141 SP 12/263/123; HMC Salisbury IX, 31, 44. It should be admitted that were some ongoing problems with obtaining cooperation from Suffolk, however: APC XXIX, 275–6, 343, 394. 142 See Smith, County and Court, 229–76. 143 Norfolk RO, AYL 182 (Heveningham to Lord Hunsdon, 26 March 1592). 144 Smith, County and Court, 277–304. Indeed, Smith hints at precisely this dynamic: 283–4. At times the Wyndham-Bacon group does seem to have been more obstructive to war policies, for example bailing individuals jailed for refusal to provide armour for the militia, although this was in 1591, when the risk of invasion was low: Norfolk RO AYL 182 (Heveningham to Hunsdon, 15 February 1591). 145 Leveson Papers 11/9/14 (Robert Byng to Leveson, 7 August 1593), 11/9/13 (Thomas Willington to Leveson, 5 August 1593), 46/1 (four JPs to Leveson, 4 August 1593). For other reports of discontent, with which some JPs seem to have sympathised, see also Leveson Papers 11/9/15 (Robert Wiseman to Leveson, 8 August 1593) and 17 (Justinian Champneys to Leveson, 18 October 1593); Twysden LP, 93. 146 BL Harleian 1926, fol. 117 (the earl of Derby to Salford JPs, 14 June 1593). 147 Murphy, Hertford’s Lieutenancy Papers, 102. This appears to date from 1605. 148 Guy, Tudor England, 455–6. 149 On Pembroke’s coordination between counties and command of detail, see BL Add. 11050, fols 54r., 56r. 150 On Pembroke’s often entertaining invective, see BL Harleian 4271, fol. 3v.; also fols 6r., 33v., 41v.; Clenennau Letters, 4, 6; BL Add. 11050 fol. 56r. On lack of confidence, see Anglesey’s appeal directly to Lord Burghley for help against invasion and their referral to the earl of Derby, lieutenant of Cheshire and Lancashire. APC XX, 155–6, 164–5.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 151 HMC Foljambe, 11; Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 440. 152 For Cobham, see Leveson Papers and Twysden LP; for North, Cambridgeshire LL. 153 SP 12/200/4, at fol. 6r. N. Lutt (ed.), Bedfordshire Muster Rolls 1539–1831 (Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical RS 71, 1992), 45. 154 Gloucester LB, fol. 59v. 155 BL Harleian 1926; Lancashire Lieutenancy; HMC Talbot, 308; ‘Derbyshire musters’, passim. 156 See the dispute over Richard Champernown’s command in 1596 and after: HMC Somerset, 29–32, 39–42; Boynton, Militia, 179. 157 Northamptonshire LP and see chapter 3. 158 Compare the attitude of the fifth earl of Huntingdon to the Leicestershire trained bands in the 1620s and 1630s: Thomas Cogswell, Home Divisions: Aristocracy, the State and Provincial Conflict (Manchester, 1998), 42–63. 159 William, Lord Cobham (in Kent), Lord Buckhurst (in Sussex) and the earl of Pembroke (lieutenant of no fewer than eighteen counties) were exponents of this ‘hands-off’ style of lieutenancy. 160 Lord North (in Cambridgeshire) was one: see Cambridgeshire LL, introduction; Lord Chandos (in Gloucestershire) another: see above, 50, n.58; the sixth earl of Shrewsbury a third: see HMC Talbot, 308, 310. 161 See Cromwell’s lieutenancy books, BL Add 34394–34395. 162 Somerset LB, fols 44r.–45r. (Francis Hastings et al. to Somerset JPs, 28 October 1597), Leveson Papers 37/2 (Thomas Wilford to Thomas Fane, n.d., ?1595). 163 APC XIV, 239; cf. APC XIV, 249, 351; HMC Somerset, 10, 13, 25–7. On several occasions, orders were laid down by the deputies or JPs only, with Bath apparently not bothering to attend, even in a matter as important as the preparations for defence against a possible invasion: HMC Somerset, 7, 8–10. 164 See Somerset LB, passim. 165 MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors, 279. 166 Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 166; Woodworth, Purveyance for the Royal Household, 43. 167 Leveson Papers 37/2 (Fludd to Leveson, 13 June 1595). See also Leveson Papers 37/3 (Leveson to Cobham, 13 June 1595, noting that he has no experience of a levy of this kind). Twysden LP, 95–7; see also 92; Leveson Papers 66/2/6 (note of a conference, 22 July 1598); Leveson Papers 54/3 (note of a conference, 6 May 1601). Other examples: Surrey LB, fol. 32r.–v. (articles agreed for a troop levy in Surrey, 20 July 1594). 168 See the case of Robert Byng’s complaints about rating in west Kent: below, 215–16, and also an earlier comment on the same issue, in which the local doyen of the bench, Robert Richers, was consulted; he not only drew upon his own experience, going back to Edward VI’s reign, but also invoked his memory of those who were then ‘auncient Justices of this Lathe’, Sir Anthony St Leger, Sir Robert Southwell and Mr Roydon, thus drawing on magisterial experience going back to the 1520s. BL Add. 34218, fol. 29v. (Robert Richers to Sir Christopher Allen, 26 August 1585). 169 The composition of these groups obviously varied as JPs were appointed, moved or died. In 1592, for example, in Aylesford, south, Roger Twysden, George Rivers, Robert

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Government and people during the Elizabethan wars Byng and Sir John Scott worked together; in Sutton-at-Hone, upper, Thomas Walsingham, Justinian Champneys, Edmund Style and Edmund Cook (Leveson Papers 32/29, 22/58). 170 John S. Nolan, ‘The militarization of the Elizabethan state’, Journal of Military History 58 (1994), 391–420, at 412. 171 Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1640 (2000), 2–3 and passim. 172 Somerset LB, fols 44r.–45r. (Hastings to Pembroke, 27 October 1597). 173 Aside from the ad hoc commissions described in chapter 1, see for example Leveson Papers 11/4 (commissioners of the ordnance Leveson et al., to survey storehouses at Chatham, 20 June 1589). 174 Leveson Papers 18/7 (Lambarde to Cobham, 22 December 1586; my italics). See also Edward Montagu’s comment to Richard Knightley that had they been left to manage matters without interference from above, ‘halfe this trubble would have been saved’: Northamptonshire LP, 75. On Lambarde’s feeling for the need to maintain a united front amongst local officials see Leveson Papers 14/16/14 (Lambarde to John Leveson, 22 December 1591). 175 On problems, see APC XVI, 174–5; BL Harleian 6994, fol. 128r. (Walsingham to Burghley, 18 July 1588); on council intervention APC XVII, 169; BL Lansdowne 60, fol. 75r. See also Boynton, Militia, 141–4. 176 R. Cust, ‘Honour, rhetoric and political culture: the earl of Huntingdon and his enemies’ in Susan Amussen and Mark Kishlansky (eds), Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1995), 84–111, at 92. Smith, County and Court; Alison Wall, ‘Faction in local politics 1580–1620. Struggles for supremacy in Wiltshire’, Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, 72/73 (1980), 119–33. See also Wall, ‘Patterns of politics in England, 1558–1625’, Historical Journal 31 (1988), 947–63. 177 BL Add. 48591, fols 23v., 28v., 108r.–v.; BL Add. 23006, fols 21r., 26r.; BL Kings 265, fol. 268r., 273r., 289v., 292v. BL Add. 48591, fols 113v., 116v., 118r.–v. 178 See Hasler, Commons, I, 177; BL Add. 40630, fols 4 (John Cutts to Charles Morison, 5 November 1584), 6 (John Brocket to same, 6 November 1584). 179 Clark, English Provincial Society, 310. For evidence of their cooperation, see Leveson Papers 54/1 (?Ralph Bosseville to Leveson, 4 August 1601). 180 HMC Rutland, I, 208.

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Chapter 3

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Defending the Protestant state The militia and invasion threats

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rom 1585, when the Elizabethan regime’s perception of its religio-political interests led it into war with the most powerful monarchy in Europe, England fully expected an invasion attempt would be launched against it. The first line of defence was the navy, a permanent, professional force funded by taxation. Naturally, however, there had to be land forces available too in case the navy should fail; the more soldiers, the better equipped, trained and led they were, the better would be the defence. This was the role of the militia. Yet the militia was always a problematic tool of war. It was always, inevitably, an ephemeral body: it consisted in theory of everyone, every man between sixteen and sixty – so in practice, it was liable to end up consisting of nobody. The council knew that, in an age of great change in the practice of warfare, great effort would be needed to mould the militia into a useful fighting force. This was not made easier by several characteristics of the militia. Firstly, there was no single militia; each county had a separate force. A key responsibility of the lieutenancies, as they were appointed between 1585 and 1588, was to assume control of the county’s militia and provide the link between central government and these fifty-odd separate forces. A further inconvenience was that militiamen were not in a formal contractual relationship with the crown: they were definitively not a standing army, did not take the Queen’s shilling and were normally not paid by the crown. This placed limits on what they could be obliged to do: they could not be called out for too long (both through custom and for practical reasons), and nor could they be obliged to cross county boundaries (although in practice they proved willing to do so).1 Yet it should be emphasised that the militia, and, later, the trained bands, were central to the government’s plans for land defence. Although the nobility and the clergy also provided troops in times of crisis, the trained bands far outnumbered these and were the core of the defence forces. To a remarkable degree, the defence of England by the militia had to be

Defending the Protestant state: The militia driven from the centre. Provincial Englishmen were remarkably reluctant to be persuaded that the danger was real until it became immediately apparent – by which point it would have been too late to implement effective defence measures. This was not absolutely universal: there were always some who were aware of the need to make preparations, and naturally such men were often appointed to office in the militia, but they seldom represented the voice of the county as a whole. The council had to provide the driving force behind virtually all of the militia efforts of the period. This rule is proved by the exception: Anglesey. This island was acutely aware of its vulnerability to invasion, given its exposed position, small population and the difficulty of reinforcing it from the mainland. It repeatedly petitioned the council for aid in its defence and even engaged a paid muster-master to provide firearms training, independently and without direction from the council.2 Such an active approach was virtually unique, yet their fears were hardly exaggerated: there was a danger, to them and to any county in England, if not direct then indirect. The assumption that coastal counties should take the threat of invasion more seriously than inland ones, as if (say) Leicestershire would scarcely be affected by a Spanish invasion in Kent or Essex, remained widespread.3 The topic of the militia is a wide one: it affected the whole of the social order, and involved every level of government from monarch and Parliament to churchwarden and parish (its prominence in the fabric of local government can be gauged by how often it became contentious in the early seventeenth century4). Yet it is often ill-documented, and whilst the council’s orders make fairly clear what it wanted done in the counties, the (often fragmentary) local sources seldom provide a clear picture of what actually did happen. Many of the customs and procedures of the militia are ill-documented, and their relationship to each other is often obscure. Often, it is unclear whether important activities such as training, which may not have left records, took place or not. The end product of musters was much less tangible than, for example, troop levies, so it is difficult to assess the extent of compliance. Nevertheless, there is often enough evidence from particular counties to sketch their responses to particular policies at particular times. The standard work on the militia remains Lindsay Boynton’s Elizabethan Militia, which, although some forty years old, stands up very well in light of more recent research, providing a clear overview of many of the practices and problems of the militia. There is relatively little recent historiography on the militia, though it has received good, though relatively brief, treatment by Mark Fissel and Paul Hammer, as well as various shorter studies.5 This chapter does not seek to replace Boynton, but to improve on his account in two main ways. Firstly it places the militia more fully in the wider context of the war effort and the demands it placed on the counties, especially over time, as the threat of invasion waxed or waned. Secondly, it looks in detail at certain aspects of

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties the militia which Boynton covered only relatively briefly, to assess the level of compliance achieved by the council through the lieutenancies, and, often, the nature of that compliance. It also seeks to exploit more fully the evidence of local archives, which Boynton tended to neglect, but which often provide more detailed and continuous evidence of what went on in the counties than the episodic reports in the state papers. Overall, the analysis presented here seeks to qualify the critical assessment usually made of the militia, what Smith, for example, called a ‘pathetically small achievement’.6 THE ORIGINS OF THE TRAINED BANDS The council’s efforts to improve the militia did not, of course, start from scratch in 1585. The starting point for militia policy was the obligation under the Statute of Westminster of 1285 for all Englishmen aged between sixteen and sixty to serve the monarch in military service, with their own weaponry. This was an enduring principle, but to be meaningful it had to be rendered into workable policy. The legal framework which did this was the 1558 acts for ‘the having of Horse Armour and Weapon’ and ‘the taking of Musters’. These laid out a scheme for provision of armour according to a scale based on income, so that anyone of any means was required to provide armour of specific types and quantity, which would be borne by other people, usually their relatives, servants or dependants.7 Almost immediately, however, it was recognised that this was inadequate, for two main reasons. Firstly, developments in military technology (particularly the increasing use of firearms and the development of the pike) made it increasingly obsolete, even had it been enforced properly, which the council doubted.8 Secondly, it was recognised as early as 1559 that a more effective military force would be achieved by concentrating resources on fewer men, organising them more carefully, arming them with better equipment, and training them.9 Arguably, the best approach to militia reform would have been through new legislation, and indeed there were a number of attempts to pass laws: a bill was read in the Commons in 1581; a 1588 draft bill for musters survives in Burghley’s papers, and the Lords passed a bill in 1589, which was not heard in the Commons. There were other abortive efforts in 1597 and 1601.10 It is not clear how hard the government tried to get these bills through, but for whatever reason its reform programme never had the full force of statute. This was by no means fatal, but it did deprive the council of one means of encouraging compliance. Instead, militia reform proceeded through council orders directed to county muster commissioners appointed by the Crown. During the 1560s and 1570s, the council periodically made serious efforts to improve the militia. On several

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia occasions, they attempted to make significant reforms: alongside general musters, they gave directions on remedying problems such as the shortages of appropriate weaponry, the lack of organisation or training, or the need for contingency plans in case of invasion. Many of these initiatives were reasonably well-planned and sensible, but it is clear that they did not lead to the creation of a satisfactory militia.11 It is customary to blame the failure to accomplish meaningful reform during this period on the apathy or evasion of local governors, an argument which was strongly made by Boynton. However, Roger Vella Bonavita has persuasively argued, in a very comprehensive but almost entirely neglected thesis, this is unjust. Local officials were in fact mostly responsive to the council’s demands, at the very least in principle, and their correspondence was often constructive and willing. Some real improvements were made, for example in the provision of armour. The council was at least as much at fault, in failing to provide both consistent orders and consistent oversight; local officials can hardly be blamed for allowing reform to peter out if the council itself took up the matter only every few years.12 Thus although some productive ideas were in circulation during the first fifteen years of the reign, no lasting reform emerged. The key development of the pre-war years was the development of the trained bands policy, whereby each county would institute a kind of elite militia by concentrating resources on a limited number of men, organised into companies, armed and trained. This principle was mooted in 1573 but only put into practice in 1577. In both cases, the counties responded with a fair amount of willingness, but again the council did not press strongly for the programme to be continued in subsequent years.13 It is commonly asserted that the trained bands were simply ‘created’ in 1573, but in practice they remained a work-inprogress until well into the 1580s.14 Thus whilst the moves of the 1570s achieved relatively little in themselves, they were important in paving the way for future developments by establishing the principle of training in the militia. This was in itself a success, since training placed significant new burdens on the counties. The 1558 statute was predicated on provision in kind: individuals had to provide particular types of weapon according to their wealth or social status; poorer people contributed towards purchasing further weapons on a parish basis. The system was based on individuals’ personal service and made no provision for training or money to pay for it.15 The trained bands, however, were to be funded from within the counties, which would entail non-statutory local taxes, clearly an unappealing prospect. The council claimed that ‘it is not mente to have a continewaunce of any suche a charge, but nowe at the begininge some resonable alotement wold be made’ to cover the costs of wages, powder, shot and match, but local officials were rightly sceptical: the Hertfordshire muster commissioners, for example, thought that ‘though the burden will not be greate, yet we see

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties that the people be so unwillinge to be drawen to suche newe and unwonted charges without lawe’.16 The counties’ acceptance of this principle was a considerable success, therefore, but the trained bands were still deficient in two important ways. Firstly, in organisational terms, the militia was still run by county muster commissioners, whose diffuse authority was never likely to provide a strong and coherent organisation for the trained bands. From 1585, this was provided by the lieutenancies; the need for a sustained presence to oversee and improve the county forces was clearly one of the reasons behind their revival. The second problem was that each county’s trained bands were still tiny, quite unequal to the task of defending the nation – only 300, for example, in counties as large and prosperous as Hampshire or Somerset. This was not surprising, since in the 1570s, the council arrived at the counties’ quotas by asking them how many they could feasibly train; naturally they suggested very small numbers. Now, therefore, the principle of trained bands had to be applied on a scale sufficiently large to make them worthwhile, which meant multiplying these quotas by factors of ten or more. This began in earnest only in 1584, when the trained bands programme was taken up again and continued with increasing intensity until the Armada crisis itself. The orders of this year (they went out on 29 December 1583) directed the muster commissioners in maritime counties to view all the able men in their counties, organise specified numbers of men into companies and equip them with up-to-date weapons. These were referred to as ‘furnished’, meaning equipped, and though they were not yet to be trained, they were clearly intended to be an elite section of the militia: the council wrote that they were to concentrate on them ‘in hope that there wilbe the more care had to see the number now appoynted throughlie furnished’.17 This must have been met with widespread ambivalence, since the numbers of men involved were vastly greater than before: in Sussex, for example, the 600 suggested in 1573 became 4,000 equipped in 1583; in Cornwall, 400 became 3,000. Rather than inviting suggestions from the counties, these were imposed arbitrarily.18 The council repeatedly described these new quotas as ‘reductions’, however, apparently by carefully managing expectations in the counties. Hertfordshire, for example, had declared 2,626 able men in 1580, of which 1,544 were furnished with weapons, and 1,000 trained. In December 1583, however, the council ordered they furnish 2,000 men. This was clearly an increase of 456 furnished men, but by taking the number of able men as the point of comparison, the council described this as a ‘reduction’. It also required that the weapons to be used were to be modern and good-quality, by directing that shortfalls in weapons in the county were to be supplied, at fixed costs, from London – thus Hertfordshire had to find £189 to buy 140 bows, 280 bills and 102 corslets (pikemen’s equipment).19

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia At this stage, the counties must have been very concerned at the prospect of having to train so many men, but in May 1584, the council ordered training of numbers which, although much greater than had been trained before, were nevertheless much less than the numbers being talked about in December. Hertfordshire had to train only 1,000 of the 2,000 furnished men, so again the council chose to call it a reduction, but since Hertfordshire had trained only 100 men in 1577, and had to train 1,000 in 1584, it was clearly no such thing.20 This manipulation of categories of men must have been an attempt to achieve a significant increase of trained men whilst presenting it as a reduction; the counties can hardly have been fooled, although at least one modern historian has been.21 A crucial element of the whole programme was not only that the troops needed to be selected, armed and trained, but that they needed to be organised; the issue of how to marshal and deploy troops during an invasion was a matter of much debate.22 The lieutenancy provided the outline of the command structure, linking the central authorities with the militias, and indeed running the militia was perhaps the lieutenants’ most important function.23 The detailed work of maintaining the bands, however, had to be carried out by their officers. From the start, and throughout the period, these were senior local gentlemen, whose social status was essential to their work. The council laid down an extensive list of subordinate officers: lieutenants, sergeants, corporals, deceniers, drums, fifes and so on; as with many aspects of the trained bands, these were probably implemented only fairly sporadically, but certainly some companies recorded full complements of officers in their muster rolls.24 Done properly, the work of a captain could be onerous, expensive and fairly thankless.25 Whilst many gentlemen sought captaincies as a mark of prestige, and in certain parts of the country, the size of their companies were linked to their honour, many requests to be discharged from the role can be found, and at times it was difficult to find gentlemen prepared to take on the job.26 Here, as elsewhere, the council regularly stressed the importance of ensuring the religious credentials of militia captains, and undoubtedly the counties sought to oblige.27 Thus, by 1584, the trained bands system as it existed throughout the war was essentially in place, at least in theory, in the maritime counties: the south and east coasts of England, Somerset to Lincolnshire (though not the Welsh or north-west coasts), with other counties which rounded them out as a defensive zone: Wiltshire, Berkshire, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. These were regarded as much the most important parts of the country for defence purposes, in effect the first line of defence, and almost all of them were placed under lieutenants in 1585. Other parts of the country were a much lower priority, but from 1585, the trained bands were rolled out across the country, like the lieutenancies, in several phases.28 Whilst the mari-

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties time counties’ troops were intended primarily to defend their own coasts, or those of other coastal counties, those from inland counties would form the reserve, to guard the Queen.29 From the mid-1580s, then, the trained bands became increasingly wellestablished, and absorbed the bulk of the time and energy put into the militia. In return for the extra money which needed to be spent on them, the Queen promised that they would be excused from foreign service and ‘reserved for the deffence of our persone, and withstandinge of forrayne invasyon’.30 This remained official policy, although, as we will see in chapter 4, it was broken several times, and in fact in 1595 the council shifted to describing them as ‘to bee imployed in any suche soddayne service as her Majestie should thinke meete’.31 While the counties concentrated on the trained bands, the classic mobilisation of the militia, the general muster of all male inhabitants of the county or hundred, declined. It continued to be ordered most years, but had less and less military value. Instead the general musters were used to determine the county’s total resources of weaponry and manpower. This might be done on a very detailed level, recording individuals’ physical capabilities, social status and even occupations.32 The general muster therefore provided an opportunity to select suitable men for the trained bands, which had to be done regularly to combat natural wastage. In Gloucester, in 1587, for example, there was a generall muster of all the able men, and a generall view of all armour within the cittie and countie thereof. And CCC men appointed under the charge of William Bridges esquire their captain were diverse tymes trained.33

It is now time to address how, and how well, the counties put all of this into practice in the years leading up to the Armada crisis. The clearest points to emerge are the patchiness of the response to council demands and the lateness of much of the compliance. The city of Gloucester, perhaps surprisingly for a borough with the right to conduct its own musters, responded fairly conscientiously to the trained bands, but the timescale of their activity is revealing. When the council ordered them to set up trained bands in 1586, a company of 300 men was formed under William Bridges esquire, and ‘diverse tymes trained’. After this, however, no further training is recorded until a period of frantic activity in April and May 1588. A second furnished band of 200 untrained men was formed alongside the trained band. On 12–13 April, there was a ‘generall view of armour’; on 16 April, ‘the Lord Lieutenante toke a viewe of all the armour & of the trayned men’ in Gloucester. On 19 April, the 300 trained men were armed and trained before the lord lieutenant, mayor and corporation; the untrained 200 were viewed by the mayor on 23 April, for faults in their armour; on 25 April, there was ‘a view of the defaults of armour in the cyttie’, and there was further training on 6 May.34 Thus, after the initial response, it seems that further activity was

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia stimulated only by the approaching threat in 1588. A similar pattern is evident in Lambeth, in Surrey. Again, there was an initial response when the trained bands were set up in 1584, with two training days in July and September, but after this training seems to have resumed only in 1588, with thirteen muster or training days recorded.35 The pattern is more marked still in counties without lieutenants. In Cambridgeshire, Lord North was appointed lieutenant only in April 1588. During the past three years, he told the council, when the militia had been run by JPs with little military experience, no training had been carried out, and the militia’s equipment was ‘out of all order’. The JPs had also evaded some of the council’s other instructions, such as establishing a band of petronels at the charge of the JPs; North complained of ‘the disorder of some principall Justices and men of the best living in the comission’, noting that ‘dealing of theirs did at the day of muster greatly hinder her Majesty’s servis’.36 Leicestershire had an absentee lieutenant, Huntingdon, and it was found during the Armada crisis that the 500 men sent up to London ‘had not as yet ben trayned and discyplyned’.37 The evidence for Northamptonshire, where the deputies were some of the least diligent in the country, suggests similar conclusions. As late as June 1588, the council had to badger the lord lieutenant, Sir Christopher Hatton, to return a muster certificate. This was probably because very little had been done: the evidence suggests that the trained bands existed largely on paper. The deputies reported in October 1587 that they had set up bands furnished with corslets and calivers, but there is no mention of training. Certainly Hatton knew little of what was going on, referring in April 1588 to ‘such bandes which by your good endeavoures I truste shall be provyded’, and noting ‘I knowe not in what sorte your soldiours haue ben hitherto trayned’.38 Hatton must bear responsibility for failing to motivate his deputies, but they were extremely capable at evasion, obstruction and neglect. In April 1588, when most of the country was finally beginning to take seriously the threat of a Spanish invasion, they told Hatton that they could not execute their orders because of a technical flaw in their authority: clearly the mark of stalling tactics.39 Other counties were significantly more energetic. Lancashire, for example, was one of the best-run lieutenancies in the country, firmly under the control of the earl of Derby, and his extensive kinship and clientage network. Derby decided to purchase new armour for the trained bands, proposing estimated costs so lavish that the council trimmed them by half, a rare situation indeed. The training itself seems to have gone ahead in remarkably well-ordered fashion, and Lancashire also implemented some of the orders which the council probably sent out more hopefully than with real expectation that they would be implemented, such as setting up a county storehouse for weapons.40 In addition to their trained band quotas of 600 each, Lancashire and Cheshire,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties like other Northern counties, each set up 500–strong bands to defend the North against Scotland.41 The picture in Kent was also impressive, especially after the advent of Lord Cobham’s lieutenancy in 1585. Cobham and his deputies were very energetic, issuing highly detailed orders to militia captains and seeking to increase available armour. In 1586 Cobham took the extraordinary decision not only to meet his quota of 2,500 trained men, but, ‘with the good liking of the country’, to add 700 more.42 In many places, much of the crucial work required to make this project worthwhile took place remarkably shortly before the invasion crisis itself.43 In Norfolk although trained bands had theoretically existed since 1584, there were major expansions in the bands very late indeed. In June 1588, under the direction of Sir Thomas Leighton, the deputy lieutenants wrote to Bassingbourne Gawdy, captain of 200 trained bandsmen, to say – as if announcing a fact of some profundity – that there were too few trained men in Norfolk and that he should pick 200 men to add to his existing band of 200. The concern to avoid costs was clear – only on 1 August, when they had orders to mobilise the county’s troops, did the deputies order that this band be provided with armour, weapons, powder and conduct money, and, under the leading of Gawdy’s son, Bassingbourne the younger, report to Thetford on 6 August.44 In some ways, it can be argued that the Norfolk trained bands only really came into existence in 1588. It seems that this was substantially the case in Yorkshire as well.45 The story of the militia from the renewal of the trained bands scheme in 1584 to the Armada itself was, from the council’s viewpoint, a matter primarily of applying pressure on the counties to carry out instructions: not continual pressure, but certainly strong and certainly repeated. The establishment of the trained bands in 1584 was a not inconsiderable achievement, but the pressure had to be kept up, or this initiative would go the same way as the 1573 and 1577 experiments. Thus, whilst training seems to have been ‘respited’ everywhere in 1585, it was initiated or renewed almost everywhere the following year, and by 1587 every county ought to have had trained bands. Yet there can be little doubt that in many places – parishes or districts, whole counties, perhaps even entire regions such as the far North or the more remote Welsh counties – little was done, or what was done was perfunctory and minimal. Senior ministers were well aware of the limited willingness of local governors to place national defence over local vested interests; they knew that the counties would tend to respond willingly at first, but required constant prodding to continue preparations. This, after all, had prompted the reintroduction of the lieutenancies. The council tried to counter ignorance or inactivity in the counties by sending agents into the counties, whether muster-masters or inspectors, ‘persons of trust, credit and knowledge … to see [inspect] the said forces’. ‘One sufficient gentleman well chosen’, wrote Burghley, ‘would doe more good being sent from hir Majestie, than the worke of all the commis-

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia sioners for doble the time’. These undoubtedly reflected the council’s concerns about the varying quality of the militia. In the years prior to the Armada, these included men of great experience and prestige such as Sir Thomas Leighton, Sir Roger Williams, Sir John Smythe, Sir John and Sir Henry Norreys. They could be very effective: John Norreys, for example, persuaded the gentry of Dorset to upgrade their light horse to lances, and laid down important orders in case of invasion. Whilst the potential for lieutenants to get things done in the counties was valuable (albeit variable), it was recognised that few were military experts.46 PREPARATIONS AGAINST INVASION, 1585–88 Aside from the militia, the lieutenancies had a number of other tasks to prepare against invasion. These were enumerated in an important list of ‘Orders to be observed by the Lord Lieutenants’, which was issued to newly-commissioned lieutenants and served as standing orders to specify ‘her Majesties pleasure in what sorte your Lordship was to proceade in the execucion of the saide servyce’.47 The council took these orders very seriously, referring back to them to in later years, and, when lieutenants died, badgering their successors for progress, clearly seeking to avoid them falling by the wayside like so many council initiatives.48 They were taken seriously in the counties, too, with progress on the instructions often reported point by point.49 Here again, compliance was often very late indeed, even in the case of (for example) administering the oath to trained bandsmen to encourage religious conformity and commitment to defence of the regime, a straightforward enough task. Lord Cobham swore the Kent trained bands in 1585, but the Wiltshire JPs only got around to ordering it on 17 July 1588.50 In other orders relating to the Catholic internal threat, ‘all papists and other suspect persons’ were to be disarmed, and moves taken to reduce the danger of a fifth column of Catholics in the event of an invasion, including disarming or imprisoning recusants.51 This seems to have been fairly vigorously enforced, underlining the extent to which orders which threatened local interests (mainly financial) were neglected, and those which did not, like this, went ahead more reliably, especially under the supervision of more earnest local officials.52 Many of the 1585 orders related to militia preparations which have already been discussed. The view and exercise of the horse bands was particularly stressed, as these would be particularly valuable in the event of invasion. In addition, they ordered the preparation of mounted shot, and JPs were to be especially ‘moved’ to personally contribute a number of petronels on horseback. Certain towns in each county were ordered to buy in stocks of powder, match and lead in readiness against invasion, another order which seems to have been complied with closely, despite the fact that these provisions were

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties additional to that bought for training, and the obvious costs involved in both. Gloucester, for example, spent £37 on powder for training in 1587, and a further £112 ‘accordinge to the counceills direccion’ in 1588, and even the normally lackadaisical Northamptonshire deputies complied.53 Several points addressed invasion planning: viewing potential weak spots, planning the deployment of troops in case of attack, and preparing and watching the beacons. These also met with varying degrees of compliance, and little appears to have been done until the prospect of invasion became very immediate. Surveys of the coast to assess possible landing places and what could be done to improve them were carried out in Kent, Sussex and the south-west, but this was comparatively easy.54 The actual preparation of earthworks to defend potential landing places was vastly more difficult and expensive. Little was done, and often remarkably late in the day: late July 1588 saw urgent fortification work in Norfolk, and in Northumberland, Lord Ogle proposed a survey of possible landing places at the same time, by which point it was surely too late to do much to strengthen the coast.55 This tardiness is not surprising, considering the cost of these preparations: local governors would not make this kind of investment unless they really had to, and this brings up a recurring trend: when it came to preparing defences against invasion, it was the attitude of local governors, and their assessment of the level of threat, not the council’s, which was the decisive factor in what went on. A more successful field was the preparation of contingency plans to respond to an invasion, primarily arrangements to mobilise the counties in a crisis. Again, most of the important work was only done in 1588 itself (and on the council’s initiative), when, in April, the council sent military experts such as John Norreys and Thomas Leighton into the counties again, with some impressive results.56 In Norfolk, Leighton and the deputy lieutenants laid down orders for fortifications to be prepared in certain places, expansion and training of bands, and plans for various invasion scenarios – preparation of victuals, disposition of forces, places of retreat, destruction of bridges, crops and so on. There is definite evidence of fortifications being prepared and bands expanded and trained, and an elaborate rota for militia bands to guard the coast was begun (although the council, displaying its typical inability to resist individual petitions, allowed the deputies to abandon it in June). Norreys’s similarly impressive orders for Dorset also survive; this combination of local officials and military experts was a fruitful initiative by the council.57 Overall then, in the execution of the 1585 orders, the council met with some degree of success, often due to their persistence and the repetition and consistency of their orders. It is very noticeable, however, that whereas some lieutenancies enforced their orders very conscientiously, and even went

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia beyond the council’s expectation, in many cases compliance was grudging and often compliance was delayed until the very eve of the Armada itself. To explore this further, it is worth looking at the chronology of these years, since, although the English government had been expecting an invasion attempt since 1585, it was far from clear when this might come. One should avoid predicating any account of the Armada crisis on the assumption that English preparations were all timed to come to a peak in July–August 1588; yet it seems clear from the evidence shown that 1588 did in fact mark a turning point. There were a number of more or less serious scares prior to 1588, testament to the jumpiness about the risk from Spain of both the government and the population at large. There were two minor panics in 1586 (one of them connected with the Babington Plot) in which defence preparations were initiated.58 There was a major panic in early February 1587, with rumours of a Spanish landing as far north as Chester; there was a panic in Bath caused by ‘a fained report that London was afyer’; a report of a Spanish fleet off the southwest in August; and a more serious alarm in late 1587, which had been the date originally intended for the ‘Enterprise of England’.59 The attack on Cadiz by Sir Francis Drake in April 1587 slowed down Spanish preparations, but an attack was contemplated in Spain, and feared in England, in the autumn.60 In response, in early October, the council placed the trained bands in the counties on one hour’s warning and ordered views and preparations of the bands; the same day, a shipping embargo was ordered.61 It is unclear whether this was a response to a short-term alarm, or whether it formed part of long-term preparations; possibly it was an immediate crisis, but, when that passed, in a typical piece of improvisation, it was used to raise the level of military readiness in the country as a whole.62 There was certainly real alarm in London over the winter of 1587–88: Francis Wyndham told Nathaniel Bacon about ‘great rumors of the Kynge of Spaynes navye as though some present ent[e]rprise shuld be atte[m]pted’, and that these were ‘the cawse of these generall musters thorough the realme’.63 A royal proclamation in November 1587 ordered gentry to return home and keep their households.64 Letters from court were full of alarming news, of 12,000 Italian soldiers at Dunkirk, whose destination was unknown; on 11 November, it was ‘publikely declared that the lykelyhoode of invasion is so great & the intelligence so playne that wee may acco[u]nte it for undoubted’, on 11 February, ‘the King of Spaine prepares with all spede to eate us up’.65 As the winter receded, there was more than ever a conviction in the minds of the English ruling classes that an invasion attempt was likely; if fear of foreign attack was an effective factor in motivating local governors to commit to the nation’s defences, that can never have been more powerful. It is in this context that we must look at the military activities in the counties in 1588. For years,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties during the 1570s and 1580s, local governors had put ease and economy higher in their lists of priorities than implementing council orders, since the orders had no obvious benefit to those who were expected to administer them. As Sir Edward Stanley told the council in February 1588, people in Lancashire and Cheshire ‘thinke theare monie vearye ill bestoued, whiche the bestowe on armor or weppn [sic], for that the be in hope the shall nevar have anie occation to use it’.66 This was, perhaps, about the latest point they could think this. In 1588, local authorities finally recognised that the issue was no longer abstract, but concrete and immediate, and began to take it seriously. The degree of compliance was suddenly very great, owing primarily to the danger perceived by local elites: it was only when local governors themselves felt at risk of invasion, not when they were told by the council that there was a risk, that they acted. Thus from late 1587 through to 1588, the council’s demands mounted steadily. In December 1587, they sought to implement a plan for mass training of county trained bands in camps for two weeks or more at a time. These were arguably a very sensible idea, and would probably have remedied a lot of the problems with the trained bands, and made them a reasonably useful fighting force. But after receiving a very cool response from the counties over the cost of the camps, this plan was abandoned rapidly.67 From the spring of 1588, however, council demands changed from the longterm to the immediate. On 1 April, lord lieutenants were ordered to review, train and muster the militia, and to return muster certificates; those counties which failed to return certificates were pursued with unusual diligence, both to stimulate action in the counties and to gather information in the centre.68 A new urgency entered correspondence; when the Queen wrote to the nobility on 2 June, she spoke of ‘great preparations of foreign forces’; by 15 June, she was ‘certainly advertised, that the King of Spain’s navy is already abroad on the seas’.69 Thus, the council took the nation to what was, in effect, the penultimate level of readiness. Preparations from this point were clearly urgent. The regime seized the opportunity to demand special measures. The Queen wrote to lord lieutenants on 18 June, ordering them to assemble the gentry in their counties, explain the danger, and ask them, ‘upon this instant extraordinary occasion’ to increase their provision of armour, especially horsemen.70 The fact that this came from the Queen herself added to the seriousness of the demands: the Essex deputies referred reverently to ‘her Majesty’s own letters’.71 The letter also hinted that any increases would not be taken as a precedent, since this was an ‘extraordinary occasion’ – another great incentive to the gentry, which several counties referred to. Derbyshire and Staffordshire, for example, offered to increase their contribution from 18 lances and 50 light horse to 120 lances on these terms. It was recognised on both sides that the counties could mobilise much greater resources than they usually did

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia when absolutely necessary, but that they did not wish an extraordinary mobilisation to become a standard quota.72 Reaction elsewhere was more muted, however. The Essex deputies assembled the gentry and ‘required every one to sett downe under his owne hande what he entended to finde voluntary’ – an ingenious gambit, which unfortunately backfired, producing additional offers of only 5 lances, 33 light horse and 94 foot, which they still hoped ‘might be no precedent to charge them hereafter’. The Somerset gentry, despite protests of willingness, were ‘unable to perform any greater charge at this present’.73 The new, albeit limited, mood of receptivity in the counties was, then, accompanied by considerable increases in the demands placed on the counties by the council. In the conditions of the first half of 1588, with the political and governing classes finally convinced that such preparations were necessary, the council could, in effect, raise the bar, and impose greater burdens on the counties with a reasonable expectation that they might be carried out. Thus the record of the council and the lieutenancies over the years leading up to the Armada crisis was mixed. Despite its shortcomings, the council’s renewed attention to the militia, beginning in the 1570s, renewed in 1583–84 and increasing up to 1588 had considerable effect. The two institutions had some capacity to provoke the counties into action, one which varied widely from county to county, depending on factors such as when the lieutenant was appointed, how skilfully and forcefully he did his job, and how responsive were his subordinates. One highly important factor, however, was much less under the council’s control: the perceptions of individual gentry as to the level of national threat, and how seriously they needed to act to counter it. For all the shortcomings of the system, by 1588, the council could plan against the expected invasion attempt in the knowledge that it could call upon reasonably well-established companies of men in every county, from over 7,000 armed men in Kent to just 300 in Flintshire; the men would be selected, organised under captains and other officers, provided with modern weapons and equipment, and periodically trained. Powder was stocked, mobilisation plans were in place, beacons watched, recusants restrained. The limitations of the troops were clear. Only a proportion of them (somewhere between one-half and two-thirds) were even nominally trained, and the quality of their training varied widely; they were clearly no match, man-for-man, for the Spanish tercios. Nevertheless, the trained bands were a major improvement on what had gone before, in that they were at least suitably armed, and placed within a coherent command structure provided by the lieutenancy and their captains. These were the resources the council had in place to counter an invasion from Spain.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties THE ARMADA CRISIS The Armada crisis was the first great test of the council’s efforts to reform England’s defences, testing both the long-term development of defence preparations in the counties and the management of short-term crises. It did not, of course, test the military effectiveness of the militia, since no landing was ever made, but it tells us much about the management of government. Although the Spanish Armada is one of the most extensively written-about events of English history, relatively few works deal in detail with the preparations on land, as opposed to the more dramatic events at sea, and they have been much misunderstood.74 The most influential accounts have been critical of English defences, most notably that of Geoffrey Parker, which painted Elizabeth’s preparations as hopelessly inadequate. According to Parker, preparations were ‘desperately behind-hand all over’; the strategy was poor, the command structure weak, the English officers divided amongst themselves on the strategy to be pursued. ‘The troops at Dover (most of them raw recruits) began to desert in considerable numbers when the Armada came in sight off Calais. In any case, there were only 4,000 men in all, a ludicrously inadequate force.’ The Duke of Parma’s invading army would have been facing ‘untrained troops without clear orders, backed up by only a handful of inadequately fortified towns’. On top of all this, the defensive forces were concentrated in Essex, and not the real intended target, Kent.75 More recent historiography has been more favourable to the English preparations, yet much of it is still unsatisfactory and contains significant errors and misapprehensions with regard both to the overall picture of the council’s planning against invasion and to the events themselves.76 The defences were in large part efficient, capable and willing, and overall, the preparations were more impressive than is often thought. Whether they could have repelled the Spanish remains, however, a moot point. Aside from the long-term preparation of the forces, the key issue facing the council was maximising the ability to respond to an attack effectively. It was not possible simply to call up the available troops and await the enemy, partly because it was uneconomical, but chiefly because it was unknown where the attack would come. On top of that, there was potentially a concern that militia units, which traditionally had no obligation to serve outside their own counties, might in a moment of crisis be more concerned with defending their own homes than uniting to face the enemy. Defence planning was, therefore, a mixture of obvious imperatives and frightening uncertainties. The basic plan for defence against invasion had remained essentially the same throughout Elizabeth’s reign, traceable as far back as 1559. The county militias in the coastal counties would respond to an initial attack, supporting each other as necessary, while the inland counties’ forces would form a separate army either as a reserve or to defend the Queen and capital.77 The scenario

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia in 1588 was more complex, however, as the council knew that they faced two separate enemy forces, the Armada itself, and the army of Flanders, able to attack together or, potentially, independently. The council of war held on 27 November 1587 expected that the Armada would try to seize a major port on the south coast to regroup; secondly, the council expected the main attack from Flanders, which would have to take a short route across the Channel to Kent or Essex.78 By mid-July 1588, however, the council no longer expected an attack on the south coast, but had become convinced that the main attack would be made directly on London or the Thames estuary. This highlighted the north bank of the Thames as the key point of weakness, since a landing here would allow an extremely rapid attack on London and potentially a swift, decisive defeat.79 It was decided, therefore, to place 5,000 foot and 1,000 horse there when a landing threatened, in addition to forces defending the south coast and an army to defend the Queen; the army in Essex was a late addition to the strategy, but one of central importance.80 This was, however, only seen as the most likely scenario; possible invasion spots along the south and east coasts could not be neglected, so English forces had to be highly flexible. Consequently, the council devised a plan with three main elements: troops from the maritime counties from Cornwall to Norfolk would remain there to be the first line of resistance against any Spanish landing in their localities; a larger force would be gathered in Essex, performing essentially the same function in the location thought most likely to be attacked; finally a reserve army at London would defend the Queen and capital if a successful landing was made.81 The first of these elements is by far the least understood. The trained bands in coastal counties, particularly along the south coast, were expected to offer initial resistance to any attempted landing, if not repulsing them then buying time for reinforcements to be assembled from the trained bands of nearby counties. Thus, if there were a landing at Plymouth, the trained bands not only of Cornwall and Devon, but also of Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset, 17,000 in all, would have congregated to defend or counterattack. If Portsmouth was attacked, the Wiltshire troops would head there instead, along with troops from Hampshire, Berkshire, Sussex and Surrey. Under this plan, 11,000–20,000 men would be available to defend any point between Falmouth and the Wash.82 This was a long-established plan, and in the months preceding the crisis, local officials along the south coast made arrangements with their colleagues in neighbouring counties for putting it into practice.83 In the event, it was unnecessary to implement these plans since the Armada made no attempt to land on the south coast, instead sailing down the Channel, pursued by the English fleet, towards its rendezvous with the army of Flanders.84 As per the council’s earlier orders, when the alarm came, the various county authorities called out their trained bands to prearranged rendezvous points, but short of an invasion

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties or other orders, they had no occasion to move; once the Armada was safely clear of their coasts, the troops were stood down.85 By 27 July, the Armada was anchored at Calais, and Medina Sidonia’s decision not to use his fleet to attack the south coast removed all element of surprise from the operation. Prior to any assault on England, however, the Armada had to rendezvous with the Duke of Parma’s army of Flanders, something which the English must have predicted and which allowed them a window of some days to mount final preparations against the expected assault on London.86 On 23 July, when the council first became aware of the Armada’s arrival off the south-west coast, it ordered lord lieutenants in the south-east, the home counties and East Anglia to mobilise their militia: the trained footmen were to assemble in one place in every county and measures taken for internal security. At the same time, troops were called up to defend London: cavalry were to report to the earl of Leicester at Brentwood in Essex, and 5,000 foot to London or Stratford-at-Bow, along with a detachment at Gravesend, opposite Tilbury on the Kent side of the Thames. At this stage, only limited numbers of troops, mainly from inland counties (with no coasts to defend) were called up. Leicester, as lord lieutenant of Essex, also called out the county’s 4,000 trained bandsmen.87 The same day, 23 July, Leicester was appointed commander-inchief (although the council remained in charge of summoning and deploying troops) and the following day began to centre his preparations on Tilbury.88 These troops probably never formed a single army, but were dispersed among various places between London and the Thames estuary, presumably to maintain flexibility (the location of the attack being still unknown) and ease logistics; the council was waiting on events to dictate precisely what to do with them.89 Leicester also had overall charge of the army in Kent. A camp was erected at Northbourne, near Deal; it apparently consisted of 5,000 men at its peak, probably shortly after the alarm was raised, plus 1,500 on the Isle of Sheppey and 1,200 at Lydd. The troops seem to have been demobilised in stages: on 5 August, the council thought that 5,000 Kent troops were in pay, but by 13 August, they had been reduced to about 3,300. At any rate only 3,513 east Kent infantry and 336 horse were paid, from about 29 July to 19 August, under the command of Sir Thomas Scott and Sir James Hales as colonels of foot and horse respectively. The west Kent militia were not listed on the payroll: they were presumably called up on the initial alarm, and sent home when no immediate threat of invasion loomed (they may have been held in reserve in west Kent so that they could respond to an invasion in either Kent or Essex).90 On 16 August, Leicester called up 1,000 from the west to replace the east Kent troops, but this must have been abandoned when the camp dispersed a few days later.91 There is no evidence that any Kent troops were called up to London.92

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia While Leicester was pulling together an army in Essex, the council was assembling the third element of its strategy, the army to defend the Queen, court and government. This would have been the largest single body of troops, and was also composed mostly of county levies, 16,700 summoned on 23 July and more on 28 July, bringing the total to 27,150.93 These were to arrive at London only from 6 August, and were to be commanded by Lord Hunsdon. The assembly of this army began in earnest only on 28 July, when Hunsdon was commissioned as general and his officers assigned and summoned.94 However, the decision to delay the rendezvous for several days meant that this army – or its militia element at least – never really came into being. Most of the county levies, which had been ordered to arrive at London only from 6 August, were ordered to turn back before they reached the camp and entered into the Queen’s pay. Only 1,200 troops entered pay, all of whom were dismissed on 14 August.95 As the example of the Kent troops shows, however, the payroll is not a perfect record of what actually took place, so it is probable that other contingents were in fact ready: the Surrey troops, for example, seem to have assembled at Croydon, where it was envisaged that the Sussex contingent would join them.96 Presumably, then, Hunsdon’s forces were intended to assemble around (rather than actually in) London, forming a united army only when necessary. Here again, the council sought to have troops ready, but retain flexibility by leaving final arrangements to the last possible moment. Hunsdon was also assigned the forces provided by the nobility, privy councillors and the clergy, expected to come to around 5,300 foot and 2,150 horse.97 It is not known how many of these arrived at London; as they were not paid by the crown, they do not appear on the payroll. It is doubtful whether many clergy forces came into camp: although some of the certificates submitted by bishops are impressive (the 165 foot and 35 horse certified by the archbishop of Canterbury, for example), others came too late to be of use.98 The forces of the nobility are a different matter: noblemen who had pledged to provide men would wish to be seen to do so. 99 These troops were raised through the clients and associates of noblemen, and evidence survives of individual gentleman offering their service. Burghley received an offer of ‘xx or xxx furnished men, at my own proper charge’ from one Wright of Hampshire, and Sir Edward Fitton of Gawsworth, Cheshire, offered him 200 foot armed with ‘bowes, jackes and bylles’, on the occasion of ‘the styrre and the newes about the southe partes’. Sir Francis Walsingham apparently raised 50 lances, 10 petronels and 200 foot from associates such as William Darrell, a Wiltshire gentleman, to whom he promised not only his own favour but access to and thanks from the Queen.100 This disrupted the trained bands, since many of the men called up by noblemen were trained bandsmen (which casts interesting light on the bandsmen’s social status); Lord Chandos complained that his Gloucestershire cavalry had been seriously depleted in this way.101 Nevertheless,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties these would have been valuable troops: the cavalry raised by the nobility and gentry had proved to be of impressive quality in the Netherlands.102 Little is known about where they camped or lodged, or how many there were; possibly these troops were the reason that London was, in the council’s words of 4 August, ‘greatly embarrassed with troops, sent to it from divers parts of the country, for whom no fit entertainment in lodging and food can be made’.103 In all, Hunsdon’s establishment – foot, horse and officers – cost only £739 8s 5d, out of the £26,000 budgeted for the land campaign, less than the £783 14s 8d the Essex–Kent army was estimated to cost daily.104 Besides explaining its neglect in the historiography, this was a success for the government’s careful and flexible planning. There was some risk involved, but the council had to manage their resources carefully. As mentioned earlier, there were several days between the point at which the Armada could attack the south coast and the point at which the joint Spanish attack could be launched on Kent or Essex, and the council used this to its advantage, in effect recycling many of the troops which would have defended the south coast. Many of the troops intended to form Hunsdon’s army were from the south coast: Dorset (1,000 troops), Somerset (4,000), Hampshire (2,000), Sussex (2,500), and Wiltshire (2,300). When the council called these troops up, on 23 July, it was aware that an attack on the south coast remained possible. A strategy withdrawing troops from the defence there would thus seem absurd, even assuming the county authorities would execute it. In practice, however, the troops were ordered to arrive in London only from 6 August, fourteen days later, so they would not need to leave their counties for several days. If the Armada did attack the south coast, plans would obviously change, and the mutual-aid plan would come into operation. But assuming, as the council did, that there would be no attack on the south coast, the counties would be well aware of this by the time they had to leave for London, and so would have no qualms about leaving their homes undefended. This double use of the troops is illustrated by the example of Sussex. When the first alarm came, the lord lieutenant, Buckhurst, formed his troops up into a camp, in case of an attack on the coast which never came. Meanwhile, on 23 July, the council ordered 2,000 troops sent from Sussex to London, to arrive on 6 August. Since this journey did not take two weeks, they clearly did not need to leave at once; Buckhurst issued final orders for the mobilisation eight days later, on 31 July. The council had by then increased Sussex’s quota to 2,500 and postponed the deadline until 9 August, but they were all clearly still in Sussex – there is no sign whatsoever that 2,000 troops had already left, and 500 additional troops followed them separately. Buckhurst intended to arrange victuals at Reigate on 8 August and Croydon the day after, so they probably expected to leave on 6 August.105 Thus the south coast militias were available to defend the coast against any attack by the Armada itself, but once

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia this danger was passed, they had time to march to London and join Hunsdon’s army. The fact that the council planned from the beginning to use these troops twice has not been evident to historians, possibly because the full text of the council’s instructions (which clarify the point) is not readily available, and only a précis was entered into the council register. A letter of 27 July to the Dorset deputy lieutenants, however, notes that ‘forasmuch … that the said Fleet was past that coast, they should not faiell to put in readiness with all speed and send up to Stratford in the Bow the thowsand footmen … appointed by their Lordships’ letters’.106 This arrangement not only satisfied the natural desire of the south coast counties to defend their own homes, but also delayed the mobilisation as long as possible, thus minimising expense.107 Hunsdon’s army, then, was only intended to come into being after a landing had been made. This was certainly not ideal, being dictated mainly by financial and political considerations, but it effectively made best use of the available resources, and allowed a degree of tactical flexibility. The council relied on the forces on the spot wherever the Spanish landed (expected to be in Essex) to delay the enemy whilst the principal army, Hunsdon’s, assembled. Flexibility was, indeed, the key to the entire mobilisation. The council had no qualms about changing its orders to the county militias, or even stating straightforwardly that it had not quite decided what to do with them.108 On 1 August, when the council received news that the Armada had been sighted off the Norfolk coast, the troops from Norfolk and Suffolk were told to halt their advance ‘untyll it may appere what course the said Fleete will take’; they were subsequently diverted from London to Stratford or Tilbury.109 The decisive factor was not only the council’s planning, but also the ability of the governing structures to cope with rapidly changing orders. A clearer picture of the relationship between Hunsdon’s army and the forces in the counties also allows a better estimate to be made of the size of the defence forces. Existing estimates have been subject to a variety of problems. It is not always recognised that the 27,000 troops along the south coast were not all discrete from the 27,150 ordered to form Hunsdon’s army: these men have often been counted in both places, thus overestimating the total number of troops.110 The Sussex troops, for example, are counted both as part of the 4,000 defending Sussex and as 2,500 troops of Hunsdon’s army, which they cannot have been, since Sussex only had 4,000 armed men in total.111 On the other hand, 9,000 of the 10,000 London militia and 1,000 from Middlesex are often left out of calculations, because they were never mobilised.112 At the height of the alarm, the council had ordered the mobilisation of 38,150 men, with plans to set up armies of 11,000 in Essex, and 27,150 at London; 6,000 further troops (at the council’s estimate) were ready in Kent. To these can be added 10,000 further militia from London and Middlesex, which could

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties have been called up very quickly if necessary, and the forces of the nobility and clergy (nominally 5,331 foot and 2,169 horse), giving a total of 59,481 foot and 5,130 horse which were or could quickly be called up.113 This figure is somewhat lower than some estimates (the 76,000 quoted by Ian Friel, for example114), and does not represent the total number of troops available. Not all the south coast militias were called up, and nor were troops from Wales, the Marches, the North or north Midlands. Ultimately, the vagaries of sixteenth-century administration make it impossible to give definitive figures for the total defence forces: county muster certificates are almost invariably unreliable, incomplete or inconsistent in their terminology. Furthermore, in the event of an actual invasion, counties would likely have discovered more resources than they were prepared to admit to. Since every able-bodied man between the ages of 16 and 60 was liable to militia service, the number of potential troops was in theory close to inexhaustible. In reality, the effective size of the militia was limited by the available weaponry and the organisation of the men into companies. It seems likely that, in the event of a prolonged campaign, existing militia units would have been augmented by whatever other troops and equipment were available across the country or from the Netherlands or Ireland. The total number of armed militia men, trained and untrained, came to around 100,000 men, with a majority of these being (nominally at least) trained.115 These would have been of widely varying quality, with the best likely to have been those from the south, the home counties and East Anglia, which were called up first; one would expect that the counties would have sent their best men first. Any reinforcements called up later would have been either poorer quality troops from this same area, or those from more remote areas which were in general poorer anyway. Thus reinforcements may have been of progressively diminishing quality. It remains to discuss the counties’ responses to the council’s mobilisation orders, which was, broadly speaking, prompt and willing. There were certainly reports of meanness and evasion: refusals to contribute in Sussex, reluctance in Middlesex; accusations (vigorously denied) that the Hertfordshire gentry sent horses inferior to those shown at musters.116 Elsewhere, however, there were reports of great enthusiasm: the Dorset gentry voluntarily upgraded their light horse to lances; Bedfordshire sent 50 more footmen than were required; and Leicester reported great willingness in his Essex troops.117 Indeed, the response was equally varied within counties: in Huntingdonshire, for example.118 This was the inevitable corollary of an amateur military force. However, on the surviving evidence, the overall response can at least be said to have been orderly and well organised. The county gentry were certainly keen to lead their troops out of the county, a mark of their sense of duty, if not an entirely welcome move to Leicester, who wanted to replace them with professional captains.119

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia Contrary to some assumptions, the council’s mobilisation orders did not necessarily require frantic urgency in the counties. They had had extensive advance warning of the crisis from the Queen and council, as we have seen, and had been effectively on amber alert since mid-June.120 Many lieutenants warned their deputies about what was to be expected of them; Hatton, for example, wrote four letters to his deputies in Northamptonshire in mid-July, urging them to have all things in readiness.121 Therefore the mobilisation orders of 23 July and afterwards will have come as no surprise. The one part of the mobilisation which was very hurried was the assembly of troops in the south coast counties in case of a landing by the Armada. In the south and south-west, news of the fleet’s sighting on 19 July reached many people before the council’s orders. George Carey established his camp on the Isle of Wight on 22 July, before the council knew of the Armada’s arrival.122 In the case of Wiltshire, the council dispatched the deputy lieutenant Sir Henry Knyvet from court to take command of the 2,000 troops to be sent up from the county. He sent orders ahead of him for the troops to rendezvous at Marlborough on 28 July. However, the other deputy lieutenant, Sir John Danvers, had heard ‘credible advertisement of the Spanish Fleet being nere unto our coast’ and acted on his own initiative, ordering mobilisation of the county forces. The JPs met on 27 July to work out the details, by which time the council’s orders would have arrived. 123 In most cases, receipt of the mobilisation orders was followed by several days of preparations during which final arrangements and finance were worked out. In Gloucestershire, as in Wiltshire, the JPs met to agree to raise a tax of £854 to cover the costs of the 1,500 men ordered up; this was increased after the council demanded a further 1,000 men on 28 July. On 30 July, the authorities in Gloucester held a muster to select 300 men as their contribution to the contingent; their armour was selected and packed into carts for the journey the following day. The men reported to the county rendezvous at Cirencester on 2 August, marched the following day to Fairford, then on 4 August to Dorchester (east of Abingdon), where they were reviewed by their lord lieutenant’s mother at Ewelme. However, ‘before ix of the clock on that munday [5 August] tidinges came from Sir Henry Poole lyenge at Henly that he had receaved speciall lettres from the Pryvie Counsaile that all the captaines with their bands should returne back into their cuntries and discharge their souldiers’.124 Thus, although the Gloucester city band’s Armada campaign never got further than Oxfordshire, the response from the local authorities seems impressive: the soldiers were selected from the band which had been trained several times earlier in 1588, their armour had been chosen and packed up for safe transport, they had been given coats and wages, and they were on schedule to arrive at London on time. It is true that some bandsmen bribed their way out of the trained band, which hardly

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties reflects well on the captains, but the lord lieutenant, Lord Chandos, promptly sent replacements.125 The Northamptonshire deputy lieutenants, normally some of the worst foot-draggers in the country, also responded reasonably well. They had hoped to get away with supplying only 400 soldiers, but the council called up all 600 trained bandsmen on 23 July. Over the next few days there was a good deal of last-minute preparation. Although little armour or weaponry was purchased, some was ‘trimmed’, or repaired, and a coat was bought for each man, at 15s each, a relatively generous allowance. The four bands of 150 men received four or five days training, at a cost of £200, plus ‘80 pounds of gunpowder for to practice by the way, as they marched towards London’. The men left Northampton on 31 July, and arrived at Islington, where they entered the Queen’s pay, on 2 August.126 As we have seen, these troops were some of the few who reached their destination, since the demobilisation began before many troops reached London. Most of the troops for Hunsdon’s army, 21,150 in all, were ordered to halt their advance on 3 August.127 Leicester was much more reluctant to send his troops home, ignoring the council’s requests to do so on 5 August, perhaps because of the Queen’s decision to visit the camp.128 On 17 August, however, the council ordered the camp dissolved altogether, and this time Leicester complied.129 Thus ended the English militia’s Armada campaign. In the light of this reassessment of the crisis, many of the criticisms of the mobilisation (notably those of Geoffrey Parker) appear overstated. The concentration of defence forces in Essex rather than Kent was not a matter of ignorance but a considered response to new intelligence which minimised the risk of a surprise attack. The disagreement between Sir Thomas Scott and Sir John Norreys over the disposition of forces in Kent is not sufficient evidence that there was serious confusion over strategy among the English commanders: Scott was not a professional soldier, and he owed his command to his local influence in east Kent, not his military experience.130 Nor was there confusion in the council’s orders; the specific example cited is based on a misread source.131 The overall management of the Queen and council was much more impressive than has been argued. The council sat every day from 22 July to 5 August, coordinating all aspects of the defence. The response to the movement of the Armada, with men called up from the south-west and south coast once the danger had passed, was successful. It is true that much of the detail seems to have been decided very late; the approach seems to have been to get as many troops as possible to London and then work out exactly what to do with them. This certainly allowed greater flexibility in disposing the troops, and whilst there was potential for confusion, the relatively small numbers of men involved made this less of a risk. Furthermore, Parma’s operations would have been very much on the hoof too.

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia On a broader level, the crisis allows an assessment of the overall success of Elizabethan military policy in preparing the country to repel an invasion. The command structures set up by the council in the years prior to the Armada – the lieutenancies in each county and the militia structures under their aegis – worked well in the crisis. Even the slackest, such as Northamptonshire’s, met the council’s demands. In many ways, the achievement of the trained bands campaign was not military but organisational. Leaving aside for the moment their military prowess, it provided a clear chain of command to relay orders to the trained bands captains and men. When called upon, the troops would (and did) turn out with their weapons, under designated leaders whom they knew, and assemble at the rendezvous points in a reasonably orderly fashion. As Hammer emphasises, it was the government’s confidence in this efficiency which allowed them to take the risk of partial mobilisation.132 This was indeed a success for the council’s efforts to create a network of command based on the lieutenancies. It has also been noted that the counties were well able to act on their own initiative, implementing the plans laid down in conjunction with military experts. To some extent, this answers Parker’s point about the lateness of many of the preparations, and it allowed the council to organise the mobilisation in the very last-minute way demanded by the national finances. The mobilisation had to be tailored to the available resources, and it was: to have repelled an invasion at the cost of bankruptcy would have been a pyrrhic victory, if the country was unable to defend against future attacks. Perhaps the most vexed point is the effectiveness and morale of the defenders. Clearly, an assessment of the trained bands’ military capability is difficult, since they were never tested in battle. Although they had some rudiments of military discipline, it is doubtful whether many of the troops were outstandingly well armed or trained; at the very least, the quality varied enormously. Perhaps crucially, few had experience of battle, whereas Parma’s troops were mostly veterans. On the other hand, the English forces must have contained an admixture of veterans of various wars too, and there was a sizeable pool of experienced officers available. As Parker rightly argues, a crucial factor would have been the level of determination in the defence by ordinary Englishmen. Anecdotal evidence supports Parker’s own case that there was strong anti-Spanish sentiment throughout. Many of the nobility and gentry expressed great willingness to contribute their services.133 Parker’s speculation over whether the English defenders of English towns would betray them to the Spanish – as the Catholic Sir William Stanley betrayed the Dutch Protestant town of Deventer – is hardly a direct comparison.134 One problem which may have become very serious in any prolonged campaign was the shortage of weapons, particularly of more modern types. In July 1588, the council had to despatch 2,000 pikes and 2,000 burgonets to the Essex trained bands, which would still not be enough. At the height of

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties the crisis, on 28 July, Hatton told Sir Richard Knightley, one of his Northamptonshire deputies, that the council was contemplating forming auxiliary units of archers. There was also a widespread shortage of powder. In this respect England appears underprepared in aspects which might easily have been remedied.135 It is impossible to be sure what would have happened had a successful landing been made. Certainly the English would have vastly outnumbered the Spanish, particularly in cavalry; they would have been reasonably well-equipped, and they would have had high morale and determination. On the other hand, there is no substitute for experience of battle, which most lacked. One interesting test of the militia’s effectiveness did come, however, in 1589–90, when 3,600 trained bandsmen were despatched from Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and London to the aid of Henry IV (as we will see, many of the trained men sent substitutes in their places). They faced appalling conditions, but these amateur troops performed ‘extremely well’, partly thanks to their Netherlands-seasoned officers.136 There can be little doubt that such men would have been yet more determined if they were fighting for their own Queen and country. AFTER THE ARMADA The repulsing of the Armada in 1588 by no means ended the threat of invasion, as subsequent years would prove, but the council’s hand in seeking compliance in the counties was inevitably weakened. It was well known that Spanish naval power was significantly diminished by the disastrous voyage, and despite the disappointing result of the Portugal voyage of 1589, the responsiveness of the gentry was reduced. The government might have used the comparatively high level of willingness shown in 1588 to raise the quality of the militia in the longer term. Although the crisis certainly encouraged the counties to implement many measures which the council had ordered previously, there is no sign that the council made a sustained effort to use the patriotic sentiment stirred in 1588 as momentum towards further improvement for the future. This may have happened in some localities, however, on local initiative: the earl of Huntingdon, for example, was encouraging individuals in the North to purchase new armour.137 The council, however, seems to have been glad to be able to reduce the pressure on the counties, and on the whole it honoured its promise not to hold the 1588 mobilisation as a precedent. Thus whilst the council had to strike a balance between allowing some relaxation of the burdens whilst maintaining a base of readiness against future attempts, the early 1590s saw significantly reduced activity in the militia. The orders for musters in summer 1589 thus sought to minimise trouble and expense in the counties: musters were to be held locally to be ‘leaste

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia troublsome’ and training, ‘a thinge verie chardgable’, was left to local discretion, so long as the men, their armour and their ability to use their weapons was sufficient: clearly a tacit licence to relax.138 Musters were certainly held in some places, though whether training was carried out is more doubtful.139 The year 1590 brought something of a renewal of concern. The council gave orders for spring musters on 2 January, and several council letters suggest a genuine fear of another invasion attempt. Lord lieutenants were ordered to review all of their defence preparations.140 Again, there were definitely preparations in Kent: some of the trained bands had weapons renewed, but since it took over a month for Cobham to forward the orders to his deputies, this does not suggest frantic urgency.141 The Gloucester authorities also renewed their band; it was viewed by Lord Chandos on 9 February, after which the deputy comissioners were constrained to spend two days after viz the xvj & xvijth of February in applienge the souldiers to their armour, & for supplieng of all these defaultes, by which meanes all the armours weare brought into good order & the men in full readines.142

The arrangements for the defence of Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight were also renewed.143 These orders were clearly considered insufficient, since further musters were ordered in autumn, with the council fighting against complacency. They acknowledged that Spanish attack had been averted that year, by God’s goodness and the Queen’s navy, and that therefore ‘yt might be that manie of her subjects had ben ledd into some kinde of securytie and so had neglected to keepe their forces in state convenient’; yet the Spanish were building new ships and making great preparations: another attack next year was all but inevitable.144 A particular point of weakness was the damage that the trained bands of Kent, Sussex and Hampshire had sustained by being sent to France in the winter of 1589–90 to aid Henry IV; a great deal of work was carried out in Kent in August, September and October to remedy these losses.145 These musters seem, therefore, to have been taken slightly more seriously. In Gloucester, on 25 September, ‘the lord lieutenant required a speciall vewe of the trained band, and the armors in the Colledge Churchyard from which his Lordship would not be removed’, and a general muster followed on 28 October and 2 November, with defaulters being imprisoned.146 Even the clergy carried out views of their armour provision: papers of the archdeaconry of St Albans show that views were held in both March and October 1590.147 This continued concern was reflected in invasion scares in May 1591 and August-September 1592.148 From 1590, however, there was a real diminution in both the urgency in the council’s orders and the intensity of musters in the counties, especially as the council’s attention shifted elsewhere (primarily to the war in France) and its enforcement became much less intense. The council

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties ordered general musters in June 1591, for example, but failed to enforce them; by March 1592, they seem to have forgotten about these orders, and referred instead to those ordered in August 1590.149 The 1592 orders showed slightly more commitment: they were blusteringly worded, threatened to summon negligent officials before the council, and were specially tailored to each county’s state of readiness.150 Yet they seem to have been widely ignored: the Gloucester lieutenancy book reports with satisfaction that ‘all this yeare there were not any musters not trayninge of souldiers nor any other extraordinarye busines nor taxacions of moneys’.151 No evidence has been found for musters ordered in 1593 at all (despite the injunctions of the lord keeper and the Queen herself, at the dissolution of Parliament in April, for members of both houses to exert themselves in the musters). There is evidence for musters in both Kent and Sussex in 1594, but no council orders have been found, so they may have been on local initiative. Indeed, Lord Cobham, in orders to his deputies in Kent, referred to ‘the discontinuaunce of musters, in Kent since Anno 1591’.152 Throughout the early 1590s, then, and especially after 1591, the counties’ lack of interest was paralleled by the council’s failure to enforce musters effectively. The council replied to occasional queries from individual counties, but close and detailed supervision, such as that which took place prior to the Armada, was much reduced. This reflected the shift in focus of the war to France and the support of Henry IV against Spanish intervention, which made troop levies for overseas service the priority. This is very evident in the Hertfordshire muster book, for example, which details an intensive sequence of musters and armour provision between 1583 and 1588, but between 1588 and 1596 is concerned entirely with troop levies for France, the Netherlands and Ireland.153 The year 1595 marked a real renewal in the tempo of militia activity. The intervention in France largely came to an end, with Henry IV securely established. Instead, the directly Anglo-Spanish aspect of the war came back into focus, with the 1595 voyage of Drake and Hawkins the first major English attack on Spain itself since 1589.154 The threat of further Spanish attacks on England was rekindled. It was well known that the Spanish navy had been rebuilt in the years following the disaster of 1588, and the danger was vividly demonstrated when, on 24 July 1595, four Spanish galleys from Blavet in Brittany raided and burned Mousehole, Newlyn and Penzance in Cornwall.155 The Spanish capture of Calais in April 1596 was equally alarming. All this revived the fear of Spanish attack during 1595–96; in August 1595, Thomas Lake was ‘in expectation of being attempted next year … We ground our apprehension on knowledge of preparation in Spain far greater than in the year ’88, and on advertisements of their purpose’.156 There was also a false alarm about a Spanish attack on Ireland.157 Thus, both the council and the

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia gentry’s level of interest in defence preparations was certainly raised after 1595, and the hope that the intensive effort of the years before 1588 might be unique was quashed. The council began to renew its focus on militia affairs from the autumn of 1595.158 It did not seek major reform; there was no pressure to increase the size of the trained bands, and pressure to upgrade stocks of armour was minimal. Nor did the council attempt to raise the standard of training qualitatively – though they did try to ensure that their earlier orders were executed. The council focussed on ongoing maintenance of the trained bands, in line with the level of threat, as we have seen. The council’s approach shifted, then, from the innovation of the 1570s and 1580s, with successive periods of pressure to implement trained bands, to retrenchment and enforcement during the period of wartime. To this end, it was in autumn 1595 that the gaps which had arisen in the lieutenancies since 1590 were dealt with; the deaths of the earls of Shrewsbury and Warwick (1590), Hatton (1591), Derby, Sussex and Lord Grey (1593) and Lord Chandos (1594) can hardly have helped militia business in those years. Of these, only Sussex and Chandos were replaced, and in the mean time the council simply sent orders to the former deputy lieutenants, whose authority was dubious.159 This prompted the new-style muster commissions described in chapter 1, which reassured local gentry that their actions were legally warranted.160 This allowed lieutenancy business to go on essentially as before, and marked a real change in administrative tempo in the militia. Local correspondence of 1595 includes many references to what had been done in 1588, 1589 or 1591, and it is clear that both at the centre and in the counties, reins had to be picked up which had been neglected for years; the deputy lieutenants of Essex reported in October 1595 that their bands had not been mustered since 1592.161 This would have been very damaging; the trained bands were insubstantial institutions at the best of times, and such neglect would in many places have reduced them to nothing.162 The loss of muster rolls, death or removal of bandsmen or, worse, officers, the decay of armour or its use for service abroad, and the decline of institutional memory probably led to many trained bands virtually ceasing to exist. William Cromer’s band of fifty Kentish light horsemen had, he said, been reduced to no more than five or six over the course of ten years.163 In Surrey, bands from the London suburbs were so decayed that it would be impossible to refill them, and they would have to be merged; five companies needed new captains.164 There are signs, too, that the Northamptonshire bands were restarted largely from nothing, and that those in Norfolk had substantial renewal in 1599.165 Thus many trained bands would have had to be, in effect, started from scratch, with considerable effort and expense, probably scarcely less than was required to set up trained bands in the 1580s. On the other hand, the

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Lancashire and Cheshire bands seem to have had a reasonably continuous existence through the 1590s; there was clearly a great deal of regional variation.166 Trained bands had to be continually maintained if they were not to continually erode; this clearly did not happen in the early 1590s, but the situation improved after 1595. One clear sign that local authorities were becoming more energetic is the increase in complaints about having to provide armour, or even refusals to do so, in some cases from JPs and peers.167 The council ordered musters on 20 August 1595, and they were taken seriously in the counties, helped by the appointment of new muster-masters. Musters and training went ahead in many places, amongst which Lancashire and Cheshire are especially well-documented. Here, successive views of trained bands were held, as well as general musters, and musters of horse; two training days were scheduled for each trained band, and money was raised to cover the cost. Both counties certified their proceedings to the council in November.168 Further council letters followed on 9 November, ordering, amongst other things, a general upgrading of weapons: billmen were to be replaced by pikes, and bowmen by muskets or calivers. This was definitely put into practice in Cheshire and Devon.169 The council ordered further musters and training in March 1596; again, the Lancashire commissioners responded energetically, with each trained band training for three days in May and four in June–July.170 In summary, this was a period of renewal for the militia after long neglect. There were also a number of militia reform efforts at this time. The most important, and, indeed, the only major reform effort of the war years, after the trained bands, were the reforms which the council attempted to impose on the counties in May 1597, the brainchild of the earl of Essex. The essence of the plan was a further extension of the principle behind the trained bands, to concentrate resources on an even smaller number of troops. Twenty-five southern counties were to form special militia companies, just 100–500 men in each county, coming to 6,000 altogether.171 The council appointed captains for each company, as well as superintendents, responsible for three companies each, often crossing county boundaries. This was a remarkable new command structure, clearly intended to improve the chain of command, as well as its quality. Theoretically, this was all to operate under the aegis of the lieutenancies, but most of the captains were nominated by Essex.172 This was potentially a fruitful approach to militia reform, but in fact the reforms were effectively stillborn, since, although they were described in the Queen’s orders as ‘for the defence of our realme’, the majority of the troops were within months ordered up for active service on the Azores voyage.173 Whether this change of plan was intended from the beginning remains unclear, but it meant that the reforms did not survive the year.174 However, a more cautious imitation was implemented the following year. In March

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia 1598, the council introduced muster-masters (again) and also the innovation of ‘general surveyors’ of the county forces. It is not clear what exactly these were supposed to do, but they may well have been in the model of the 1597 superintendants; essentially, it was another attempt to improve standards in the localities by sending in an ‘outsider’. It is certainly notable that many of the superintendants were of substantial status, such as Lord Cromwell in Norfolk.175 From August 1595, then, to 1599, the level of readiness demanded by the council remained high. There were repeated invasion scares in November 1595, November 1596, October 1597 and August 1599.176 In August 1595, a possible landing was expected and Kent was ordered to ready 600 of the trained bands for a ‘special service’; in November, this was raised to 6,000 (not all, presumably, trained bandsmen), plus 600 pioneers. At the same time, 4,000 were readied in each of Sussex, Surrey and Essex and 3,000 in London.177 October and November 1596 saw a prolonged crisis, made worse because Spanish intentions only became apparent after most of the navy had been laid up for winter: troops were mobilised, and deputies, captains of castles and so on were ordered to their counties.178 The scare of October 1597 never got beyond orders to be in readiness (fortunately, since Parliament was in session).179 On each of these occasions, the scare proved to be illusory or news came that the Spanish expedition had failed before it reached the Channel, and the mobilisations were aborted fairly quickly. August 1599, however, saw a full-scale mobilisation which exceeded in size and duration that of 1588.180 The overall strategy was similar to that of 1588: the county trained bands were on standby in case of landings; the most vulnerable point, Kent, was defended by an army of 10,000 men, with other forces able to reinforce it as necessary. A third army of 36,100 men, analogous to Hunsdon’s army in 1588, would be assembled to defend the Queen and capital if needed – as in 1588, it was not. The only substantial difference was that there was nothing comparable to the Tilbury camp; apart from the 10,000 Kent and Sussex men stationed in Kent, the rest were camped in the villages around London. The troops called up remained in pay for longer than in 1588: they entered into pay between 13 and 19 August, and were continued until either 19 or 22 August.181 Troops were also summoned from the clergy, the nobility and senior gentry; powder and munitions were supplied to forts, beacons were watched, recusants supervised, provost marshals appointed. The earl of Nottingham was made lieutenant general of the whole of the south of England for the occasion. The confused intelligence which prompted the crisis meant that the council’s orders changed repeatedly and demanded several mobilisations and demobilisations, and whilst the response had inevitable elements of chaos, it was again willing and eventually proved reasonably impressive.182

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Taking the period 1595–99 as a whole, however, the council’s ability to generate substantial amounts of activity is relatively impressive, particularly when the factors operating against it are considered: a war in its second decade, a very intensive period of levies for both Ireland and the Netherlands, and some of the worst harvests of the century in 1594–97.183 The year 1599 saw the last major invasion scare (although there was still some concern in 1601), after which the militia subsided again into widespread inactivity, with the council drastically scaling down its demands. No militia activity has been found for 1600, and although musters were ordered in 1601 and 1602, there was very little urgency: ‘God be thancked, there be small cause of feare, or doubt at this tyme of any forreyne enemyes, whatsoever theire preparations be, or are said to be.’184 The council by now saw no need for extensive preparations; yet their efforts (particularly, perhaps, the second period of intense enforcement in the later 1590s) seem to have created real momentum in the counties, convincing them that the trained bands were not a one-off exercise for the campaign of 1588, but were intended to be permanent. Thus after 1599, the council had at times to hold back the counties: after their orders of April 1601, they sent a second letter, saying that it was not necessary to train ‘soe often as heretofore yowe have used’; only a general muster was required with at most one or two days’ training, to minimise costs.185 They told the Somerset deputies that providing new coats for their 4,000 trained bands was an unnecessary expense, and later the same year, they effectively washed their hands of militia maintenance by saying that the Queen hoped that ‘from henceforth yowe shall see theis thinges done under your charge withoute any newe directions’.186 In most cases, this had a predictable result, and few counties returned certificates after the April 1601 musters. Yet the council’s need to hold back some over-eager local authorities is striking, showing that the momentum for activity in the militia did not come solely from the centre; it could work both ways, and just as local governors sometimes disregarded the council’s warnings as exaggerated, local concerns about military readiness could outstrip the council’s.187 THE NATURE OF COMPLIANCE IN THE MILITIA Having looked at the chronological development of militia maintenance, it remains to examine some aspects of the militia more thematically. The trained bands policy is of great importance in the history of the English militia, but it is also highly significant in terms of assessing local responses to government initiative. This was a test of the council’s ability to continuously enforce a major new policy, involving significant elements of work and expense in the counties, over two decades. In this section the extent of local adherence to the coun-

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia cil’s orders is tested through analyses of several aspects of the trained bands, including their composition, stability of personnel, equipment and training. These were fields in which the counties could obey the letter of their orders without necessarily endorsing the spirit of them, and they therefore provide tests of the depth of counties’ willingness to cooperate with the council. First, the composition of the bands. The council intended the trained bands to be composed of men of relatively high social status, ‘farmers and owners’, in effect the ‘middling sorts’ of yeomen, small landowners, and gentlemen’s sons who were an appreciable cut above the ordinary militia or recruits for foreign service.188 There were several reasons for this: they were men with a stake in the society they were intended to defend; it was safer from the domestic point of view to arm the middle classes rather than the ‘baser sort’; and on a practical level, being landowners, they were less likely to disrupt the band’s organisation by moving away.189 Secondly, there was a particular religious concern: efforts were to be made to enrol ‘sound men cleare from pappistes’ or men ‘having able bodies and well affected in relligion’; as we have seen, this was the reason for the oath being administered.190 Finally, they should have been able to cover the costs of their own training, thus freeing the county from that charge.191 The exemption of trained bands from service abroad could be used to attract the right sort of people, and could be used as a threat: ‘in case they shall withdrawe them selves from this speciall service, there shalbe a noate taken of them to thend they maie bee emploied in foraine service’.192 Therefore the extent to which the middling sorts were willing (or could be persuaded) to participate in the trained bands could have a significant impact on their effectiveness. Despite some cynicism on the part of historians as to how accurate this was, there is substantial evidence to back it up. The horse bands were almost inevitably composed of gentry who were capable of serving as such, and it is suggestive that during the Armada crisis, noblemen withdrew many retainers from the trained bands to serve directly under them, suggesting that they were of some status.193 On the level of the foot, too, Lord Cobham assumed that trained bandsmen were the prosperous and settled inhabitants whom he described as ‘the countrie’ and sought to exempt from service overseas; William Lambarde wrote in 1587 that most trained bandsmen were ‘householders of the better sort’ or ‘the wealthier sort’; in 1588 the Derbyshire bands were noted as men of ‘birth creditt and qualitie’; and as late as 1599, a correspondent from Lancashire or Cheshire noted that his county’s trained bands were ‘the richest farmers’ and best freeholders’ sons of the whole shire’.194 Local officials regularly gave orders to this effect; the Cheshire muster commissioners, for example, ordered the trained bands captains in 1595 that yf you have any servaunts in your Bande wee requyre you hereby to exchaunge them for householders or such of whose resiancie in the townes where they nowe enhabite there may be some assuraunce, for soe is the Counsails direccion therein.195

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties There is evidence in muster rolls that gentlemen serving in foot bands too, in Kent, Norfolk and Hertfordshire, often as junior officers.196 The extent to which armour was carried in the militia by those who owned it, or their sons, also indicates participation by higher social groups, since only a wealthy minority provided arms. In one Norfolk band in 1602, for example, 48 of the 209 trained bandsmen bore their own armour, or armour provided by someone of the same surname.197 Similarly, 45 per cent of Edmund Style’s Kentish trained bandsmen carried their own or their father’s armour (39 per cent had armour owned by other people, and 16 per cent had common armour).198 Other incidental mentions about trained bandsmen indicate substantial status: Richard Bagot noted in 1590 that some trained bandsmen were absent from musters ‘at London upon occasion of Sutes’, and the Lancashire commissioners wrote in 1599 that the trained bands did not need horses set aside for them, since ‘sutche are appointed for trayned souldiers as have horses of there owne provition’.199 These fragments of evidence of substantial men serving in the bands may also indicate broader trends, since prosperous types would hardly want to mix with the hoi polloi. An analysis of the muster rolls of Henry Capel’s Hertfordshire trained band provides a similar picture. By comparing the nominal roll of the trained band with the general muster rolls (which are unusually detailed and give evidence of social status) and with taxation records (which give evidence of the economic elite of each village), it emerges that a surprisingly high proportion of the trained soldiers appear to derive from the subsidypaying classes.200 In the Hundred of Edwinstree, there were just 192 inhabitants liable for the subsidy in 1598, around 15 per cent of the 1,304 men recorded in the general muster of 1587. Of these 192 subsidypayers, 50 (26 per cent of subsidypayers) can be linked to a member of the furnished (armed) band in 1587 through an identical name or a name sufficiently close to be a son or brother. Forty-three of these were in the trained section (47 per cent of the trained band) and 7 were in the untrained (8 per cent). Thus almost half of the trained bandsmen were from the taxpaying classes, and around 27 per cent of the band as a whole. Those bandsmen not coming from amongst the subsidypayers tended to be artisans of various kinds, householders or servants, seldom labourers or those from the lowest ranks. As ever, the overall picture must have varied over time and place. The earl of Nottingham was not very impressed with the trained bands he commanded during the 1599 invasion scare.201 In 1602, the earl of Hertford was very dismayed to find the Somerset trained bands ‘compact of many hired persons, menservants and of inhabitants of the meaner sort’.202 It may be that the national mood of crisis occasioned by the Armada pushed the involvement of the better sort above the usual level; it is striking that gentlemen are found in the Hertfordshire bands only in 1588. The veteran soldier Sir John Smythe claimed that

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia gentry participation was declining by 1590, and Burghley ordered his deputies the same year that it was more realistic to allow wealthy men simply to provide the armour, to be borne by ‘their sonnes, or else with some other such able man’; since ‘by late experience at Tilbery, it was founde … that those riche men, which having been daintely fedd and warme lodged, when thei came thether, to lye abrode in the fielde, were worse able to endure the same’.203 As with all aspects of the lieutenancies’ work, results were clearly mixed, but the assumption that the trained bands contained a significant admixture of substantial men seems justified, even if this peaked in 1588.204 At the heart of this is whether local governors treated trained bands as standing institutions to be regularly tended, or as occasional events to be pulled together at infrequent times of emergency. Certainly examples of very conscientious local officials have been found: the papers of John Daniell, a trained band captain in Cheshire, show that he took considerable interest in his band. There survives detailed correspondence between him and the deputy lieutenants on candidates to serve in his band, and he even makes reference to ‘sutors unto me to serve under my conduct’.205 Another important question is whether the trained bands membership was stable from year to year, training to training, as the council wished.206 Stable membership would allow the trained bandsmen to learn their drills, how to handle their weapons, who their officers were, what plans were laid down in case of invasion and so on – even more so as the council became more prescriptive about how training should be carried out. The council feared that this was not adhered to, however, complaining in 1590 that ‘the chardges in trayning had ben in manner cast awaie because the parties enrolled and appointed had not continewed in the bandes, whereby throughe often trayninge they might have growne to be perfect shott’.207 Here, too, there is evidence of a very varied degree of compliance. A comparison of two muster rolls from a north Derbyshire trained band of 170 men from November 1585 and November 1587 reveals that only 53 of the men trained at the first muster reappeared at the second – slightly less than one third.208 After the first muster, however, Francis Leak, a JP who had taken part, travelled to Sheffield to complain to the lord lieutenant, Shrewsbury, about the handling of the muster by the deputy lieutenant, John Manners. ‘Moste of the men’, he said, ‘were Rogs and not sufficient. And ther was not twentie able men amongst them according to the Precepts And that the said John Manners did not his dewtie therein’.209 This may, then, have been something approaching a worst case. Similar, albeit fragmentary, evidence remains for the parish of Lambeth in Surrey. Thirteen days of training or musters are recorded in 1588. Each time, Lambeth sent two men, and although one Christopher Fenner was sent each time, he had several different companions.210 In 1594, one Kent captain noted that 52 of his bandsmen (plus 93 of their sets of

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties armour) were dead or removed since the previous musters, probably those of 1590; his band cannot be identified, but it likely contained 150–200 men.211 Clearly, the council’s orders were scarcely adhered to on these occasions.212 Other muster rolls tell a much more positive story, however. In northeast Hertfordshire, of the 303 men mustered in April 1588, 239 (79 per cent) had been at the previous muster in December 1587.213 A later sample, from muster rolls of June 1602 and September 1605, reveals a continuity rate of 71 per cent – remarkably impressive, over an interval of over three years.214 Even more impressive, perhaps, in a comparison of muster rolls of John Daniell’s hundred-strong trained band from Cheshire, from May 1588 and November 1596: five officers and at least 51 men are listed in both cases – again, remarkable, across a period of eight years, and despite the neglect of the militia in the early 1590s.215 In some places, then, the trained bands became reasonably stable, much as the council intended, which in turn increased the effectiveness of their training and their worth as soldiers. Overall, there was a very mixed degree of compliance with instructions, which obviously compromised the value of much of the training. Local compliance was often more in form than in substance. It would perhaps be a mistake to be too critical of the local authorities, however, particularly in more remote areas. The Hertfordshire band came from a relatively small area, but the muster commissioners in Lancashire sound more overwhelmed than negligent when they reported that ‘upon everye viewe wee doe finde soe greate alteracion of them by death and otherwise’. The same would have applied for north Derbyshire.216 EQUIPMENT The factor which most limited the number of fighting men available was the supply of armour.217 Musters invariably reported far more able men than armour to furnish them, and local officials constantly complained about the difficulty of making men provide armour. Furthermore, armour supplies inevitably declined continuously, as equipment decayed, broke or became outdated, or was used to equip troop levies.218 Strangely, however, the council did not place especial emphasis on increasing the armour available, or even upgrading armour. The only major shift was in November 1595, the beginning of the second period of invasion scares, when the council ordered the counties to upgrade bows and bills in the trained bands to calivers and pikes, and there is evidence that local authorities made efforts to enforce this.219 Despite this, and perhaps surprisingly, there was in fact steady improvement in the quantity and quality of armour available over the period, and local authorities implemented major upgrades of armour provision, even at great expense, without undue difficulty, as we will see.

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia The structure whereby armour supplies were made available for use by the militia was a peculiar one. Despite increasing government control over the trained bands, the armour used by the militia mostly remained privately owned. The council had not required trained bands to purchase new weaponry when they were set up, although some lord lieutenants (such as the earl of Derby in Lancashire and Cheshire) opted to do so.220 As we have seen, provision of armour was regulated by the 1558 statute, whereby individuals had to provide armour in quantity and type according to their wealth or social status and additionally, armour was to be provided by local communities (in effect the parish or township), ‘at their common chardges and expenses’.221 Thus armour supplies were mostly privately owned and kept in its owners’ homes, but had to be made available for views, training and so on, often several times a year. Armour was typically not borne by its owner himself, either because, as the head of a household, he was too old, or because individuals provided armour for more than one person. Ideally, the armour would be borne by the owner’s sons or servants, but this was not always the case, and if not, the militiaman had to ‘repaire to the dwellinge howses of suche persons, whose armour and weapon he is appoynted to weare and use (being private armour), or else, to such other place, where the common armour shall be kept [often the parish church]’ before heading to the muster.222 This was clearly cumbersome, and armour kept in this way was more likely to deteriorate, be lost, removed out of the county, or damaged in transit.223 Nevertheless, it appears to have been the norm, probably because the owners naturally wanted to keep possession of their property. It was the responsibility of deputy lieutenants or muster commissioners to enforce the laws on armour provision; an important function of musters was to check that individuals and communities had ready the armour with which they were charged. Those who failed to show armour for inspection were ordered to make good their defects before a second view was taken some weeks later. There were two main problems here. Firstly, the assessments of individuals’ wealth upon which armour assessments were based were subsidy ratings, which were almost invariably far too low. Even had this not been the case, however, the 1558 statute prescribed weapons which were largely obsolete, so even implementing it to the letter would not have met the council’s demands. The council never resolved, or even directly tackled, these problems, instead relying on local officials to bridge the gap between their demands and legal reality through their own initiative. The key approach, as in many aspects of the lieutenancies’ work, was persuasion.224 We have seen some of the rhetorical strategies which could be employed to this end, and there were certain plausible lines of attack available. The prevalence of underassessments for the subsidy could be exploited

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties as moral pressure and as a threat; the council recommended threatening to raise low subsidy assessments, although it stressed that armour should not be imposed on those who were genuinely worth less than the statutory income brackets.225 Armour purchases could also be encouraged by centrally-appointed muster-masters or military inspectors, as in the Yorkshire example described below, or by recommending suppliers, who in some cases sold armour at the Queen’s price, below market rate.226 Much of the armour used by the late Elizabethan militia was provided by this mixture of law and persuasion.227 The Cambridgeshire deputy lieutenants refer to armour provided by ‘lawe, commaundment or consentt’; in Hertfordshire there was armour ‘aswell … by the lawe as otherwise’, and the Lancashire commissioners mention ‘Light horsses furnished aswell by statute as of good will.’228 Often threats or coercion must have been used: it would have been difficult to resist such pressure from men as powerful as lord and deputy lieutenants. But this is not the whole story. The references to ‘goodwill’ suggest more than threats, and William Lambarde adverted in 1587 to individuals who, although ‘they were not compellable by lawe (in respect of their abilities)’ to provide armour, ‘have bene contented (for testification of their dutifull mindes) to provyde and use the same, when many (of better substaunce then they) wold hardly come to that, which by lawe they ought.’ Such men were ‘of all others most worthy to be cherished’, providing out of their ‘free myndes and chearefull readynesse’. These comments suggest that local burdens were met partly by genuine goodwill, perhaps towards the local community, perhaps towards the regime and its political or religious policies.229 Armour provision certainly improved markedly over the period. Part of this related to ongoing maintenance of the trained bands, perhaps encouraged by their captains, but it was common for local officials to improve armour stocks by mounting a drive within the locality or county for a general upgrade of armour. In January 1588, for example, local authorities in Hertfordshire imposed an ‘increase of corseletes and muskettes onelie, aswell upon particuler persons as townships and hamlettes’. A total of 41 muskets and 41 corslets were imposed, a considerable upgrade for the area’s 300–strong trained band, and these were state of the art weapons: muskets were still rare in 1588. This was a remarkable display of forwardness, but seems to have been widely replicated. In 1589 the earl of Shrewsbury sought to have 600 ‘mete’ individuals in Staffordshire provide corslets and calivers; later the same year there were still ‘manye defectes’ in the programme, but this implies a base of compliance. Similar efforts were conducted in Kent, Surrey and Gloucester.230 In these cases, then, specific individuals were ordered or persuaded to furnish themselves with particular equipment. Alternatively, purchases could be made communally, treating the trained bands as a common county resource, an approach neither envisaged by the

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia statute nor advocated by the council (though they did not oppose it).231 Many counties evidently decided that this was the most appropriate method, however. In Lancashire, Cheshire and Gloucester in 1587, armour for the trained bands was bought from London, presumably at common expense.232 In Yorkshire, the arrival in 1599 of Sir Edward Yorke as muster-master, following a period of neglect of the militia, triggered a major reform programme, with the purchase from London of no fewer than 1,905 sets of modern corslets and muskets for the trained bands at common charges, costing the massive sum of £3,752 10s.233 The same year, Cheshire spent over £200 on new armour for their 600–strong trained bands.234 In 1595, the Lancashire muster commissioners raised a general rate partly for ‘suply of defects of armor & munycyon in the trayned & selected bands’.235 Particularly towards the end of the period, then, the view that trained bands’ armour ought to be communal was becoming more widespread, a significant step. One of the advantages of this approach may well have been that they were perceived as fair, since individuals would have been less likely to feel that they were being singled out for an expensive contribution. The system that arose, then, was extremely untidy and often close to nonsensical. In the absence of accurate records of wealth, rating was probably vague, based on general perceptions of individuals’ wealth as well as patronage, favouritism or malice.236 One especially peculiar but very common practice was joint provision of equipment by two or more people – in the case of a horseman, by as many as six people, inevitably an approach calculated to lead to confusion and conflict.237 Other problems arose from the use of provision by persuasion, since armour bought over and above the statute could not be compelled to be presented at musters, and local officials sometimes tried to enforce the Marian statute alongside voluntary provision, thus punishing the more willing.238 The situation arose from the breakdown of the assumptions on which the 1558 statute was based, that individuals typically owned weapons and used them, and could therefore serve in person. Instead, an approach based on taxpaying was increasingly, but untidily, arising, which in its more sensible form led to communal armour purchase by the shire as a whole, funded by a general tax, and in its more absurd outcomes led to shared provision. As in so many areas, the regime adapted existing systems, however messily, rather than attempting major reform. One particular downside of this essentially voluntary system was that it was very difficult to pursue those who were unwilling to participate. The 1558 statute allowed fines to be imposed for failure to provide armour, but no example has been found of this being enforced, perhaps because the armour specified was no longer useful. Non-cooperation was inevitable; a 1594 list of men not providing armour in Kent includes several gentlemen and men

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties assessed at between £8 and £30 in land in the subsidy, indicating very prosperous gentry.239 Under a voluntary system, the status of enforcement was problematic. Summoning offenders before deputies or JPs for an intimidating talking-to must often have been effective, and some lieutenants summarily imprisoned offenders.240 Ultimately, however, this essentially prerogativebased administration could only be enforced by the council itself, which was ill-equipped to do so on a detailed level.241 Yet despite all this it was clearly effective, since muster certificates show that stocks of armour, especially up-to-date weapons such as muskets and corslets, increased substantially over the period. Muskets, in particular, provide a castiron test of voluntary compliance, since these were not even mentioned in the statute; any provision of muskets can only have been accomplished by persuasion, which Burghley was encouraging as early as the Armada crisis.242 In Lancashire, by 1595 the untrained section of the militia included 235 muskets and 904 calivers (aside from the trained band equipment), most of which must have been bought since the war began, which implies that several hundred men decided or were persuaded to purchase these expensive items.243 By 1602, the 4,000 Norfolk trained bands were reported to include 40 muskets, 40 corslets and 20 calivers for every hundred men, and the muster roll of one band for which detailed records survive shows that of 209 men, 95 had muskets and 93 corslets.244 Therefore whilst it is not clear how such people were persuaded to make these investments, they did in fact do so; possibly the threats to raise subsidy ratings mentioned in chapter 2 were used here.245 Nevertheless, it is significant that in areas such as armour provision and armour storage, local officials were ready, much readier than the council, to adopt solutions based on extensive government administration and taxation rather than individual provision, a more archetypally ‘modern’ approach. The same applies to storing the weaponry (and potentially avoiding the cumbersome system described above): although the council occasionally suggested setting up storehouses, it did not press the issue strongly.246 Yet many counties arranged storage themselves, either in county armouries or by having trained band captains store it.247 The council did not seriously challenge the fundamentals of the system they had inherited by demanding ‘state’ provision, even though some local communities were putting this into effect on their own initiatives. Thus, as Braddick points out, militia service was increasingly ‘being commuted into a cash payment to support the trained bands’, an important development towards specialisation in the militia supported by government (in this case, local government) financing, and arguably a modernising development.248

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia TRAINING The issue of militia training is particularly difficult to pin down.249 Evidence is very scarce; local authorities very seldom describe in detail exactly what was done, and even accounts of costs are rare. Aside from occasional anecdotal mentions, the most reliable sources are orders or schedules for training days, but even these are rare. Nor is it possible to assess how effective training was. When the trained bands were instituted, the standard training regime, in theory at least, was four days at Easter, four at Whitsuntide and two after Michaelmas.250 Whether this was ever adhered to very closely is doubtful, as examples cited above show. We have seen how easy it was, in the years before the Armada, for counties to neglect training almost entirely until the threat was imminent. It took either a clear national emergency or a serious push from the council to generate activity in the counties. Yet it was possible: at times, in some places, training proceeded with a surprisingly high degree of organisation and thoroughness. At the time of the invasion scares of the late 1590s, for example, under the pressure of the council’s orders, training seems to have been both widespread and relatively intensive. As we have seen, in response to the increased council pressure after 1595, the Lancashire commissioners had each band trained for three days in May and four in June–July 1596; in Cheshire, the commissioners ordered two days’ training in autumn 1595 and three more in May 1596.251 Nevertheless, this evidence is rare, and it is difficult to be certain how widespread training really was. The council had various tactics in trying to impose reasonable standards of training. One of these was to issue directions on how to carry out training, sets of which were issued when the trained bands were set up in the mid-1580s.252 Another set was issued as part of the 1597 reforms, a lengthy document for use by the 6,000 men prepared for the reforms, although it may have been used more widely. Its purpose in laying down universal standards for drill and words of command used by the militia is significant in the context of the development of standardised military practice, no doubt spread by veterans of the Low Countries wars.253 Another important tactic was the council’s ongoing efforts to impose outside scrutiny on the counties, a policy which was introduced and reintroduced several times, as superintendents, surveyor-generals, and most commonly muster-masters. Their role is usually described as employing their expertise to help with training (rather than actually organising musters, as their title might suggest), and no doubt they did, but they also prompted local officials to carry out council orders on the militia regardless of their reluctance to impose trouble and expense on their neighbours, particularly if the lord lieutenant was absent or ineffective himself. Muster-masters have a reputation for great unpopularity, particularly since they had to be paid by the counties. As Braddick points out, they disrupted the social hierarchy: militia

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties bands were commanded by local, high-born men, but muster-masters were often neither.254 For this reason, efforts were taken to appoint natives, and, as we have seen, some of the ‘superintendents’ of 1597–98 were nobles and gentry.255 Nevertheless, although muster-masters were highly controversial in some places, notably Wiltshire, and a matter of irritation in others, this was not universal: no complaint has been found in Kent or Cambridgeshire, for example, and in Cheshire objection was made to one muster-master but not to another.256 It remains uncertain whether any training went on in much of the country. As was noted above, there is little evidence that trained bands had any real solidity in Northamptonshire prior to the Armada, and the few days’ training they were given immediately prior to departing to defend Queen and country may have been all they ever had. This is possible to imagine in Northamptonshire, with an ineffective lord lieutenant before 1591, none thereafter, and a small clique of powerful, stubborn gentry running affairs. Similarly, Ian Archer has pointed out that clear evidence that the London trained bands received training exists only for the invasion scares of 1588 and 1599; training was ordered in 1595, but appears not to have taken place.257 During the 1599 invasion crisis, the earl of Nottingham told Sir Robert Cecil that ‘our men … will be wonderful raw, for in all the shires there are very few of the trained men left’.258 Yet there is clear evidence of training in some counties in the late 1590s. Any generalisations about training should be viewed with caution.259 THE COUNCIL’S ACHIEVEMENT IN MILITIA POLICY What, overall, was the achievement of the council and counties over the trained bands? On the level of policy-making, the creation of the trained bands was an act of some considerable vision and determination, reshaping deep-rooted and long-established practices to new military realities quite effectively. Achieving nationwide acceptable of the scheme in the first place was remarkable enough, requiring real commitment, perseverance and repetition of orders. This was an act of some statesmanship, which was probably seen through above all by Burghley – he was certainly very proud of the trained bands, writing in 1587 that their creation by the ‘chief care & travaile’ of himself and Walsingham was ‘a thing never put in execution in anie of her Majesties predecessors times’.260 Yet, as was so often the case with the Elizabethan regime, it can be seen as more of a sticking-plaster than a genuinely deep reform. Assessments of the quality of the troops are mixed. To Burghley, Elizabeth’s military policy gave her ‘strenght [sic] against boath foraigne or inward offence fare exceding the strenght of her predecessors’, and helped to dissipate the very real fears of earlier decades that England was hopelessly weak in the military sphere.261 Some, such as Essex and John Norreys, who had seen the troops

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia at first hand during the Armada mobilisation, expressed less enthusiasm, although they had ulterior motives in that they wished to promote the cause of professional soldiers and an aggressive rather than defensive war.262 In this context it is interesting that trained bands were used for a royal bodyguard and to keep order at Essex’s arraignment and at James I’s coronation, which suggests that they were regarded as useful and presentable troops.263 Modern historians tend to give the policy some credit. Simon Adams, whilst acknowledging their limitations, argues that ‘the modernization of the Crown’s military forces … was one of the great under-appreciated achievements of the reign’, and the trained bands were ‘a precocious experiment in the creation of a national system quite unparalleled on the Continent,’ comparable to the Poor Law in that respect.264 There was an achievement here, and a lasting one, since the trained bands remained the basis of the militia throughout the early Stuart period. From a military perspective, the reforms did encourage some important steps towards the adoption of up-to-date weaponry and military organisation. The widespread replacement of bows and bills with muskets and corslets provided the means for more effective resistance against invasion. The institution of the lieutenancies as an organisational structure in place of large muster commissions in which authority was diffuse and continuity lacking was also significant. The influence of continental military practice is clear. The perception that a civic militia was the best way to defend the nation was itself a reflection of the work of Machiavelli and others. On a more detailed level, moves such as the standardisation of the size of militia bands and the issuing of drill instructions reflected contemporary European practice. The continental experience of veteran muster-masters must have been relevant here. It is an interesting development, however, that with the institution of training in the militia, the state chose to assume responsibility for telling its subjects how to fight. Of course, these plans all depended on the quality of their implementation in the counties. This chapter has cast new light on several aspects of the trained bands’ operation, showing the weakness of generalisations about any aspect of their operation. When it came to the continuity of their membership, the social status of the bandsmen or the regularity of training, examples can be found illustrating both good and poor cases. Membership was often not continuous, it was not always of the higher social status which is sometimes assumed, and training was probably much more sporadic than has been thought. In some counties, it may be doubted whether trained bands existed in any real sense, beyond being hurriedly assembled before invasion scares. This obliges historians to look at the trained bands in a new way. The trained bands were not simply set up in the mid-1580s and continued thereafter. They were not static institutions, but dynamic bodies, which had to be continuously

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties recreated, both to deal with natural wastage and to overcome neglect by many of those charged with overseeing them. On the other hand, some counties were very conscientious, and the energy and money spent on the trained bands was sometimes genuinely remarkable. Examples such as Yorkshire spending £3,750, almost the equivalent of a full subsidy, on re-equipping trained bands in 1599; the communal purchase of arms in Lancashire and Cheshire, and its maintenance throughout the early 1590s; and the sustained efficiency of Henry and Arthur Capel in north-east Hertfordshire all show that at times, local authorities confounded the laxity which might be expected of them, and genuinely committed to the council’s programme. Lacking wider evidence, it is difficult to tell which is symptomatic of the wider picture; ultimately, it was mixed, an admission of the council’s dependence on local elites in carrying out their demands. Nevertheless, the council did mobilise a remarkable number of individuals – nobility, gentry, yeomen – in pursuit of its aims. A key problem with the entire trained bands scheme, however, was that the council was seldom able to persuade the counties to approach the running of the militia as they would have wished. The council wanted maintenance of the militia, particularly training, to be a continuous, rolling programme, since for training to be effective, it had to be sustained. Yet in practice, most militia activity was sporadic, reacting to council demands on a short-term basis. Significant amounts of activity could be generated for reasonably sustained periods (during the years before the Armada, for example), but the trained bands could not be made self-sustaining.265 This was partly to do with finance, but the inability of the council itself to maintain constant supervision of the militia was a significant factor. As Hirst has shown, the council in the 1620s could be an effective agent of enforcement, but only by focussing its time and energy on a particular policy – something which was unfeasible when other concerns intruded.266 The local response to council orders was thus the product of a complex of factors. The council’s orders were important, but the council recognised that these were assessed critically in the counties. During the early 1590s, the council often seem to have recognised that, since the level of threat was low, their orders were unlikely to have been carried out very conscientiously.267 The local assessment of the threat of invasion was clearly important, probably more so than the council’s claims; the nationally consistent variations in the level of response to muster orders seems to make this clear, for example in the great upsurge in activity in 1595.268 The different responses to council orders in the counties also illustrate the role of the lord lieutenant and other contacts in interpreting the wishes of the centre in the localities, a role which also gave lieutenants space to enhance their own credit with both the centre and the counties.269 The council’s orders for musters needed interpreting at various

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia levels, to determine how urgent and important their demands were.270 But the internal workings of the lieutenancy were relevant too: often lord lieutenants, deputy lieutenants and commissioners were keen to execute their orders, in some cases going further than the council ordered, and in these cases, what slowed progress was the scepticism of the wider county. The extent of variation within the system was the price the regime paid for relying on an amateur militia. NOTES 1 See Mark Charles Fissel, The Bishops’ Wars: Charles I’s Campaigns Against Scotland 1638– 1640 (Cambridge, 1994), 175. 2 E. G. Jones, ‘Anglesey and invasion, 1539–1603’ Transactions of the Anglesey Archaeological Society (1947), Ralph Flenley (ed.), A Calendar of the Register of the Council in the Marches of Wales [1535] 1569–1591 (Cymmrodorion Record Series, 8, 1916), 218; National Library of Wales, Wynn of Gwydir, Panton Group, 9051E, no. 178. 3 See the comment of Sir Henry Neville (in Berkshire) to his brother-in-law Nathaniel Bacon in Norfolk before the Armada that Bacon ‘hadd more nede make provition [against the Spanish] then wee’: Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 95. 4 See for example Michael Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars (2008), 63–7. 5 Mark Charles Fissel, English Warfare 1511–1642 (2001); Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars; see also John McGurk, ‘Armada preparations in Kent and arrangements made after the defeat (1587–1589)’, Archæologia Cantiana 85 (1970); McGurk, ‘The clergy and the militia 1580–1610’, History 60 (1975), 198–210. 6 Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’, 93. 7 4o & 5o Philip and Mary, cap. II–III, Statutes of the Realm IV (1819), 316–22. Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’. 8 On problems with the 1558 act, including the unreliability of the subsidy assessments used to implement the act, see BL Egerton 2790, fols 67v.–68v. (instructions to the earl of Bedford, lord lieutenant of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, 1559). 9 Roger Vella Bonavita, ‘The English Militia, 1558–1580. A Study in the Relations between the Crown and the Commissioners of Musters’ (unpublished MA thesis, Manchester, 1972), 124–5. HEHL EL 2580 (memo ‘tuching the redress of the commynwelth’, 16 May 1559); BL Cotton Otho E. XI, new fols 86–7 (memo by Nicholas Wotton, December 1559); SP 12/47, fols 75r.–76v. (memo by William Cecil, 8 August 1568). 10 Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’, 101; BL Lansdowne 58, fol. 164r. (objections to the bill, 24 March 1588); Conrad Russell, James VI and I and His English Parliaments: The Trevelyan Lectures Delivered at the University of Cambridge 1995 ed. Richard Cust and Andrew Thrush (Oxford, 2011), 16–17. See also Smith, County and Court, 290–1. 11 Boynton, Militia, 59–62; Bonavita, ‘English Militia’, 12–14, 20, 26–7, 40–1; BL Harleian 309, fols 109–13. 12 Bonavita, ‘English Militia’, passim.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 13 The 1573 orders are SP 12/93/18, fols 91r.–98r., printed in Francis Grose, Military Antiquities Respecting a History of the English Army (1801), I, 79–96. For the replies, see CSPD 1547–80, 461–9, 473. See also Boynton, Militia, 91–2; Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 99; as Bonavita points out, the 1573 orders did not specifically order training, but asked for the feasibility of training to be assessed. ‘English Militia’, 161–2. For the 1577 orders, see SP 12/134 fols 168v.–171v.; for replies from the counties: CSPD 1547–80, 539–84, passim. 14 The earl of Hertford’s attribution of the reform to 1586 is in many respects more accurate: see above, 84–5; HMC Salisbury XX, 298. 15 Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’, 94–5, 97. 16 SP 12/93/18, fol. 94v. (1573 muster orders); Boynton, Militia, 94. 17 SP 12/164/74; Herts. Musters, 3–6; HMC Foljambe, 10. 18 The council did enter into dialogue with counties over their quotas of trained bands, but were firm: Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 432; see also Northamptonshire LP, xxi, 35, 37–8. 19 SP 12/139/34 (Hertfordshire muster certificate, 1580); Herts. Musters, 4–6. 20 SP 12/170/85 (the council to muster commissioners in inland counties, 20 May 1584). See also BL Harleian 703, fols 14v.–15r. (the council to Sussex muster commissioners, 21 May 1584); here, 4,000 men were ordered to be furnished, and when the council ordered only 2,000 to be trained, this was presented as a reduction. 21 E. Green (ed.), The Preparations in Somerset against the Spanish Armada A.D. 1558–1588 (1888), 55. The planning of what numbers were to be trained can be seen in a paper of April 1584: SP 12/170/61. 22 Boynton, Militia, 146–8. 23 This was noted at the time: HMC Foljambe, 21. 24 Leveson Papers 6/9, 26 (Kent muster rolls, 1590); BL Add. 48591, fol. 126r. (orders by Norfolk muster commissioners, 28 June 1602). 25 See e.g. Leveson Papers 13/1 (Thomas Fludd to Cobham, 11 April 1590). 26 The council originally ordered that the size of bands should be in line with the status of their captains (SP 12/93/18, fol. 94r., 1573 muster orders), but later shifted towards recommending uniform bands of 150, more in line with contemporary military practice: see Smith, County and Court, 285–90; see also above, chapter 2. For examples of reluctant captains, see Leveson Papers 36/8/3 (Edmund Style to Leveson, 9 July 1594), 13/1 (Thomas Fludd to Cobham, 11 April 1590) and 19/16/1 (Michael Sondes to Leveson, 23 September 1597), SP 12/254/63 (John Brocket to Burghley, 10 November 1595). 27 BL Harleian 309, fols 177–8 (the council to Suffolk muster commissioners, 29 May 1574); Northamptonshire LP, 35; see also Boynton, Militia, 101. 28 LPL 247, pt ii fol. I; SP 12/198/70 (note of proceedings in musters, 14 February 1587). 29 CSPD 1581–90, 357 (SP 12/193/77); Northamptonshire LP, 16–17; SP 12/206/2 (memo, 2 December 1587). 30 BL Harleian 703, fol. 34r. (the Queen to Howard, lord lieutenant of Sussex, 18 July 1585). This was well understood in the counties: see Leveson Papers 10/36 (Samson Lennard and Thomas Potter to Leveson, 20 May 1597). 31 BL Add. 26886, fol. 5r. (the council to Lancashire muster commissioners, 26 September 1595).

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia 32 See, for example, the very detailed muster rolls in Herts. Musters, 8–27, 50–82, 152–64. 33 Gloucester LB, fol. 3r. 34 Ibid., fols 3r., 9v.–10v. 35 C. Drew (ed.), Lambeth Churchwardens’ Accounts 1504–1645 and Vestry Book 1610, pt II (Surrey RS, 43, 1941), 155, 171–3. These were in the accounting year, 25 February 1588 to 24 February 1589, but most or all of these training days likely came before the crisis rather than afterwards. 36 SP 12/210/9 (North to the council, 9 May 1588), 12/210/24 (North to Walsingham, 20 May 1588). 37 APC XVI, 221. 38 Northamptonshire LP, 48–50, 54–6; SP 12/204/49 (Sir Richard Knightley and Sir Edward Montagu to Hatton, 28 October 1587), printed in Northamptonshire LP, 96. On their earlier reluctance to comply, see Boynton, Militia, 83–5. 39 Northamptonshire LP, 51. They were technically correct: since Hatton’s commission of lieutenancy had been renewed, they ought to have had a new deputation. There is irony in the fact that they had the nerve to protest grounds of legal warrants with the then Lord Chancellor. 40 Lancashire Lieutenancy, II, esp. 158–60, 180–5. 41 SP 12/206/3 (the Queen to Midland lord lieutenants, 3 December 1587); Lancashire Lieutenancy, II, 196 n. 23, 199, 200 n. 27; BL Harleian 1926, fols 62v. (Lord Strange to Salford JPs, 30 April 1588), 71r.–v. (Lancashire deputies to Salford JPs, 31 March 1588), 84r.–85r. (Richard Brereton to the constables of Worsley, 9 April 1588). The bands still existed in the mid-1590s. 42 Leveson Papers 12/1 (Kent deputies’ instructions for defence, July 1585), 13/4 (Leveson’s instructions as a trained bands captain, ?1585), 13/2 (Cobham to the hundred of Shamele, 20 July 1586), 11/1/4 (Cobham to Leveson, 10 August 1586), HMC Foljambe, 16; Northamptonshire LP, 10–13. 43 Cf Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 142–3 for comments on these late preparations. 44 BL, Add. 23006, fols 11r.–12r. (Norfolk deputies to Bassingbourne Gawdy, 10 June and 1 August 1588). 45 Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, esp. 439. 46 SP 12/168/4 (memo on defence by Burghley, 3 February 1584). APC XV, 295–7, XVI, 20–21; HMC Foljambe, 28–31. CSPD 1581–90, 524. APC XVI, 234; XV, 313; XVI, 42–3, 173. 47 Copies include SP 12/179/48, 49; Northamptonshire LP, 17–18 (omitting clauses on coastal defence); J. E. Jackson (ed.), ‘Longleat Papers, A. D. 1553–1588, VIII – Wiltshire Preparations against the Spanish Armada, A. D. 1588’, Wiltshire Archaeology and Natural History Magazine XIV (1874), 243–53, at 244; HMC Rutland, I, 176. Quote: LPL 3204, fol. 102r. (the council to Shrewsbury, 29 January 1586). 48 LPL 3204, fol. 102r.; SP 12/198/66–7 (the council to lord lieutenants, 23 February 1587); APC XIV, 14–15, 239; HMC Foljambe, 17. Replies to these letters are summarised in HMC Foljambe, 16–17. 49 SP 12/186/70 (Essex deputies to the council, 19 February 1586), 12/186/74 (Hertfordshire deputies to the council, 21 February 1586); CSPD 1581–90, 309; Northamptonshire LP, 10–13. HMC Foljambe, 18. See also APC XIV, 23.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 50 Northamptonshire LP, 12. ‘Longleat Papers, 1553–1588’, 249. Cf. Boynton, Militia, 111; HMC Foljambe, 23. 51 Northamptonshire LP, 47. 52 See for example the very vigorous supervision of recusants in Derbyshire: HMC Talbot, 305–7. 53 Gloucester LB, fols 9v.–10r. Northamptonshire LP, 21, 101. 54 Northamptonshire LP, 11. BL Add. 57494. HMC Foljambe, 20, 22. 55 BL Add. 23006, fol. 3r. (Norfolk deputies to Bassingbourne Gawdy, 21 July 1588). Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 440. 56 CSPD 1581–90, 473; HMC Foljambe, 34–6. Both Norreys and Leighton were called away from their tasks before they were completed and Sir Thomas Morgan, appointed for Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wales, did not go. Sir Richard Grenville seems to have been appointed to Cornwall and Devon. 57 Norfolk: SP 12/209/118 (Leighton’s directions, 30 April 1588). BL Add. 23006, fols 3r., 10r.–12r. (Norfolk deputies to Bassingbourne Gawdy, 25 May, 10 June, 21 July and 1 August 1588). APC XVI, 115–16. Dorset: SP 12/210/8. 58 There was a scare about a French landing in Sussex in late August, and one on the report of a Spanish fleet in early September 1586. Plans included the summoning of councillors, the despatch of soldiers to guard Portsmouth and the Queen’s person, and the provision of powder in the maritime counties. Although these plans were swiftly abandoned, the responses of the council were already practised. APC XIV, 212, 216–17; CSPD 1581–90, 348. Cf. Conyers Read, Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (3 vols, Oxford, 1925), III, 222–4. See also Ambassador Mendoza’s gleeful report to Philip II about the farcical August panic: CSP Spanish 1580–6, 626. 59 On February 1587, see CSPF, 1586–88, 241; this is probably the same panic noted in a Chester town chronicle, when ‘there came hew and crie to this Cittye in the Night that there was a Navye of the Kinge of Spaine Shippes landed in worrall and yt London and Bristow was fired. W’ch Newes did greatly amase the people yt proved contrarye’: Amanda Wilson, ‘Edward Whitby’s List of Mayors, 1300–1620 (Birmingham, BA dissertation, 1984), pt 2, 31. F. D. Wardle (ed.), The Accounts of the Chamberlains of the City of Bath 1568–1602 (Somerset RS, 38, 1923), 97. August: Loseley, 6729/9/43 (Howard to his Surrey deputies, 10 August 1587). 60 Parker, Grand Strategy, 193–7; Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 137–9. Read, Walsingham, III, 294–5. 61 APC XV, 252–5; HMC Foljambe, 26–7; CSPD 1581–90, 428 (SP 12/204/5–6, the council to lord lieutenants, 4 October 1587); cf. Burghley’s notes on these: SP 12/204/2. At the same time, there were plans for both Admiral Howard and Sir Francis Drake to put to sea, the former into the Channel and the latter to Spain. 62 The shipping embargo and the orders that the militia be ready on an hour’s warning suggest an immediate alarm; cf. Northamptonshire LP, 43. The response from the counties, however, show little sign of urgency, though many counties did view forces (HMC Somerset, 4; Lancashire Lieutenancy, II, 180–5; CSPD 1581–90, 431–3, 436–40, 442). 63 Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 37. 64 Tudor Royal Proclamations II, no. 694. 65 Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 39, 48, 98; also Gawdy Letters, 18.

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia 66 SP 12/208/86. 67 Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 70–2. 68 APC XVI, 16. Northamptonshire was one such county: Northamptonshire LP, 49–50. 69 HMC Foljambe, 42–3. 70 Ibid., 44–5; also BL Add. 34394, fol. 25r.–v.; ‘Longleat Papers, 1553–1588’, 243–4. 71 SP 12/212/14 (Essex deputies to Leicester, 5 July 1588). 72 SP 12/212/47 (the earl of Shrewsbury to the council, 15 July 1588); see also 12/212/22 (Cornwall deputies to Sir Walter Ralegh, 8 July 1588), 12/212/75 (Lord Chandos to the council, 21 July 1588), CSPD 1581–90, 464. This is also remarked by Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 443–4. 73 SP 12/212/14 (Essex deputies to Leicester, 5 July 1588), 12/211/64 (Somerset deputies to the council, 29 June 1588). 74 Most accounts of the Armada are very thin on the land defences, almost always derivative and usually misleading, as we shall see. The most authoritative account remains Boynton’s: Militia, chapter 5, esp. 159–64. The account in Fissel, English Warfare, 56–60, is derivative, though it has some interesting comments on clergy provision. See also John S. Nolan, ‘The muster of 1588’, Albion 23 (1991), 387–407. 75 Geoffrey Parker, ‘If the Armada had landed’, History 61 (1976), 358–68; see also Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada (1988), 265–77; Parker, Grand Strategy, 226–7. 76 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, chapter 4, esp. 146–7. 77 Bonavita thesis, 11–12. Boynton, Militia, 140. SP 12/206/2 (memo, 2 December 1587). 78 There are several variant copies of this report: SP 12/209/49, 50; M. Oppenheim (ed.), The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson in Six Books, II (Navy RS, 23, 1902), 267–9; HMC Foljambe, 32; BL Harleian 168, fols 110r.–114r. 79 S. Adams (ed.), ‘The Armada correspondence in Cotton MSS Otho E VII and E IX’, in M. Duffy (ed.), The Naval Miscellany, Volume VI (Navy RS, 146, 2003), 80–2; cf. APC XVI, 176, 206. On the council’s urgent rethinking, see T. Wright (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and Her Times (1838), II, 378; BL Harleian 6994, fol. 128r. (Walsingham to Burghley, 18 July 1588). Monson Tracts, II, 282–3. 80 SP 12/212/66 (Burghley to Walsingham, 19 July 1588). The Tilbury army has always received the most attention, but the London army under Hunsdon was in fact projected to be larger. 81 HMC Foljambe, 45. 82 SP 12/213/84. This plan is sometimes misinterpreted to mean that the numbers of men shown all existed separately (rather than representing responses to different contingencies), thus dramatically overestimating the available troops: McGurk, ‘Armada preparations in Kent’, 86; CSPD 1581–90, 519. On other mutual support plans, see HMC Foljambe, 27–8. 83 SP 12/213/29 (Winchester to the council, 25 July 1588). HMC Somerset, 4–5. APC XV, 269. 84 This contrary to the myth, found in many works on the Armada, that the south coast counties’ trained bands coalesced together and marched along the coast, shadowing the

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Armada in case of a landing; see Neil Younger, ‘If the Armada had landed: a reappraisal of England’s defences in 1588’, History 93 (2008), 328–54, 333–6. 85 APC XVI, 137–8, 169. HMC Foljambe, 45. Troops assembling: Hampshire: SP 12/213/40 I (Sir George Carey’s report from the Isle of Wight, 25 July 1588), 12/213/60 (certificate of the troops at Portsmouth, 29 July 1588); APC XVI, 176. On Cornwall, see accounts showing troops moving to defend Plymouth: T. Peter (ed.), ‘The St Columb Green Book’, supplement to the Journal of the Royal Institute of Cornwall XIX (1912), 37–8. Accounts of Blanchminster’s charity in Stratton, quoted in A. L. Rowse, Sir Richard Grenville of the ‘Revenge’ (1937), 263. Standing down: SP 12/213/40 (the earl of Sussex to the council, 26 July 1588). APC XVI, 184–5, 194. 86 Parma said he needed six days to embark his army. Martin and Parker, The Spanish Armada, 185. 87 Horse: APC XVI, 169, 171–2, 181; HMC Foljambe, 48; Twysden LP, 70–1 (LPL 1392, fol. 37r.); SP 12/213/21 (Leicester to the council, 24 July 1588). 88 HMC Foljambe, 49–51; see also ‘Armada correspondence’, 80; SP 12/213/21 (Leicester to the council, 24 July 1588). On Tilbury: SP 12/213/27, 12/213/38 (Leicester to Walsingham, 25 and 26 July 1588). On the decision to appoint Leicester as commander, see Younger, ‘If the Armada had landed’, 338 n. 37. 89 For a fuller discussion of the disposition of the forces, and the exact role of Tilbury, see Younger, ‘If the Armada had landed’, 338–41. 90 SP 12/215/7 (Sir Thomas Scott and John Hales to Lord Cobham, 13 August 1588), 12/213/45 (Scott to a senior minister, 27 July 1588), 12/214/52 (Scott to Leicester, 9 August 1588). APC XVI, 222. TNA E 351/242, rots. 5d.–7r. (payroll of the land forces) This account differs markedly from McGurk’s version in ‘Armada preparations’; I have preferred retrospective sources to the various plans used by McGurk. 91 Leveson Papers 12/16, 12/14 (Leicester to Kent deputies, 2 and 16 August 1588). 92 McGurk, ‘Armada preparations’, 88. 93 APC XVI, 171, 186, 195–6, 215–16. 94 SP 12/213/55 (Leicester to Walsingham, 28 July 1588). APC XVI, 196, 197. 95 TNA E 351/242, rot 8r. 96 The Lambeth churchwardens’ accounts record 14d ‘to two men for goinge to Croyden to fetche ye Churche Armor after the breakinge uppe of ye Campe’, but it is not clear which camp this was, and whether it was the camp itself or simply the demobilisation which was at Croydon; Lambeth Churchwardens’ Accounts pt. II, 173. Sussex: BL Harleian 703, fols 53v.–54r. (Buckhurst to his Sussex deputies, 31 July 1588). 97 Figures derived from HMC Foljambe, 57 and SP 12/213/84, which differ slightly. 98 McGurk, ‘The clergy and the militia’, 200–3. CSPD 1581–90, 533. 99 See APC XVI 191, 205–6; also Sir Henry Cromwell, who marched from Huntingdonshire on 2 August with ‘ten lances, ten light horse and ten carbines to serve her Majesty all of his own’. BL Add. 34394, fol. 36v. 100 BL Lansdowne 58, fol. 76r. (W. Wright to Burghley, 4 August 1588); BL Harleian MS 6994, fol. 134r. (Edward Fitton to Burghley, 8 August 1588). On Darrell: SP 46/44, fols 106–11; Read, Walsingham, III, 316. See also Robert Eyton’s offer to serve the Earl of Shrewsbury: LPL 3204, fol. 155r. (Eyton to Shrewsbury, 7 August 1588).

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia 101 SP 12/212/74 (Chandos to Walsingham, 21 July 1588). See also SP 12/213/22 (Leicester to Walsingham, 24 July 1588), 12/214/31 (Dorset deputies to the council, 5 August 1588). For the council instructing lord lieutenants to release retainers from the trained bands, see APC XVI, 127, 144, 157, 174–5, 176–7, 179, 192, 207. 102 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 125–9, esp. 129. It is worth noting, however, that the council had to make provision for armour to be sold to some of them. APC XVI, 220. SP 12/215/71. 103 HMC Seventh Report, MSS of W. More-Molyneux, 645. 104 This estimate from SP 12/213/90. 105 BL Harleian 703, fols 53v.–54r. (Buckhurst to his Sussex deputies, 31 July 1588). 106 APC XVI, 192–3. 107 On Norfolk’s concerns about leaving the county undefended, see APC XVI, 206, 209. 108 E.g. APC XVI, 180. 109 APC XVI, 209, 210, 217. ‘Armada correspondence’, 83–4. 110 Fissel, English Warfare, 57. Nolan, ‘Muster of 1588’, 406–7. 111 SP 12/213/37 (numbers of footmen remaining in the counties, 26 July 1588). APC XVI, 195. 112 APC XVI, 202. 113 This figure essentially agrees with that in HMC Foljambe, 57–8, although I add 1,000 Middlesex militia and 400 from Huntingdonshire (see APC XVI, 186). 114 Ian Friel, ‘The Defence of England in 1588’, in M. J. Rodriguez-Salgado (ed.), Armada 1588–1988 (1988), 126. 115 SP 12/210/42 (a digest of the April 1588 muster certificates); SP 12/213/37. 116 APC XVI, 218, 219, 216. SP 12/214/69 & I (Hertfordshire deputies to Leicester, 11 August 1588). 117 SP 12/214/31 (Dorset deputies to the council, 5 August 1588). APC XVI, 200. SP 12/213/38 (Leicester to Walsingham, 26 July 1588). 118 SP 12/214/14 (Lord St John to the council, 2 August 1588). 119 SP 12/214/1 (Leicester to Walsingham, 1 August 1588); TNA E 351/242, rot. 7d. 120 See above, 114. 121 Northamptonshire LP, 56–60. 122 SP 12/213/40 I (Sir George Carey’s report from the Isle of Wight, 25 July 1588). 123 Danvers’s letter must date from about 22 July. C. E. Long, ‘Wild Darell of Littlecote (no. 2)’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, VI (1860), 208–9. ‘Longleat papers, 1553–1588’, 248–9. 124 Gloucester LB, fols 18r.–33r. The same day, 5 August, William Heydon, at Newmarket with his band of Norfolk trained bandsmen, en route for Tilbury, received orders to turn back (BL Add. 48591, fol. 44v.). 125 Gloucester LB, fol. 24v. 126 SP 12/214/32–3 (Northamptonshire accounts for the campaign, 5 August 1588). TNA E 351/242, rot. 8r.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 127 APC XVI, 215–16. ‘Armada correspondence’, 86. 128 APC XVI, 221–2, 234. SP 12/214/34 (Leicester to the Queen, 5 August 1588). BL Harleian 6994, fol. 142r. (Walsingham to Burghley, 9 August 1588). ‘Armada correspondence’, 87. 129 APC XVI, 239; Bodleian Library, Oxford, St Amand MS 8, fol. 65r. (Leicester to Sir John Norreys, 18 July 1588); Wright, Queen Elizabeth, II, 391–2. 130 Parker, ‘If the Armada had landed’, 364–5. 131 Ibid, 365. Parker writes that the council ‘ordered all forces in Kent to move to the seashore to prevent a landing’, whereas the letter cited in fact ordered them ‘to be ready’ to do so (Parker, ‘If the Armada had landed’, 365 and n. 23, quoting Twysden LP, 70–1, which is in any case misdated: see Younger, ‘If the Armada had landed’, 338 n.37). 132 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 147. 133 E.g. CSPD 1581–90, 516, 527. 134 Parker, ‘If the Armada had landed’, 362–4. 135 APC XVI, 198. Northamptonshire LP, 61. ‘Armada correspondence’, 81–2. 136 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 176; Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army, 47–51. Willoughby replaced most of the trained bands’ county gentry officers, though John Leveson (after an impassioned request) was allowed to keep his command: Staffordshire RO, D868/1/29 (Leveson to Cobham, 13 September 1589). 137 Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 442. 138 APC XVII, 186, 220–4. Yorkshire, the North, and Wales were apparently not required to muster. 139 Kent seems to have held musters in August: see Leveson Papers 11/1 (Sir Henry Cobham to Aylesford JPs, 6 August 1589), 12/3 (instructions for militia captains, 6 August 1589). Gloucester held a muster on 17 June, and made up the trained band to its full complement: Gloucester LB, fol. 36v. On Staffordshire, see FSL L.a.814 (the earl of Shrewsbury to Richard Bagot, 17 May 1589). 140 APC XVIII, 294–8; cf. APC XVIII, 414; XIX, 209–10. See also SP 12/231/3, 12/231/9 (council memos, 1 and 4 March 1590) for further preparations. 141 Leveson Papers 11/1 (Cobham to Sir Henry Cobham, 4 February 1590), 13/1 (Thomas Fludd to Cobham, 11 April 1590). 142 Gloucester LB, fol. 49v. 143 APC XIX, 255–60, 342, 393. 144 APC XIX, 414–6. 145 Leveson Papers 19/4/7 (Cobham to Leveson, 12 September 1590), 26 (muster roll, 1590), 13/1 (Roger Twysden et al. to Leveson, 31 August 1590); SP 12/230/74 (Cobham to Walsingham, 16 February 1590). For an enquiry into the loss of armour, see APC XXI, 259–61; Leveson Papers 22, fols 18–20 (the council to Cobham, 5 July 1591 and Leveson to Cobham, 28 August 1591). See also SP 12/254/63 (John Brocket to Burghley, 10 November 1595). 146 Gloucester LB, fol. 55r. 147 APC XVIII, 399; XX, 22; H. R. Wilton Hall (ed.), Calendar of the Records of the Old Archdeaconry of St Alban’s 1575–1637 (St Alban’s and Hertfordshire Architectural and

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia Archaeological Society, 1908), 73–81; W. Brigg (ed.), ‘Provision of armour and men by the clergy of the archdeaconry of St. Albans, 1590’, Herts. Genealogist and Antiquary 1 (1895), 113–19. 148 APC XXI, 131–3. CSPD 1591–4, 37. Leveson Papers 22, fols 16r.–v. (Leveson to JPs and militia captains, 22 May 1591), 44v. (Admiral Howard to Cobham, 29 August 1592). 149 APC XXI, 223–4, 243–4; APC XXII, 301–3. As Derek Hirst has argued with reference to the council in the 1620s, issues of low priority tended to drop down the council’s agenda and be forgotten: ‘The privy council and problems of enforcement in the 1620s’, Journal of British Studies 18 (1978), 46–66, at 54 ff. 150 APC XXII, 301–3. The council made an effort to chase up missing certificates in October. APC XXIII, 278. 151 Gloucester LB, fol. 62r. 152 Neale, Parliaments, 320, 323. BL Harleian 703, fols 74r.–75v. (Buckhurst to his Sussex deputies, 7 and 24 March, 13 May and 18 June 1594); Leveson Papers 36/8/1–3 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 26 May 1594, Sir Thomas Scott to Leveson, 14 June 1594 and Edmund Style to Leveson, 9 July 1594). 153 Herts Musters, passim; see also the gap in muster business between 1592 and 1595 in BL Add. 48591, fol. 49r.–v. 154 John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), 345; D. Goodman, Spanish Naval Power 1589– 1665: Reconstruction and Defeat (Cambridge, 1997), 14. 155 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 188. The raid provoked a brief invasion scare: BL Harleian 703, fols 78v.–79r. (Buckhurst to his Sussex deputies, 26 and 28 July 1595 and the council to Buckhurst and Howard, 30 July 1595). On the Spanish shift of attention towards the Atlantic in the later 1590s, see Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 7–9. 156 Hammer, Polarisation, 189. See also Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 190. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley II, 159. 157 Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (1960), 505–7. 158 SP 12/254/32, 49 (at fol. 101v.), 64–5 (memos etc on defence, late 1595); J. Strype (ed.), Annals of the Reformation (2nd edn, 1725), IV, 221–5. 159 This was very troubling to Burghley, who wanted them replaced: see BL Lansdowne 103, fol. 229r. (notes on musters, 8 January 1594); SP 12/247/5 (memo by Burghley, January 1594). 160 See above, 30–1; also SP 12/253/96 (a list of counties lacking lieutenants, August 1595); HMC Salisbury V, 523–4. 161 SP 12/254/65, fol. 134r. (memo on defence, late 1595). In Kent: Leveson Papers 37/1 (Cobham to Leveson, 26 July 1595 and George Rivers to Leveson, 27 July 1595), 37/4 (Leveson to Robert Edolph, 28 July 1595). SP 12/254/16 (Essex deputies to the council, 9 October 1595). SP 12/254/11, 12/254/63 (Hertfordshire deputies to Burghley, 6 October and 10 November 1595). 162 On the need for constant action to counter natural wastage, see APC XXV, 302–5, XXVI, 51–3, 330–32, XXVIII, 303–7. Leveson Papers 46/2 (1 August 1597, note of arms to be replaced), 23/8–10 (the council to Cobham, lieutenant of Kent, 27 August 1595 and 12 February and 30 July 1598), 36/8/3 (Edmund Style to Leveson, 9 July 1594), 36/8/6 (Justinian Champneys to Leveson, 5 September 1594).

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 163 Leveson Papers 37/3 (Cromer to Leveson, 16 June 1595). For examples of the loss of armour as a result of troop levies, see LPL 6204, fol. 305r. (‘Remembrances for the musters in Comit: Derby’, 9 September 1595); SP 12/241/91 (Hertfordshire deputies to Burghley, 4 March 1592), 12/253/100 (Lincolnshire deputies to Burghley, 2 September 1595). 164 Loseley, 6729/9/64, 6729/13/82 (Howard to his Surrey deputies, 23 October and 5 November 1595). 165 HMC Buccleuch III, 29–30 (misdated to 1592). Norfolk: BL Add. 48591, fol. 43r.–v. (Norfolk muster commissioners to JPs, 11 August 1599). 166 See below, 136. 167 For example, Leveson Papers 37/3 (Cobham to Leveson, 20 August 1595, to commit those who fail to attend musters, even JPs, to prison); also APC XXV, 36–7, quoted above, 78. 168 Leveson Papers, 37/1 (many papers); Surrey LB, fol. 38r. (Sir William Howard to Sir William More, 28 November 1595). HMC Salisbury V, 523–4. BL Add. 26886, fols 23r.– 24r. (Lancashire muster commissioners to the council, 14 November 1595); Cheshire LB, fol. 11r.–v. (Cheshire muster commissioners to the council, 26 November 1595, with muster certificate). 169 APC XXV, 51–2. On 28 November 1595, the earl of Bath and some of the JPs ordered the constables in the North Division of Devon ‘those that were sett to arms to be in readyness and that the billes shd. be chaungd into pykes, and the bows and arrowes into Muskitts and Calyvers.’ T. Gray (ed.), The Lost Chronicle of Barnstaple 1586–1611 (Devonshire Association, Exeter, 1998), 75. 170 APC XXV, 302–5; BL Add. 26886, fols 30r., 33r. (arrangements for training, April and June 1596). 171 APC XXVII, 101–5. 172 SP 12/262/140 (list of the new officers, 24 April 1597); APC XXVII, 104–5. 173 Cambridgeshire LL, 94; HMC Salisbury VII, 179. APC XXVII, 160–4. 174 This episode is explored in more detail in Neil Younger, ‘The practice and politics of troop-raising: Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex and the Elizabethan regime’, English Historical Review forthcoming 2012. 175 Only scattered evidence of these survives: APC XXVIII, 350–1; HMC Salisbury VIII, 88; Cambridgeshire LL, 116–8; Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 49. 176 The major later Spanish ‘Armadas’ were those of 1596 (which foundered off Cape Finisterre), 1597 (scattered by storms) and 1599 (also scattered by storms). Recent historiography has criticised Wernham’s characterisation of these as ‘Armadas’, seeing them instead as raids, comparable to English raids on Spanish territory, and indeed partly in response to the humiliating attack on Cadiz; see Pauline Croft, ‘“The state of the world is marvellously changed”: England, Spain and Europe 1558–1604’ in Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson (eds), Tudor England and its Neighbours (Basingstoke, 2005), 178–202, at 195–7. This does not, of course, alter the facts of the preparations made in England. 177 Leveson Papers 53/1 (the Queen to Cobham, 24 August 1595 and the council to Cobham, 15 November 1595), Twysden LP, 102. 178 Wernham, Return, 135–40; Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 198–9. APC XXVI, 284–95, 301–3. Twysden LP, 109–10. Tudor Royal Proclamations III, no. 784.

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia 179 APC XXVIII, 57–8; Cambridgeshire LL, 113–15; Somerset LB, fols 43v.–45v. (the council to Pembroke, 27 October 1597, Sir Francis Hastings to Pembroke, 27 October 1597 and Hastings and other JPs to JPs in Somerset, 28 October 1597). 180 See Boynton’s very full account: Militia, 198–206; many of the relevant documents are in HMC Foljambe, 67–106. As Croft has convincingly argued, this scare was even more illusory than the others and a misjudgement by Sir Robert Cecil, who was facing the first major invasion crisis since his father’s death. Croft, ‘“The state of the world”’, 196–8. Cf. William Lambarde’s despair at this failure of intelligence: ‘I thinke that the ghost of Syr Fra. Walsingham groaneth to see Ingland bared of a serviceable intelligencer … If it weare a feigned alarme, it was wel, if it had not been too costly’. Leveson Papers 14/16/17 (Lambarde to Leveson, 1 September 1599). 181 HMC Foljambe, 98–100. 182 BL Harleian 703, fol. 115r.–v. (the council to lord lieutenants, 7 August 1599, Buckhurst to his deputies, 7 August 1599 and n.d.); Chamberlain Letters, 56ff. For expressions of willingness, see HMC Salisbury 290–2. 183 See a request for exemption from training from the Isle of Ely due to ‘these many wett yeares’. Cambridgeshire LL, 128. 184 1601: APC XXXI, 318. Cambridgeshire LL, 183–5. BL Harleian 703, fols 121v.–122r. (the council to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 28 April 1601). 1602: The council to the counties, 28 April 1602. There is no copy in APC; see Cambridgeshire LL, 234–6 (quote); HMC Buccleuch, III, 69–70. 185 Cambridgeshire LL, 187. 186 APC XXXII, 91, 98–9. Cambridgeshire LL, 184. 187 Cf. a similar case in James I’s reign: Thomas Cogswell, Home Divisions: Aristocracy, the State and Provincial Conflict (Manchester, 1998), 15–16. 188 SP 12/179/48 (orders to be observed by lord lieutenants, 1585). 189 See, for example, Sir John Smythe’s opinion on the matter: HMC Salisbury IV, 5. 190 BL Add. 40629, fol. 57r.–v. (additional orders for musters, ?early 1588); Northamptonshire LP, 14. See also Boynton, Militia, 111. 191 Leveson Papers 13/4 (Leveson’s instructions as a trained bands captain, ?1585); in Hertfordshire, the trained bands were made up ‘as near as maye be of the most hable men to beare their own chardges in the tyme of Trayninge’: Herts. Musters, 88, 114. 192 Northamptonshire LP, 14. 193 See above, n. 119; FSL L.a.891 (Ferdinando, Lord Strange to Richard Bagot, 28 August 1588). 194 Leveson Papers 11/6/7 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 6 January 1591); Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 81; LPL 3204, fol. 123r. (John Harpur to the earl of Shrewsbury, 4 February 1588); HMC Salisbury IX, 43 (mention of the Scottish bands indicate that this was from Lancashire or Cheshire). See also F. J. Fisher (ed.), ‘The state of England, anno dom. 1600, by Thomas Wilson’, Camden Miscellany XVI (Camden 3rd series, 52, 1936), 34. 195 Cheshire LB, fol. 9v. (26 November 1595); see also HMC Talbot, 304; Twysden LP, 109–10; FSL, L.a.789 (the earl of Shrewsbury to his Staffordshire deputies, 4 February 1586). 196 Leveson Papers 6/9, a muster roll from Sutton-at-Hone, listing eight men styled ‘gent’, all junior officers, and nine further men annotated with figures between £50 and £100

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties which must represent incomes – that is, on the verge of gentility. BL Add. 48591, fols 121–5 (muster roll, 1602). Herts. Musters, 88, 114, 117, 123, 124. 197 BL Add. 48591, fols 121–5 (muster roll, 1602). 198 Leveson Papers 10/31 (1590 muster roll). 199 LPL 3204, fol. 210r. (Richard Bagot to the earl of Shrewsbury, 28 February 1590); BL Add. 26886, fol. 54v. (Lancashire muster commissioners to the council, 2 June 1599). 200 This analysis is potentially liable to false positives arising from coincidences of names; additionally, the closest suitable matches are of the 1587 muster roll with subsidy records from 1598. Herts. Musters, 88–96; TNA E 179/121/283. 201 HMC Salisbury IX, 338. 202 HMC Salisbury XII, 478. 203 HMC Salisbury IV, 5, 15–18; SP 12/231/47 (orders for Essex by Burghley, 30 March 1590). 204 For a similarly mixed picture, see Boynton, Militia, 109–10. Henrik Langelüddecke finds significant overlap between trained bandsmen and parish officers in the 1630s, another sign of participation by ‘more substantial householders’: ‘“The chiefest strength and glory of this kingdom”: arming and training the “Perfect Militia” in the 1630s’, EHR 118 (2003), 1264–1303, at 1272. 205 SP 46/52, fols 150, 160, 172 (John Savage to Daniell, 30 April 1588; Daniell to Hugh Cholmondely, 31 January 1589; memo, n.d.). 206 Clearly the principle was understood. In an early example, in a muster in Norwich in 1578, armour owners were instructed to send to the musters ‘such persons as before have been trayned or some other apte or mete men in ther steade’. [Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society], Norfolk Archaeology, I (1847), 21. 207 APC XVIII, 294–8. 208 ‘Derbyshire Musters’, 4–8, 11–12, 22–4. This band was from the hundreds of Scarsdale and High Peak, a remote and sparsely populated area; on the difficulties of governing this region, see HMC Talbot, 311, 312. 209 ‘Derbyshire Musters’, 8–9. There may well have been personal animosity between Leek and Manners, but the figures are certainly not impressive. 210 Lambeth Churchwardens’ Accounts pt II, 155, 171–3. 211 Leveson Papers, 36/8/4 (list of people dead and gone since the last musters, 26 August 1594). 212 See also Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 444. 213 Herts. Musters, 88–107, 114–29. 214 Ibid., 175–89, 193–208. 215 SP 46/52, fols 138–40. Oddly, fols 139 and 140, both dated 26 November 1596, are not the same, and neither obviously supersedes the other. Only names which appear on all three rolls have been counted here, so the real figure was probably somewhat higher. 216 Cheshire LB, fol. 10v. (sic.; Lancashire muster certificate, 1595). On Derbyshire, see HMC Talbot, 311, 312. 217 For convenience, ‘armour’ is here used to refer to military equipment generally. 218 SP 12/242/87 (the council to Burghley as lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire, Essex and Hertfordshire, 23 July 1592); APC XXIII, 39–40.

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia 219 Cheshire LB, fols 13r.–v. (the council to Cheshire muster commissioners, 9 November 1595 and the commissioners to the gentry, 26 November 1595). 220 HMC Foljambe, 15–16. Derby estimated the cost of setting up the bands at £2,062, but the council suggested that £1,041 would suffice, £848 to purchase new arms for all 600 men in each county and the remainder to pay for musters etc. In Derbyshire, the lieutenant, Shrewsbury, appears to have wanted provision from new, but his deputy John Manners was understandably reluctant: HMC Talbot, 305. See Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c.1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), 186. 221 4o & 5o Philip and Mary, c. 2, clause V. Statutes of the Realm, IV, 318; Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’. The latter type of armour provision is usually referred to as ‘town’ (i.e. township) or ‘parish’ armour, though the statute applied to ‘everye Citie Bourghe Towne Parishe and Hamelett within this Realme.’ 222 J. Bruce, Report of the Arrangements which were Made for the Internal Defence of these Kingdoms when Spain Projected the Invasion and Conquest of England (1798), appendix LXV, p. cccxii. Cf. Sir Thomas Wilford’s comments in BL Add. 48162, fol. 66r. 223 CSPD 1595–97, 134–5. 224 Leveson Papers 11/1/7 (Cobham to Leveson, 9 December 1587). This was stressed as early as 1573: SP 12/93/18, fol. 93v. (1573 muster orders). 225 See e.g. BL Harleian 309, fol. 115 (the council to Suffolk muster commissioners, 15 May 1569). 226 In 1583–84, when the trained bands were being set up, shortfalls in county armour quotas had to be purchased from London, at guaranteed prices: Herts. Musters, 5–6. In 1602, the council recommended Edmund Nicholson: Cambridgeshire LL, 236–7. BL Harleian 703, fols 126v.–127r. (the council to lord lieutenants, 29 April 1602). See also Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 442. 227 The same had been true earlier in the reign, and had accomplished a surprising amount, notably at points of crisis such as 1569: Boynton, Militia, 70–6. Bonavita, ‘English Militia’, 58–61, 71, 80–1. 228 Cambridgeshire LL, 123. BL Add. 40629, fol. 48r. (Henry Cocke to ?Henry Capel, 13 April 1587), Add. 26886, fols 11r.–12r., 14r.–v. (light horse in Lancashire, October 1595). For examples of armour provided by goodwill in 1574, see Lancashire Lancashire, I, 50, 57. 229 This is discussed in detail in Younger, ‘Lambarde’ (the quotes at 81). See also Leveson Papers 13/1 (Leveson and Lambarde to Kent deputies, 29 November 1587). 230 Herts. Musters, 109–13; also 35–7; FSL, L.a.813, 816–18 (the earl of Shrewsbury to Richard Bagot et al., 13 May, 8 June, 8 July and 8 August 1589). For other examples, see Leveson Papers 13/2 (Cobham to the hundred of Shamele, 20 July 1586); T. Craib (ed.), Surrey Musters (taken from the Loseley Manuscripts) (Surrey RS, 3, 1914–20), 137–60; Gloucester LB, fol. 4r. 231 APC XXII, 301–3. 232 HMC Foljambe, 15. Gloucester LB, fol. 4r. 233 BL Add. 36293, fols 17r., 26r.–v., 29r.–30r. (the council to Archbishop Hutton and the council of the North, 30 April 1599; note of agreement for purchase of armour, 7 June 1599; accounts). The first 1601 subsidy yielded around £4,300 in Yorkshire (information supplied by Simon Healy). Cf. CSPD 1598–1601, 332; R. W. Stewart, The English Ordnance Office 1585–1625: A Case Study in Bureaucracy (Woodbridge, 1996), 135, although the agreement was concluded before Burghley was appointed lord lieutenant.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 234 Cheshire LB, fol. 71r. (accounts, August 1599). 235 BL Add. 26886, fol. 24v. (memo, ?1596). 236 FSL, L.a.615 (Sir Edward Leigh to Staffordshire deputies, 12 December 1586), 800 (the earl of Shrewsbury to Staffordshire deputies, 27 December 1587); P. R. Seddon (ed.), Letters of John Holles, 1587–1637 (Thoroton Society, 31, 1975), 6; LPL 3204, fol. 151r. (William Harcourt to the earl of Shrewsbury, 11 July 1588). 237 Leveson Papers 13/2 (Cobham to the hundred of Shamele, 20 July 1586); BL Harleian 2219, fol. 119r. (agreement between 6 men jointly to provide a demi-lance, 30 September 1588). Loseley, 6729/6/104–5 (Lord Windsor to Sir William More, 13 February and 12 November 1595). 238 Boynton, Militia, 48; Simonds D’Ewes, The Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1682), 552–3; as Lambarde noted, relying on goodwill also weakened the government’s ability to make further requests (in this case, for training camps): Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 74–5. 239 Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’; BL Stowe 150, fol. 9 (Warwickshire muster commissioners to John Ferrers, 24 August 1573). Leveson Papers 36/8/6 (Justinian Champneys to Leveson, 5 September 1594). 240 SP 46/52 fol. 151 (Cheshire deputies to John Daniell, 22 June 1588); Cheshire LB, fol. 9r. (Cheshire muster commissioners to various gentry, 14 November 1595); Leveson Papers 37/1 (Cobham to Leveson, 24 September 1595), 12/1 (Kent deputies’ instructions for defence, July 1585). 241 Hirst, ‘The Privy Council’, 51–4. 242 BL Add. 40629, fol. 57r.–v. (additional orders for musters, ?early 1588). 243 BL Harleian 2219, fol. 84r. (Lancashire muster certificate, November 1595). 244 BL Add. 48591, fols 121r.–5v. (muster roll, 1602), 128v.–9r. (muster certificate, 1602). 245 This being so, it does not appear that the problems concerning absentee landlords and their liability for armour provisions highlighted by Hassell Smith in ‘Militia rates and statutes’ were as widely problematic as he argues. 246 HMC Foljambe, 23. Surrey Musters, I, vi (where it is misdated to 1573). 247 Storehouses: Cambridgeshire LL, 181; APC XXVIII, 463; Wardle, Bath Chamberlains Accounts, passim; Leveson Papers 39/5 (note of county stores, ?1596). See also Boynton, Militia, 21–4. Burghley was in fact against armouries, and repeatedly refused his deputies permission to set them up in Hertfordshire: CSPD 1595–97, 134–5, 136, 206–7. Storage by captains: CSPD 1595–97, 119, Cheshire LB, fol. 20v. (the council to the Cheshire muster commissioners, 31 October 1595). 248 Braddick, State Formation, 186; cf. Knud Jesperson, ‘Social change and military revolution in early modern Europe: some Danish evidence’, Historical Journal 26 (1983), 1–13, esp. 9–10. 249 For a general outline of how musters were carried out, see Boynton, Militia, chapter 1; also W. J. Smith (ed.), Herbert Correspondence (Cardiff and Dublin, 1963), 60–1. 250 Boynton, Militia, 92–3; Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 100. 251 BL Add. 26886, fols 30r., 33r. (arrangements for training, April and June 1596); Cheshire LB, fols 12r. (muster accounts, 1595), 29v.–30r. (muster orders, May 1596). See also HMC Somerset, 32–3.

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Defending the Protestant state: The militia 252 BL Harleian 703, fols 14v.–15r. (the council to Sussex muster commissioners, 21 May 1584). HMC Talbot, 305. 253 Cambridgeshire LL, 119–22; SP 12/266/100. These date the orders tentatively to March 1598, but the reference to 6,000 troops and the superintendants suggest Essex’s reforms of 1597. These orders seem to have been reissued in 1599: Cheshire LB, fols 64r.–65r. 254 Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 447. 255 Twysden LP, 102. 256 On Wiltshire, see chapter 1. HMC Salisbury IX, 363; BL Add. 26886, fol. 23r.–v. (Lancashire muster commissioners to the council, 14 November 1595); Cheshire LB, fol. 46v. (the council to Cheshire muster commissioners, 24 February 1598); Boynton, Militia, 179–81. Cf. a similar picture in Langelüddecke, ‘Perfect Militia’, 1294–5. 257 Ian Archer, ‘The burden of taxation on sixteenth-century London’, Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 599–627, at 622; ibid., ‘Gazetteer of Military Levies from the City of London, 1509–1603’, http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/site/human/modhist/personnel/785598/ research/, nos 53, 83, 99. Training did take place in the 1570s and 1580s: ibid., nos 36, 39, 42, 45. 258 HMC Salisbury IX, 289. 259 See for example, Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 141, which describe the ‘special training camps [which] were introduced in which large numbers of troops received intensive instruction for two or three weeks at a time’, a plan which was ultimately abandoned: Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 72. 260 SP 12/206/2 (memo, 2 December 1587). The identification of Walsingham and Burghley as the subjects of this document must be inferred, but seems clear. 261 SP 12/255/84, fol. 156v. (Burghley’s ‘meditation on the state of England’, 1595). On earlier fears, see for example SP 12/51/6, fol. 10v. (‘A necessary consideration of the perilous state of this tyme’, 7 June 1569). 262 L. W. Henry, ‘The earl of Essex as strategist and military organizer (1596–7)’, EHR 68 (1953), 363–93, at 370; SP 12/224/22 (Sir John Norreys to Burghley, 8 May 1589). 263 Chamberlain Letters, 106; Leveson Papers 70/1 (various papers of 14 February 1601 and after); Surrey LB, fol. 69v. (the council to Surrey deputies, 14 February 1601); SP 15/35/27 (King James to Nottingham, lord lieutenant of Surrey, n.d. July 1603). 264 Simon Adams, ‘England and the world under the Tudors, 1485–1603’ in J. Morrill (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain (Oxford, 1996), 397–415, at 415. 265 Cf. Langelüddecke, ‘Perfect Militia’, 1265. 266 Hirst, ‘The privy council’, 51–4. 267 Ibid., 61. 268 Cf. Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 453–4. 269 See Buckhurst telling his deputies in Sussex that a general rebuke from the council did not apply to them. BL Harleian 703, fol. 118r. (26 June 1600). Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 451. 270 Younger, ‘Lambarde’.

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Chapter 4

.

Fighting Elizabeth’s wars Troop levies from the counties

T

hroughout the wars of 1585–1603, every English soldier who fought for his Queen did so outside England. The militia, however much effort was put into their exercise, never saw action in defence of their country. The sharp end of the military effort was always abroad: firstly, in the Netherlands; after 1588 in northern France; in Ireland, reaching a peak in 1599–1601; and, throughout, at sea, where many soldiers formed part of the various aggressive efforts against Spain and its empire. Lacking a standing army, and reluctant to send the trained bands abroad, the government in most cases raised troops from scratch, and it turned to the counties to carry this out. This task, one of the most regular and burdensome aspects of the wars in the counties, is the subject of this chapter. Although the main focus is on the most common method of provision, by the lieutenancies, it also deals with alternative methods of troop-raising. Historians have tended to be unimpressed by the forces raised by the Elizabethan government for foreign service. Influenced by the now ageing work of C. G. Cruickshank and Lindsay Boynton, who tended to assess the Elizabethan ‘army’ by modern rather than contemporary standards, historians have found it wanting. Braddick, for example, writes the capacity of the government to mount military expeditions was woeful. The recruitment of troops was marked by great ‘irresponsibility’ … these problems affected morale and help to explain the poor military record of the Elizabethan and Jacobean armies.

He stresses the poor quality of recruits, a ‘well-remarked phenomenon’, attributable to the tendency of local governors to use troop levies to rid their communities of undesirables, and highlights the inevitable conflicts of interests and mixture of motivations in the process adopted by the council.1 He also argues that the lieutenancy was ill-suited for the work it was asked to do:

Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies As a basis for expeditionary forces the lieutenancy continually disappointed the privy council and never provided the means for military success … In part this was because it demanded participation on terms which did not necessarily suit officeholders. Put crudely, conquering Ireland was a less pressing need than ridding villages of undesirables.2

The reputation of the Elizabethan armed forces has risen somewhat recently, with emphasis placed on the compromises required from the crown and council. John Wheeler gives a generally positive account of the Elizabethan military forces, pointing out that although ‘Elizabethan overseas expeditions always retained an ad hoc quality’ due to the lack of well-developed institutions, the government did in fact achieve its objectives both on the Continent and in Ireland: ‘these soldiers performed remarkably well’.3 Paul Hammer also delivers a more positive verdict, highlighting the difficulties faced by the regime’s strategic and fiscal position. He, too, argues that the lieutenancy system ‘made for poor soldiers’, but insists that the Elizabethan war effort actually stood up to the strain of the Irish crisis of 1598– 1603 surprisingly well. The frequent complaints and problems show the system was certainly under considerable strain, but they do not signify imminent crisis … When it really counted, Elizabethan government was able to do what was necessary for military success.4

Opinion is, then, divided: alongside some negative assessments, there are those who identify elements of success, and the difficulties and compromises implicit in the crown’s policy are recognised. Both verdicts suggest a need to look again at Elizabethan troop-raising in the context of the regime and the local institutions from which it is in practice inseparable in order to explain this success. Additionally, it is argued that several important aspects of Elizabethan troopraising have been widely neglected. One is the great variety in the administrative approaches used. The council had no compunction about continuous variation, no ideological agendas about methods (compare Spanish agonising over the merits of royal administration, or administracion, versus contracting out, or asientos 5). The only criterion for the Elizabethan government was what fitted the demands of the moment, politically, strategically and financially. A second, linked issue is the extent of the council’s use of non-lieutenancy means of troop-raising, which is not well-known or understood. Thirdly, the speed and flexibility of troop levying is emphasised here. Put together, these demonstrate greater capability on the part of the council and the counties than they are always credited with. The aim of this study is not only to describe how troops were raised, but to place the practice of troop levies in its institutional and political context. What did the council require? How did the counties respond? What did they do, and to what extent did they meet the council’s expectations? What do the ways in

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties which the council and the lieutenancy handled the pressure of troop levies tell us about those institutions, and the relationship between them? THE EXTENT OF THE BURDEN The need for troop levies varied widely from year to year, in line with the military situations in the various theatres of war (see table 4.1 and figure 4.1). Firstly, during 1585–87, there were several large levies for the English army in the Netherlands; after this, recruitment for the Netherlands continued at a lower level, reinforcing the armies and garrisons there for less intensive fighting, until the siege of Ostend in 1601–04 once again demanded large levies. Secondly, from 1589 and through the early 1590s, large contingents were raised for service in France to support Henry IV against his Catholic enemies. The third and most important cause of levies was Ireland. Elizabeth maintained a small permanent force here throughout her reign, which needed to be periodically reinforced; from 1594, however, in response to the rebellion of Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, these levies became much larger and more frequent, reaching a Table 4.1 Troop levies from the counties, 1585–1602. Netherlands

France

Ireland

Expeditions

Horse

Total

1585 1586 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 1600 1601 1602

4,000

4,000

4,000

4,000

Total

16,400

500 400

1,500

3,600 6,245 2,840 1,800 2,050 1,800 700

3,000 3,000 19,035

Source: See chapter 4, note 6.

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4,500 1,000

188 1,930 2,430 2,560 8,770 7,200 8,000 8,000 4,500 44,578

4,900 4,000 120 100 469 390 13,400

1,079

8,600 1,400 6,245 2,840 1,800 3,738 1,930 9,130 7,260 8,890 7,300 8,469 11,390 7,500 94,492

Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies peak in 1598–1601. Finally, the various amphibious attacks on Portugal in 1589, Cadiz in 1596, and the Islands in 1597 required large one-off levies. As figure 4.1 shows, troop raising during the first decade or so of the war was usually relatively light and sporadic, but from 1596, the demands for Essex’s overseas attacks on Spain and then the massive levies for Ireland, as well as the levies for Ostend, led to a huge and sustained burden on the counties. These figures represent every levy of troops (or pioneers) paid for by the counties, by London or by particular sectors of the population (the clergy, recusants, gentry, or lawyers) between 1585 and 1603; in the vast majority, the counties raised and equipped these men themselves, but some exceptions to this are noted below. In line with the focus of this chapter on the counties, several categories of troop-raising are excluded here: the few troops raised by contractors paid by central government; volunteers who did not form part of county contingents (for example on quasi-independent overseas ventures, such as the Portugal and Cadiz voyages); and men who served in foreign armies (especially the Dutch). Small-scale informal recruiting to fill gaps in existing companies is also excluded, primarily because such levies are so illdocumented but also because the counties tended not to be involved. Naval recruiting is also excluded.6 These figures are, therefore, lower than some existing estimates, and omit, for example, the ‘voluntary’ companies raised for the Dutch with English cooperation in 1585–86 or the many thousands who sailed with the Portugal expedition in 1589, since these were not paid for by the counties. These figures should be not be read as representing the total manpower drain occasioned by the wars, since (as we shall see) repeated recruitment was common. Therefore it should be remembered that these data Figure 4.1 Troop levies from the counties, 1585–1602. 12000  

10000  

8000  

Horse   Expedi2ons  

6000  

Ireland   France  

4000  

Netherlands  

2000  

0   1585 1586 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 1600 1601 1602

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties illustrate primarily the fiscal and administrative burden borne by the county machineries.7 Not all of these levies imposed the same burdens on the counties, however, because they were not always equipped in the same way. In some cases, counties had to provide only minimal weapons or even none at all, as in levies for the Netherlands in 1587 and 1594 and for Ireland in January 1602, so these were in practice much cheaper. On the other hand, the levies of horse were financially much more expensive, costing around £30 per man in comparison to a rough average of about £3 10s to equip an infantryman. These figures should also be read alongside the fact that quite often troops came back from overseas service before too long, sometimes with their armour, as in the case of an Irish levy in 1590–91, and in the Islands Voyage of 1597, when most of the county levies were sent home before the fleet left (though after the money had been spent).8 On the other hand again, this analysis excludes troop levies ordered by the council but later cancelled, in which money must have been spent by the counties. A perfect representation of the burden is impossible, but these figures provide an impression of the magnitude of the demands made on the counties. Overall responsibility for managing the troop levying process lay with the privy council. Our picture of Elizabethan policy-making is always patchy, but it seems clear that whilst the Queen’s approval was necessary for any troop levy (they were always initiated by letters under her signature), it was the council’s role to work out the details: the number and type of men to be sent, how these were to be obtained, and where the burden should be laid. At times, the Queen required some persuading: in March 1599, the council resolved to ask the Queen to order a small levy of 200 men in Kent, Surrey, Sussex and London, but it was two weeks before the orders went out.9 As we have seen, the Elizabethan wars were fought reluctantly and on as small a scale as possible. In line with this, and considering the expense occasioned both in setting forth troops and in the ongoing costs of maintaining them in the field, most troop levies were probably authorised reluctantly by most councillors, and only when believed to be truly essential. Deciding how many troops to levy was generally a matter of seeking the least bad approach, based on the crown’s financial position and conditions in the counties. The signs are that decisions were made very quickly and on an ad hoc basis – as we will see, troop levies could be prepared very quickly, and the council knew this, so they could leave it very late before ordering levies.10 This is also reflected in the many troop levies which were cancelled when it was decided that they were no longer needed. Once the period of waiting and wondering whether troops were needed was over, however, the council moved very rapidly. Contrary to some accounts of its administrative competence, most of the time the council was an effective high command, and its instructions were

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies almost always clear.11 When it was not, confusion and expense arose, as in 1589, when the council failed to specify whether 1,000 men to be raised in Sussex did or did not include the customary deduction of 10 per cent, the so-called ‘dead pays’. The lord lieutenant, Buckhurst, assumed that the council wanted 1,000 men, whereas it had intended 10 per cent dead pays, and thus only 900 men.12 Uncertainties and confusions in the counties as to the council’s instructions were perhaps even less common but they did, of course, occasionally occur. In 1597, the coincidence of two council orders for troop levies arriving in Kent at the same time spread confusion amongst the lieutenancy, with JPs unsure whether one demand was to replace another, or whether both were to be raised.13 Such confusions were relatively unusual, however. What was much more common was the council changing its orders, as it responded to events. There were many aborted troop levies over the period – some of them got as far as embarking the soldiers at the port.14 Some of these were recalled again later and some were not. This was another result of the flexible and short-termist approach to the war already noted. Perhaps the greatest debacle of the period was the attempt to relieve the siege of Calais in April 1596, when orders were changed almost daily in response to successive reports from the siege. The Kent lieutenancy was ordered on 1 April to levy 2,000 men; four days later, the total was reduced to 1,000; it was raised again to 2,000 on 9 April, cancelled altogether the following day, in the belief that Calais had fallen, reinstated the day after, and finally cancelled on 17 April. This levy was unprecedentedly large, and the speed required was amazing: on 4 April, John Leveson demanded 70 men from JPs in south Aylesford, and the next day doubled the number of men required, and ordered they be at Dover the next day.15 By the time the levy was finally cancelled, the time, trouble and expense was significant. In Aylesford North alone, the cost was £89, so the total cost to the shire must have been well over £1,000, for precisely nothing achieved.16 Moreover, a great deal of armour was lost during the dispersal of troops who had assembled at the ports and issued with their equipment: of 716 sets of equipment sent to Dover out of Aylesford and Sutton-at-Hone, 197 failed to return.17 A disaster on this scale can hardly have failed to cause real discontent and unhappiness even amongst those well-disposed to the regime, and it was in large part the fault of the Queen and council. The Queen came as close as she ever did to apologising, blaming bad intelligence from the French.18 Nevertheless, the war went on; the government could not moderate its demands and when, later in May, a levy of 180 troops was ordered, there was no question that it had to go ahead.19 On the other hand, contrary to accounts of its inefficiency, in important or urgent matters, the council responded to queries from the counties very quickly: in as few as two days, when dealing directly with John Leveson over a matter of very high priority (the assembling of a large contingent of troops at

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Rochester in 1601), or, from as far away as Northamptonshire, five days.20 The council also coordinated the agencies under its command; given the undeveloped nature of many of the institutions involved, there was no other agency which could do this. During the preparation of the 1589 expedition to France, for example, the council was in constant communication with the lieutenants concerned.21 Once a troop levy was agreed upon, the council had to allot a quota to each county involved. Whereas many counties had elaborate and precise means for dividing up burdens, there was no such national system. The council took note of how heavily counties had been charged in the past, but in the absence of detailed and accurate information, its rating was necessarily based on experience and rough estimates of the size, wealth and population of various counties.22 A letter of Burghley’s to Sir Robert Cecil shows how vague the system was, suggesting that ‘for men to be had, I think London might yield 200, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Hertford 400, and I think there would be found 100 voluntaries of such as were dismissed from the Downs’.23 Most surviving papers concerning the distribution of troops tend to be scratched out by Burghley.24 His tone very much suggests that the least troublesome option was being sought, and that his information was generally vague and impressionistic. Nevertheless, a county’s share of the total burden was not rated purely on the basis of its size or wealth: its location was also a factor. Troops for the continent often came from the south and south-east, those for Ireland often from the west, north-west and Wales, in order to simplify travel arrangements.25 Over the years, however, as the number of troop levies mounted, more distant counties had to be charged to avoid overburdening certain parts of the country. As the conflict in Ireland reached its height, in 1598–1601, the council spread burdens much more widely, to minimise the pressure on individual counties. In 1600, for example, a levy of 1,000 men was spread over no fewer than 39 counties, with some Welsh counties providing as few as 10 men, and even teeming London only 150; again, in July 1602, every county apart from the far North was charged to raise 2,000 men. In a roundabout way, this was a rather more rational national system.26 The council also resorted to tapping sectors of society which may otherwise have been under-taxed: in 1598, in a piquant combination by the council, the clergy and recusants had to provide cavalry for Ireland; in January 1600 it was the turn of the London legal establishment, and in June 1600 and October 1601 senior county gentry.27 At this time, it was clearly felt that the high levels of demands had pushed the counties very hard, and alternatives methods of provision were called for. This was, again, a case of continual experiment in approach. Similarly, there was a significant degree of variation in the method of levying troops. English levying practices differed strikingly from those of most contemporary European states. Firstly, Elizabeth entirely eschewed the use

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies of mercenaries or foreign troops, which were used extensively by Henry VIII and Edward VI. This was partly down to cost, although it was also a point of national pride.28 Secondly, troops raised through noble affinities had a relatively small role in English armies. Under Henry VIII and as late as Mary’s army for the French war of 1558, armies had been raised in large part by noblemen and structured around their contingents; this now ceased. In most cases, the vast majority of the rank-and-file of royal armies were composed of troops raised by the lieutenancies. Noble clientage networks could also add to these in important ways, however. The vital cavalry contingent for the Leicester’s 1585 campaign in the Netherlands was formed from some 750 of his own followers, aside from 400 foot ‘of his own tenants’; Sir Thomas Cecil and Sir Philip Sidney each took 200 of theirs, and the Kent gentleman Sir Thomas Scott sent his son over with 39 horse and 50 foot.29 In the crisis of 1588, the nobility provided large contingents of troops.30 Essex’s various exploits attracted much of their manpower, especially gentlemen volunteers, from his affinity and (perhaps more significantly) his national prominence.31 In many cases (as in the case of Leicester’s cavalry) these may have been disproportionately valuable troops. But in large part the regime preferred to steer clear of noble affinities, and relied on the counties for the vast majority of troops raised over the period. The reasons for abandoning this age-old approach to troop-raising probably lie in a combination of factors. The bonds between lords and men which had facilitated this approach were slowly declining; much of the nobility remained conservative or Catholic, making them ill-suited to raise troops for a Protestant regime to send in defence of their rebellious Dutch co-religionists; the limited appeal of serving when the monarch herself did not grace the field is also significant. The government also seems to have been wary of these approaches; the Queen was often reluctant to allow her noblemen overseas (as in the case of Southampton and Rutland in 1599).32 Finally, troops such as this had real drawbacks: they were potentially unreliable, since those serving as volunteers could (and did) depart at will, especially if their patron withdrew. Furthermore they presented a potentially unhelpful conflict of loyalties, a point especially significant with regard to the earl of Essex. Yet for all that, this was a marked and very rapid development: whereas large proportions of the able-bodied nobility had turned out for Henry VII and Henry VIII’s campaigns, the most aristocratic of Elizabethan expeditions, that of Leicester to the Netherlands, or of Essex to Ireland, boasted only five or six noblemen.33 In some ways the militia was a successor to the nobility as the principal national defence force, and the trained bands, in theory at least, provided an organised, armed and trained force. An obvious solution to the problem of finding suitable soldiers would thus have been to send the trained bands. In theory, the trained bands were intended only for defence of their native

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties counties, as we have seen, but the government reneged on this several times: most notably in 1589, when Hampshire, Kent, London and Sussex were each ordered to send 900 of ‘the choiceste men of the Trained Bandes’ to France under Lord Willoughby, in an emergency effort to prop up the embattled Henry IV, but also on a smaller scale in February 1592 and July 1594; there were abortive plans to send trained bands to defend Ostend in 1597, and to fight in Ireland in 1602.34 Even when the trained bands were sent abroad, in practice, many bandsmen avoided serving in person: in 1589, Buckhurst allowed wealthier men to send substitutes, saying that ‘surelie it shall not be any hindrance but in myne oppinion rather furtherance to the service’. The same was allowed in February 1592, when 300 Sussex trained men were sent to Normandy, but in this case it backfired, since the substitutes were ‘a company of very rogues, rag[ge]d, without apparrell, without armor and in suche miserable case, as they doubt the greatest parte of them will starve for want and colde’.35 The Kent contingent in 1589, however, included at least some proper trained bandsmen, in John Leveson’s own company, although this was regarded as being the best equipped of the whole expedition.36 Whilst the trained bands were a useful reserve of men for emergencies, then, there were major disadvantages in using them too often, primarily because it was so unpopular in the counties, particularly amongst the gentry and yeomanry, the better sort. On one occasion in 1591, Cobham used the exempting of the trained bands to encourage the county to be ‘more willinge to yeld to this contribucion, in respect that their owne persons shalbe forborne, and their armour spared’.37 The Somerset gentry were very unwilling to use trained bands, and in 1599, the news that the Lancashire trained bands would not be sent to Ireland occasioned a ‘joyfull’ response.38 Counties would rather buy new weapons for troop levies than send their own – suggesting, unsurprisingly, that weapons bought for levies would be inferior to those used by the trained bands.39 More seriously, the practice had a corrosive effect on the trained bands themselves, making them less useful for national defence, especially, as we have seen, the 1589 expedition. For all these reasons, resort to the trained bands was very much the exception, and it is misleading to suggest that the government was increasingly forced to use trained bands for overseas levies; they were not used during the peak years of the Irish campaigns, for example.40 These options being mostly ruled out, the regime was obliged to raise virtually all of the troops it sent overseas from scratch. There were essentially two options for early modern governments to raise troops: to do it in-house, or to contract it out. The former was obviously more demanding to the resources of the state but arguably provided a more reliable outcome; the latter was easier, but often more expensive, and naturally entailed some loss of authority by the government in question. Contracting was essentially a simple arrangement,

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies whereby a government paid an individual to raise a contingent of troops, equip them and deliver them for the use of the government, in effect privatised troopraising. This approach was widely used in Europe to recruit foreign soldiers: Spain had well-established relationships with German contractors, and France with Swiss contractors.41 On several occasions, the Dutch employed English contractors to raise troops (often with the cooperation of English officials): in 1577–78, Sir John Norreys raised 3,000 troops for the Prince of Orange, and in 1584, 1,500 more were raised for the Estates of Brabant.42 In 1585, alongside the English county levies sent to the Netherlands, around 3,000 further troops were raised in England to be employed by the States and to augment the overall English force; they appear to have been mostly volunteers sent over in June, as well as 1,000 ‘pioneers sent over at the charge of the States’, ‘at sundry times’.43 English troops were also raised for the States in April-May 1586, when the council gave commissions to 15 captains, nominated by Leicester and in many cases close associates of his, to raise contingents of men in certain counties. They were provided with authority from the council and letters ordering local officials to cooperate with them. Although these men were technically to be in the pay of the States, they were in practice a supplement to Leicester’s expeditionary force. Somewhere between 3,250 and 4,000 men – a very substantial levy – were raised in this way.44 In these cases, of course, the troops were not raised to be in English pay, but this approach was occasionally used for troops that were. In autumn 1588, during Parma’s siege of Bergen-op-zoom, Sir John Norreys ‘toke upon him at a certaine rate to leavie, victuall, arme and transport’ 1,500 reinforcements for the English army in the Netherlands. The men were to be volunteers, taken up by Norreys’s officers mainly in the south-east, with the help of the lieutenancies.45 Much later, successive commanders in Ireland were used as contractors to provide cavalry contingents in return for lump sums: in December 1598, the earl of Essex received £12,000 out of the Exchequer to provide 400 horse, and in January 1600, Lord Mountjoy was paid £6,000 to provide 200.46 The practical disadvantage to this approach was that money was required up front, but the council devised a way around this on the latter occasion by ordering the counties to provide £30 per horseman in lieu of their usual provision in kind.47 Similarly, when preparing his army for Ireland in December 1598, Essex offered to equip the county levies for £3 a man, an offer taken up by Sussex, but rejected by Kent and others.48 For a much smaller levy of 200 men in March 1599 (when Essex was still preparing to depart), the council insisted on this, ordering the counties to pay £3 per man for Essex to provide the men and their armour and apparel.49 The use of these approaches is not well-known, and indeed it was not very common. Yet it was full-scale contracting, albeit with important differences to continental practices: the troops were raised at home rather than abroad,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties and the government kept a close eye on proceedings; sometimes the counties still provided the men, and the Elizabethan government also managed to pass much of the cost onto the counties. The use of noblemen or military commanders as contractors was an effective use of the knowledge and contacts of experienced officers. The Elizabethan government also occasionally used troop-raising by commission. This involved granting a commission to a named individual, usually a military officer, to raise a specified number of troops within a defined area; usually, these were relatively small numbers of men, often a company of 150, who were then led in the field by the commissioner. This was essentially a looser version of using permanent officials such as the lieutenancies, and had in the past (under Henry VIII, for example) been done using members of the nobility or gentry as commissioners.50 Later on, when the lieutenancy system was better established, commissions came to be used more rarely, for levies that were in some way anomalous, such as making good deficiencies in depleted companies.51 They were also used to raise troops for the Portugal Voyage of 1589 (alongside troops raised by the lieutenancy) and the Cadiz voyage of 1596.52 It is unclear why this was done on this latter occasion – it may well have been because Essex wanted to ensure high-quality recruits by having them chosen by military professionals, rather than lieutenancy officials. Normally the corollary to this was that the county was not obliged to equip them, but Essex, characteristically, asked them to do so voluntarily, and had some success in achieving his wish.53 Recruits raised by commission were described as volunteers, since the commissioners had no authority to ‘press’ men. On some occasions, this was clearly illusory: in 1586, the council’s orders forbade that men be ‘imprested by vertue of her Majesties autoritie’, but added ‘saveing the masterles persones hable of bodie that maie be found’.54 Certainly some recruits were vagrants, as in July 1597, and probably many were volunteers in only the most technical sense.55 However, in some cases at least there was a genuine intention that this should be honoured: as in the recruits raised by commission to Drake and Norreys for the Portugal expedition, and when volunteers were taken in 1602 from the Dutch and Walloon expatriate communities in Canterbury and Sandwich.56 There were always some members of early modern societies willing to join the army, particularly in years of scarcity like the mid-1590s.57 Whilst the great majority of troops were raised by the lieutenancies, therefore, the role of commissioning and contracting for recruitment should not be overlooked. The role of Sir John Norreys in raising troops for both the Dutch and English is particularly interesting. Perhaps the most important point to note here is the council’s experimentation in responses to the problem of troop-raising; throughout the period, the best solution was whatever fitted the demands of the moment. Whilst contracting was useful at times, it was too

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies expensive to be used widely; whilst commissioning had its place, in most cases the lieutenancy was seen as a better solution. As a mobilisation technique, the lieutenancies were highly unusual in European terms, although they shared some characteristics of the commission system. In a typically idiosyncratic Elizabethan way, however, these functions were delegated not to military professionals, as in most European systems, but to the lieutenancies, a standing institution with specific military functions, yet one which was decentralised, amateur, unpaid and run by part-timers, county gentry who had to balance their responsibilities in various fields of local government. The most obvious advantage of this was that it passed virtually all of the initial costs of the troops onto the counties, avoiding a drain on central government resources (the crown still paid ‘coat and conduct’ money to the counties, but this constituted a small proportion of the total cost of troop raising; see chapter 5). When the Queen and council despatched an order to the counties to prepare a troop levy, they initiated a process that was complex, demanding, and expensive, perhaps the most complex operations Elizabethan local government was charged with. The counties were not expected to provide cannon fodder, to act purely in support to professional troops such as medieval mounted knights. What was required was high-quality troops, with elaborate modern weaponry, to be used in increasingly professional, specialised warfare. As the council noted in 1580, ‘the maner of the presente warres do differ from warres in former tymes’, and they expected the counties to keep up with this.58 Furthermore the council did not provide a great deal of detail on how all this was to be accomplished. Orders typically specified only the barest outlines of what was wanted: how many soldiers, what equipment and where to deliver them, although the council did tend to become more prescriptive over the period, particularly with regard to the perceived failings of previous levies. The counties were largely left to their own initiative, however, to decide how to carry out the three key stages in troop mobilisation: selecting the men; providing them with equipment; and handing them over to the military officials. It was up to the lieutenancies to manage these processes successfully, and how they did so is the key issue of this chapter. The ever-growing complexity of the operation, and the approaches taken to deal with them provide an insight into the development of the practice of early modern government in the lieutenancy machineries. THE RECRUITS During the reign of Henry VIII, it became increasingly uncommon to construct armies by relying on noblemen to provide retinues of soldiers assembled through their own associates and tenants. Instead armies were largely

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties raised under royal commissions issued to noblemen or county officials such as commissioners of musters and, later, lord lieutenants. The recruits were ‘pressed’ (or ‘prested’) into service, and some at least were recruited unwillingly. This approach was used extensively during the first thirty years of Elizabeth’s reign, principally for troops for Ireland, and it became standard during the Elizabethan wars.59 The legal status of such forced recruiting was murky; it was probably contrary to statutes of Edward III’s reign, but nobody seems to have found it expedient to complain too loudly about this except for John Smythe, and his incarceration and retraction was clearly a warning to others.60 There was certainly scope for further legislation to clarify the position, and various bills were introduced, but none passed; the council may well have preferred to maintain the position of creative ambiguity.61 To a large extent, this must have been because the system appears to have worked surprisingly smoothly. The council’s orders specified the total number of recruits needed from each county; lieutenants or deputies then apportioned quotas between the county’s subdivisions and issued warrants, usually to high constables, to locate suitable men and present them for recruitment. The deputies or JPs could then select recruits and formally impress them into royal service, an exercise of the royal prerogative and as such of some significance.62 The sources seldom record serious problems with the running of this process, except when very large numbers of men were demanded at short notice, and even then the authorities made strenuous efforts to meet the council’s demand. London, for example, often had to provide men in large levies as well as small contingents of reinforcements. In May 1602, however, the council demanded 2,000 men for the relief of Ostend, and the authorities had such difficulty in finding men that they attempted to press lawyers, gentlemen in town on legal business, theatregoers, frequenters of bawdy houses and bowling alleys, royal servants ‘and as it was credibly reported one Earle’.63 Much of this smooth running must have been down to the ability to rely on forced recruiting. This was in striking contrast to the difficulties of raising troops in Spain, where compulsion could not be used and the population was declining. Ambassador Mendoza sounds distinctly surprised when he noted that the Queen had ‘commanded the city of London to raise 4,000 footsoldiers, which the towns here usually do on the sovereign’s demand’.64 It is impossible to say how many of the recruits were willing to go and how many were forced; no doubt it would depend on where they would have to fight, how many troops had been levied in the area recently, local economic conditions and so on, and the process must also have been eased by the rising population of Elizabethan England.65 There are occasional mentions of volunteers, or of captains bringing followers or tenants of theirs into their companies.66 Yet the endemic problem of recruits absconding demonstrates that many were reluctant to go, especially if the levy was for

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies the despised Irish service.67 George Sydenham, a Somerset deputy, predicted that ‘the brute of setting forth of soldiors will cause the common sorte to scatter’, and Sir William Maurice, a Carnarvonshire deputy, recalled in 1615 that ‘during Tyrone’s rebellion in Ireland the people absented themselves from the musters, hiding in rocks and caves, some flying into foreign countrie’.68 Local officials employed a variety of stratagems in response; Maurice himself committed them to gaol, and William Lambarde suggested keeping secret a forthcoming troop levy whilst JPs elsewhere in Kent proceeded with it, so ‘suche as will skippe out of other partes … may fall into our lappes, and minister unto us good plentie to woorke upon’.69 This all suggests that recruiting, whilst seldom a serious problem, was not always easy. As a 1626 ‘song of a Constable’ noted, Hearing a presse for souldiers, they’le start; ells hide them selues when we come. Their wiues then will saye, ‘to presse wee yee maye, our husbands are not at home’.70

It is very difficult to say how much care local officials employed in selecting men. The council constantly demanded men of ‘strong and able bodies, meet for the service of the wars’, and also ‘of known residence in the shire’: it was regarded as important for morale and discipline that the men and their officers be not ‘strangers’.71 Occasionally there were specific requests: in 1586 some ‘Scatchemen or Stiltmen’ were sent from Lincolnshire to serve in the Netherlands; sometimes specific tradesmen, such as carpenters, smiths, saddlers and bricklayers; and once men who have ‘had use of their peece [gun] in fowling or otherwise’.72 Yet it is a commonplace (then and now) that most Elizabethan soldiers were vagrants or criminals who were recruited in order to rid the local community of troublesome members. In 1598, the council accused JPs of allowing constables to ‘take up such refues of men as the villages desire to be rid of for their lewd behaviour’, and even the Queen was reported as saying that her soldiers ‘were but thieves and ought to hang’.73 Only one example of actual prisoners being recruited has been found, but there can be no doubt that the practice must have gone on: given the need of local officials to balance their conflicting obligations to the state and to local society, it was inevitable.74 During the final years of the war, when the demand for men became greatest, this was even connived in by the council and by authorities such as Henry, Lord Cobham, who wrote that Kent was ‘burthened and pestered, with roagues, vagabondes, and other idle and dissolute masterlesse persons, yet of strong and hable bodies, meete for the service of those warres’.75 Another recurrent, probably endemic, problem was the tendency for military officials to select unsuitable recruits in the expectation that they would procure their release by bribery, a practice depicted (with Falstaff as the beneficiary) in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part Two, act III, scene 2. William Warde

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties confessed to bribing a captain to be released from a 1599 levy in Scarsdale in Derbyshire; since the sum involved was £6, he was clearly a man of some means. On this extremely profitable day, the captain released other men for payments of £5 or £10.76 No doubt civil officials also indulged in this practice: Norfolk JPs were prosecuted for doing so in 1596; in 1601, the sheriff of Denbighshire impressed supporters of his opponent in the county election, and in 1598 John Wynn of Gwydir, a deputy in Carnarvonshire, impressed a man of fifty-six, a father of nine or ten children.77 Nevertheless, the shortcomings of the recruitment system can be exaggerated: even the council tended to say that poor recruits were a problem only in some counties, and there are signs that some practices were better. John Rivers, a JP in Kent, wrote to John Leveson that when recruiting he ‘neither swepte alehouse nor had taken up rogues’.78 In 1586, Leicester complained that recruits for the Netherlands, far from being poor quality, were if anything too substantial men: many of them being househoulders, and maryed men, and of bodye not fit for this service. I pray you lett there be care had in these [a new levy], that they may be single men and of apt bodyes.79

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence (often in petitions for reward) about men who made careers of military service. One Christopher Levens, for example, fought at Newhaven (1562–63) and the battle of St Denis (1567) and had a career which ended as captain of a company under James Hales in the ‘Portingall action’ in 1589; William Mortimer served thirty-four years in Scotland, at Newhaven, in Ireland under the earl of Sussex, at Berwick, in Ireland again, in the Low Countries, as a lieutenant in Ireland, in France, and then as a horseman at Bergen; and one Matthew Barnes was pressed to serve in France, but volunteered for service on the Portugal voyage, in France, the Netherlands and Ireland.80 Most of these were (or ended up as) officers, but at the level of common soldier too, there is clear evidence of men being recruited multiple times. In Gloucester, for example, the names of 10 men appear 28 times in lists of recruits of the late 1580s and early 1590s: John Wakeman of Gloucester, for example, was recruited for the Portugal voyage in 1589, for Ireland in 1590, Normandy in 1591, Brittany in 1592 and Normandy again in 1593.81 Similarly, 8 of the 28 recruits from Dickering and Buckrose wapentakes in Yorkshire in 1596 were ‘old soldiors’.82 This must have been replicated elsewhere, not least because former soldiers would have been the obvious first resort for local officials looking to fill their quota, both because they may have been more willing to sign up but also because, to the authorities, they would have constituted the nuisances and dregs of the shires which were always complained about.83 This was possible because of a fact which is easily forgotten: many troops returned safely from service overseas. Even assuming the survival of only half of the

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies 3,600 who went to France in 1589 and returned in 1590, the 4,000 on the Portugal voyage, the 6,000 who went to Cadiz in 1596 and so on, it is clear that local officials would not have found it difficult to lay their hands on ex-soldiers, many of them still able-bodied. This means that the drain on the nation’s manpower occasioned by the war must have been less (perhaps significantly less) than the 94,000 or more usually quoted, a figure which represents the number of instances of recruitment: if men were recruited two, three or more times, then this reduced the drain. A second consequence is that the average training, fighting ability and battle-experience of the troops must have been greater than is usually assumed, if these troops had served in the face of the enemy, mastered their weapons and received training. Recruits often received training whilst waiting to depart, as in the case of the Cadiz voyage, for example.84 These would have constituted a substantial body of professionally trained troops to be drawn on for future service, either abroad or in the militia. Further light can be cast on the origins of recruits by analysing the unusually detailed records of ten troop levies in the hundred of Edwinstree in Hertfordshire.85 Of 82 men recruited between 1587 and 1596, nothing can be determined about 35, which suggests that some may indeed have been vagrants or wandering, masterless men (or even that they might have been veterans from elsewhere). However, something can be established with reasonable certainty about the remaining 47 – at the very least, their presence in the area before they were recruited. Interestingly, again, 2 or possibly 3 men were recruited twice. A total of 13 recruits had received training in the militia. In terms of their occupations, many were servants, labourers, or artisans such as carpenters or smiths.86 This latter finding is also echoed in Leicestershire records from 1600, noting that recruits were husbandmen, labourers and artisans.87 Local authorities also tried to minimise the adverse social consequences of troop levies on their communities. Men with dependants were naturally avoided – several of the Hertfordshire recruits are specifically described as single men, who would not leave wives or children dependent on local charity, and indeed one Androwe Aunsell evaded impressment specifically because his wife ‘came into the towne and sayed if her husband went she would tary upon the charge of the towne whereupon the constable required he might be discharged’.88 Similarly, the Norfolk muster commissioners ordered in 1598 that recruits should be ‘hable men and sufficientlie [sic] … sparinge (so fare as convenientlie it may be donn) married men and the sonnes of the better sorte of yeomen’.89 Leicester certainly wanted to avoid such men; not only did they potentially leave problems behind, they were naturally particularly interested in returning home as soon as possible.90 No doubt, as Thomas Wilson wrote, recruits tended to be ‘onely the comon people and the artificer … the basest and most unexperienced’; but to say that local officials spared prosperous

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties farmers’ or yeomen’s sons, the sons of the village middling sorts, and pressed artificers or labourers instead is not the same as saying that they recruited thieves and rogues.91 Sweeping accounts of the poor quality of recruits – informed, perhaps, by contemporary criticisms, which naturally highlighted worst cases and were informed by fear of, and distaste for, the masses – overstate the case.92 Local office-holders inevitably bore in mind the interests of their community when selecting recruits, since the deputies or muster commissioners were also responsible for local justice and poor relief: their concern for the village or locality extended over a number of spheres, which they were called upon to balance. This does not mean, however, that local authorities lacked any concern for the military outcome. The balancing of the interests of crown, county and local community did not always lead to the worst possible result. EQUIPPING THE TROOPS Most recruits sent overseas were expected to be fully clothed, armed and equipped by the counties. As with other aspects of troop-raising through the lieutenancies, this was not necessarily the most effective way to ensure the highest standards, since the counties were liable to be more interested in minimising costs than maximising quality, and, again, the council probably chose this approach because it shifted the cost onto the counties. Properly equipping a soldier required the counties to obtain a large number of items of clothing, weaponry and equipment. A pikeman, for example, required ‘corselet, poldrons, pyke, hedpeice, gorgett, rapior or short sword, coate, dubblet, hose, stockinges, shirt, band, shoes, [and] monmouth cap’, and the musket- and calivermen similar numbers of specialised items.93 It is surprising, then, that lieutenancy papers suggest that this caused little practical difficulty in the counties. Armour might be taken either from existing stores (whether privately or publicly owned) or bought new, and both systems were used at different times. In Staffordshire, armour for troops sent to Ireland was taken from that allocated to the trained bands; in Derbyshire, a troop levy was equipped from existing stores, with the intention of replacing it from a council-approved supplier; for a levy in Cornwall in 1590, armour was cobbled together from half-a-dozen different sources, both private armouries and new purchases.94 In some cases, as in Norfolk and Hertfordshire, the provision was simply shifted on to subordinate officials by requiring hundreds or other areas to provide men fully armed – surely a less effective system, since it would reduce uniformity in the soldiers.95 This approach was problematic both because it potentially reduced the armour available for the militia’s use, and also because existing stores

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies inevitably became depleted; later in the period, therefore, armour was more commonly purchased from new.96 This appears to have been the norm in Kent, and when a levy was aborted in 1592, the armour was put into storage for future use.97 In April 1596, for a very large levy, both JPs and deputies bought items; in 1601, provision was carried out by a single JP, Robert Bossville.98 In some cases, county authorities might engage the captain to purchase equipment. In 1593, the Surrey deputies were keen to ‘deliver money to the captaine to provide coates & corseletes for the soldioures’.99 In January 1599, when Kent was called upon to provide the exceptionally large number of 25 light horsemen for Ireland, it was initially proposed to send men from the county’s trained horse companies, before it was decided to contract with the captain, John Brooke, to make the provision at £30 per horse, for which he would ‘undertake to discharge the cowntrey of any farther cost’. 100 It is not, perhaps, surprising that clothing could be obtained quite easily in the counties, since there would naturally be manufacturers in many places who could often work very quickly: in Kent in 1596, 180 coats were produced in as few as five days.101 The ability to procure the armour and weapons is more surprising, but armour was easily obtainable in towns such as Rochester and Norwich.102 In more remote areas, more use may have been made of captains with relevant contacts to obtain items, or purchases could be made at ports of embarkation such as Chester. In one case in 1596, 400 recruits from Yorkshire arrived at Chester unarmed because ‘there was not sufficient armes to be hadd in the said Countie of Yorke’, and the captains left their companies there for almost a month while they travelled up to London to purchase it.103 The purchasing of armour seems, therefore, to have been accomplished without undue fuss by deputy lieutenants and JPs, and this highlights some of the strengths of the lieutenancy: although the demands were heavy, and procedures were ill-defined, willingness and capability from local officials, together with good communication and coordination, made the system work well. There was close cooperation between lieutenancy officials and local armourers, for example Alexander Gladwell in Kent.104 In this sense, the county was an effective unit, since it was small enough for such ad hoc solutions to be pulled off without too much confusion arising, and the relatively small numbers of troops required from each county could be handled by small-scale regional producers. The provision of equipment in the counties, therefore, shows an impressive degree of capability in lieutenancy administration: the local gentry employed by the council and the lieutenancy to carry this out took on a great deal of work and evolved the practices necessary to do it with relative ease. The standard of equipment varied, of course, and there were often complaints that some counties’ provision was poor, as we shall see. There were obvious drawbacks to decentralised, non-standardised procurement. One response to this was to encourage the counties to purchase equipment from

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties approved suppliers, as in the late 1590s, under Essex’s patronage.105 As the demand for troop levies became ever more regular late in the 1590s, however, there were increasingly moves to take procurement out of the hands of the counties altogether, by using central contractors arranged by the council (this may also reflect the cumulative running down of surplus armour stocks in the counties). In 1597, the council used ‘one Furner, a merchant of London’ to provide armour for a troop levy.106 This approach grew ever more common thereafter, stimulated by the requirements of maintaining the ever-growing English army in Ireland, which was heavily dependent on supplies of all kinds from England. For some years the council contracted with London merchants, most prominently Ury Babington and Robert Bromley, to provide clothing for troops in the field, in contracts worth huge amounts of money: almost £40,000 a year by one contract.107 It was thus a logical step to have Babington and Bromley provide clothing for new recruits from the counties, and this system was used extensively from 1598 to the end of the war, a period which included recruiting on a massive scale.108 In some cases, the armour and weapons were provided centrally as well (although this had to be cancelled in October 1601, at the end of the second-heaviest year for troop levies of the whole period, when the earl of Nottingham reported that the Queen’s stores were destitute of arms and London could not meet the demand109). This was in some ways a decisive move away from the old system of provision in the counties, but crucially the council refused to jettison the principle of provision at county expense, and instead ordered the counties to provide money in lieu of their usual provision in kind – usually 40s for apparel and 30s for armour and equipment.110 Responses to this practice were mixed. In September 1601 the council gave the counties the choice of arming a troop levy themselves or providing money in lieu: Cambridgeshire and Norfolk chose to pay the money, Kent and Suffolk chose to make the provision themselves.111 In 1600, the earl of Pembroke used the same approach on his own initiative, using the council’s preferred supplier, Edmund Nicholson, to equip 1,750 troops raised in his lieutenancies in Wales.112 More commonly, however, the practice was resented by the counties.113 When first used in Kent, it was strongly criticised by a group of senior county gentry (some with military experience), complaining that it was unnecessary, since the county had in the past provided men at three days’ notice or less, they had paid out for armour and coats to be ready made, in case of necessity; they (rightly) suspected poor manufacturing and profiteering by the London merchants and that their money was being wasted, and taken out of the county to London, rather than circulating in the local economy.114 In all likelihood, the prime cause of this was the fact that the sums demanded by the council in these levies were greater than those needed to provide the same clothing and

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies equipment in the county (though not necessarily to the same standard), but the affront to county honour may also have been a factor. There were also widespread concerns that this system meant that the recruits tended to be issued with their clothing only at the port, or even in the theatre of operations, which could leave them having to travel long distances without sufficient clothing. Soldiers were often suspicious that they would never receive their equipment at all, and mutinied in response in Norfolk in 1601.115 Yet this was partly the point: if soldiers were only issued with their equipment at the ports, they were less likely to abscond with it on the way.116 The Norfolk muster commissioners also argued that central provision undermined the local arms industry, and would leave them unable to ‘arme our owne trained companies, nor have any armour in the country to serve her Majestie upon any suddaine occasion’.117 Nevertheless, this practice had significant advantages for the government. It meant that the equipment supplied would be uniform and of reasonable quality. It also avoided the problem of troop levies denuding the counties of weaponry, tapping the counties’ financial rather than their military resources: at the same time boosting military production in London and preserving military capacity in the counties. It may even be that a useful side effect was a boost to the amount of specie in circulation, since this was a perennial problem.118 This practice represents a trend towards greater centralisation of procurement in arms and clothing, particularly in the large London firms like Babington and Bromley utilised by the government. It was also a move towards the creation of industrial capability in response to the demands of the military machine – small steps, indeed, which did not get very far before the end of the war, but steps in the direction of a real integration between military demand, industrial supply and government finance. THE COUNTIES AND THE MILITARY AUTHORITIES The last stage of the counties’ job in troop levies was to hand over the recruits to military authorities. This was one of the most problematic stages of the process; recruits could be closely supervised while they remained in their home counties, and again while under military control in the field, but in between, once mustered in the county in readiness to leave, or as they marched to the port where they would take ship for the theatre of battle, they were inevitably troublesome and difficulty to control. Troops kept waiting might try to ‘flie away’; troops on the march might abscond or mutiny, or lose or damage their equipment, and in these events, the county would have to go to the trouble and expense of replacing them.119 During this phase of the operation, much harm could be, and was, done to the results of the county’s effort and expense. Recognising this, the council made various efforts to ensure that the process was as watertight as possible, by ordering that JPs supervise the handover,

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties ‘that the service which in righte apperteyneth to them be not poasted over unto other inferior officers, ignoraunte or indiscreete persons, wherof there hath been many complaints heretofore made’, and in 1601 providing a sheet of instructions for the conductor.120 Recruits could be handed over to the military authorities either in the county or at their port of embarkation. If the recruits were to be handed over at the port, a conductor was appointed to escort them there, often a JP from the county. Alternatively, soldiers could be handed over directly to the captain who would lead them in the field. The key problem was maintaining control of the men, and there were various ways of doing so. In 1585, for example, the Gloucestershire JPs delivered their men to the captain in the county, but decided also to send a man to assist him in conducting the 300 men to London for transport, no doubt fearing that the captain’s authority may not have been enough to maintain order.121 More seriously, the Sussex contingent in the same levy, which had been ‘sett forthe verie baerlie and meanelie in everie respecte’, ‘grewe to be soe unquiete that the Justice [conducting them] was forcede to requier my Lorde Cobham his ayde, whoe in parsone was at the imbarquing’.122 The use of local JPs to maintain order was paralleled by the appointment of local men as captains of county contingents, which was believed to be conducive to recruits’ morale and discipline and even to encourage willingness to be recruited.123 It was important here that the county and military officials worked together effectively, but inevitably relations were not always harmonious, since their interests were essentially conflicting – the captains wanted the best men and armour, whilst the counties naturally sought to minimise the impact on the county and, often, keep down costs. In order to avoid conflict, it became common practice for captains to take active roles in troop levies: acting as messengers in the counties, helping in the choice of equipment and men, or even being contracted to purchase equipment on behalf of the county.124 This was often welcomed by more earnest county officials, and highlights the importance of informal contacts in oiling the wheels of a basically ramshackle machine.125 Similarly, local officials knew that their military counterparts were reluctant to accept poor quality recruits and would complain or simply refuse them, so sometimes sent a few extra men to enable a choice to be made.126 It was possible for the captain, particularly when backed by a powerful general such as Leicester or Essex, to cause a certain amount of trouble for the county if he thought the men or their equipment was substandard; he could demand that problems be rectified or extra money spent, as one affronted Kent JP complained in 1594.127 Faced with a demanding captain who was unsatisfied with his soldiers’ headpieces in 1589, Lord Buckhurst simply gave him 148 Spanish morions from his own armoury.128 Nevertheless, considering the potential for discord, there could be a surprising degree of amity between captain and officials, as a 1592 controversy over the quality of a levy from Kent shows.

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies Lord Cobham wrote to his deputy John Leveson on 2 March that there was talk at court that the Kent soldiers were poorly armed. However, Captain Johnson, who led the levy, hastened to disavow any complaint, telling Cobham that the fault that I can finde is not in the men but in their armes the which must be excused in regard the countrie could afford no better and the shortnes of the time wold admitt of no better provision to be made els where so that I accepted of them for that I would not seem troublesom unto your honor.

Cobham told Leveson that Johnson ‘honestlie [did] excuse it’ and Cobham ‘much commend[ed] him [Johnson] for his quiett allowance therof’. Despite the courtesy and moderation of the surviving letters, Leveson took the matter as a personal affront, writing a strong rebuttal to Cobham that ‘yt may appear that the default in the armes was not thought uppon, at the receiving of them: and thearfore I must leave his [Johnson’s] accusation and the sensure of my service therin to your honourable consideracion’. Johnson evidently wrote directly to Leveson, denying that he had complained about the service of the deputies; though there were defaults in the armour, he had excused these to Cobham as being due to the short time available for their preparation; he held the deputies and justices in the highest regard, he assured them, and seemed mortified by the whole affair. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this dispute, the civil and military officials went to some lengths to avoid discord and maintain consensus.129 The transfer to military authorities was formalised by drawing up indentures, copies of which were retained by the council, the lord lieutenant and the captain.130 These were in effect receipts, listing the recruits’ names and their equipment, which ought to have ensured that the county could not evade responsibility for what was provided: as Cobham put it, the indenture allowed the captain to record his ‘well likinge bothe of the men, and of their furniture, that for your paynes and good care had in this service, you may receve thanckes’. The implicit threat is clear.131 Likewise, this meant that the specific men and equipment provided by the counties should all arrive at the port, and captains could not take bribes to discharge men and then blame the county, as they were often suspected of doing. As a result, captains would sometimes ‘mislay’ the indenture.132 The council could find out about this, through the inspections of the muster-masters at the ports, but there was little it could do, beyond issuing instructions for the process, and insisting that lord or deputy lieutenants carry out the indenting personally.133 Shipping was normally arranged by port officials or vice-admirals, acting under council orders, although on occasions the lieutenancy did so, and county officials worked closely with the ports.134 Some of the more important ports became vital cogs in the war machine: during the height of the Irish revolt, for example, Chester became virtually a marshalling ground, as to a lesser extent did Bristol, with city authorities highly practised (albeit not espe-

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties cially eager) in keeping the process running.135 It is not difficult to imagine the chaos and confusion which would prevail at a small port in which an army of several thousand men were assembling. Small groups of men would be arriving regularly and would need to be inspected by the civil and military authorities. Their equipment would have to be checked and either accepted by the captains or rejected, and arrangements made for its replacement. They would have to be billeted and victualled from their arrival to their departure, which might be some days if they had to wait for other soldiers to arrive, for winds or tides, or for shipping.136 At times, Chester seemed close to being overwhelmed by the sheer number of troops often left waiting for days or weeks for apparel or transport, sometimes mutinying for lack of apparel, if it was being supplied centrally and only issued at the last moment.137 As well as port officials, lieutenancy officials were sometimes used by the council as local agents. In October 1601, the council used the Kent deputy lieutenants to supervise the assembly of 2,000 men at Rochester. Their list of duties was formidable: the men had to be inspected and divided into companies, their wages had to be paid, the apparel, which had been provided centrally, had to be distributed, watch had to be kept so that none of the soldiers ran away. Much of the armour brought by the troops was defective and had to be replaced, and many of the companies had shortfalls of men, often 20 or 30 per company, which the council asked Leveson to make good.138 On top of this, of course, Kent’s own quota of 200 men had to be provided. The process must have been chaotic, but tended not to be politically controversial: issues such as billeting and victualling troops at the ports seem not to have been sensitive under Elizabeth, as they were in the seventeenth century.139 There may well have been grievances which were not voiced openly, but the Elizabethan system does generally seem to have been handled more competently. Elizabethan billeting was short-term and localised, whereas that which caused such controversy in Parliament in 1628 was both widespread (in twenty southern counties) and very lengthy (up to seven months). Another important factor in minimising discontent was the prompt repayment of expenses, either by the council or by local authorities: in the Rochester case referred to above, Leveson paid out no less than £530, apparently of his own money, on wages for the soldiers, as well as £103 on replacing defective armour.140 Thus the government’s ability to keep its head above financial water (albeit narrowly) was crucial, allowing debts for coat and conduct and billeting to be paid promptly. Naturally this both helped to minimise discontent and made local governors more willing to lay out their own money, to grant credit, if they had confidence in being repaid, and thus to keep the wheels of local administration turning.141 Ready money was an essential lubricant for the machinery of transport, victualling and so on, as Buckhurst found when arranging victuals for the French expedition of 1589:

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies the vittellers of Sussex afferme they can not possibly performe it without meane to have cash for their mony. I have laied out redy mony for the vittelling of all the mariners of the barkes that ar to transporte them, without which they told me plainly they were pore men & were not able to provide victtel without mony, & without vittel they cold not go.142

THE QUALITY OF THE OUTCOME When it comes to assessing the overall quality of the troop levies, we are reliant on contemporary comments. Undoubtedly there was huge variation, both between counties and within them, depending on a wide variety of factors, the inevitable consequence of decentralised provision.143 Reports can be found citing both very good and very poor outcomes, although it is fair to say that the negative reports outnumber the positive ones. In 1585, for example, John Norreys found much of the county supplies of armour ‘altogether unserviceable’; in 1595, a Gloucester band was composed of ‘altogether unfitt’ armour and men, and the men ‘of the basest sort in the countrie and verie poore were quite destitute of apparrell and other necessaries’; in 1598, there were great wants in the men’s apparel, and ‘smale care in settinge of them forth and, for [the] Buckinghamsheire men they are bothe the worste men and worste apparelled of all’.144 On the other hand, much more impressive results are also found: in 1591, some pioneers from Kent were ‘handsome men, warmly clad, good swords and daggers’; in 1598, a captain commended the Worcestershire deputies for ‘the great care [they] have taken in furthering her Majesty’s service with able men well furnished and apparelled’; in 1599, Sir Arthur Chichester, inspecting 2,600 soldiers at Chester, could find only eleven to complain about; in 1601, the earl of Bath found 1,000 recruits ‘very tall men and well armed and willing to serve, and they fear nothing more, as they say unto me, than that they shall come too late to fight with the Spaniards’; and the same year, the Mayor of Chester reported that a contingent from Anglesey was ‘very well apparelled’ and ‘the arms of all the soldiers are complete, good, and sufficient’.145 As often than not, the verdict was mixed: in 1598, 200 recruits from Norfolk were ‘very serviceable’, but forty ran away before they arrived at Chester; in 1602, troops from Worcestershire and Shropshire were reasonable, with only a few defects, but Northamptonshire sent ‘very ill men, not 40 good ones. Never a county send such men hither as they’.146 It is likely that at least some of the negative reports can be blamed on the fact that problems are inherently more noteworthy than the smooth running of a fairly elaborate and sophisticated system, especially as complaints often originated with military men angling for more money or supplies, and so these reports may present an exaggeratedly pessimistic picture. A more balanced review of one particular levy is provided by the reports of Maurice Kyffin, whom the council appointed in 1596 as comptroller of the

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties musters to monitor the quality of recruits as well as clear up endemic corruption in the military pay system. Kyffin was evidently chosen for his remorseless honesty, and his detailed reports on each company of a 1596 levy as it arrived at Chester for shipping to Ireland reveal a wide variety of outcomes. Sir John Bolles’s company, for example, were ‘all of them very choise men, very excellently well furnished and apparailled in all respectes … exceeding faire and complet’. In the case of the worse provided units, the fault could lie with the county authorities, as in the case of the Derbyshire recruits, who were badly furnished, viz, with ill old-fashioned headpeeces, very ill calivers scarse worth the carrying, all the musquetes with owt restes, and both musquets, and calivers, wanting moulds: and whereas I Maurice Kyffin demanded of the capteyn why he did receive [i.e. accept from the county] such ill and unserviceable furniture, he answered that either he must have taken such as were delivered to him, or els none at all.

Alternatively, the fault could be that of the officers themselves, particularly in cases of ‘changing’ soldiers – taking money in return for discharging recruits, and accepting inferior men in their place. Some Bedfordshire men examined were ‘ill armed, especially with old burgenetes & murrians on their heads … furnished with bad calivers of the old fashion … ragged in apparaill, and lack hose and shooes’. Kyffin pointed out that ‘though the armour were bad, yet wold the lieutenantes or commissioners of the shire never send men so roaguishly and raggedly apparailled’, and that some of men must have been changed. The Captain, one Wayneman, agreed; his lieutenant, John Hales, who had received them in Bedfordshire ‘had changed and dismissed divers of them’ and suppressed the indenture to cover his tracks. He was dismissed. Of the twelve contingents reviewed, four were regarded according to Kyffin’s exacting standards as being overall very good, four received serious censure, and four were middling.147 At the very least, suggestions that troop levies were overwhelmingly very poor quality cannot be sustained. As Kyffin’s reports suggested, it may well be that the captains and conductors were the weakest link in the recruiting process. Lord Deputy Russell bemoaned ‘chaunginge of men and armour, whereby unserviceable men maie be foisted in’ to companies destined for Ireland; captains might even sell some of the armour provided by the counties, and in 1596, the council ordered counties to place the captains under bonds to twice the value of the armour they received.148 Many blamed the county authorities too, but there can be little doubt that they have been blamed for failings on the part of others.149 As Kyffin’s reports illustrate, during the 1590s the council increasingly tried to improve levels of compliance with its orders by having recruits inspected before their departure overseas. As well as Kyffin, local gentry or office-holders were used to do this, as in the Rochester case referred to above; Cheshire gentry were also regularly used to inspect contingents at Chester along with

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies the mayor, and they sometimes wrote to local authorities to demand that deficiencies in men or equipment be rectified.150 In 1599, Sir Arthur Chichester and Sir Francis Darcy similarly supervised large levies heading to Ireland, with the cooperation of the Chester authorities.151 These attempts to supervise county and military authorities did not resolve the fundamental problems in the system, but they ironed out some of the abuses and certainly improved the council’s knowledge about what was being done in response to their orders. ASSESSING THE ELIzABETHAN MILITARY SYSTEM This final section will consider some of the issues which rise out of this analysis of troop-raising, which illustrates not only the response of one early modern government to the demands of the military revolution, but also many of the strengths and weaknesses of the Elizabethan state. As we have seen, the council had a wider range of options for raising troops than has generally been recognised. It was not inevitable that the government should rely so heavily on the lieutenancies; the decision to do so must be attributed primarily to cost: the regime simply did not have the money to raise armies professionally. Although always wary of military men, the regime would probably have preferred to use professional military men to raise troops more widely, and probably the outcome would have been more impressive. Troops provided by the counties were evidently regarded as cheap at the price, in both financial and political terms. In terms of national finance, the council’s legerdemain in shifting this burden onto the counties might even be regarded as a success. Furthermore, the use of the lieutenancies – run, as we have seen, by men in whom the council had implicit faith – meant that they could be relied on to have sensitivity for the wider interests of the counties, minimising discontent and avoiding potential rebellion. Furthermore, and this should be stressed, whatever the drawbacks of the lieutenancies as means of raising soldiers, the counties were in fact remarkably obedient; if the council ordered troops from a county, it would get them, and on time; it was almost unthinkable to refuse. The JPs of Suffolk felt it necessary to write to the council in 1599 to apologise that 25 horse they had been ordered to provide might be a few days late arriving at Bristol.152 English troops could be relied upon to be where they were promised, unlike forces raised by the nobility in France, for example, who might simply depart the army if the harvest needed bringing in.153 The council’s decision to use civilian lieutenancy officials for this task was a conscious one, and a reflection of their confidence in the wider political classes.154 As we have already seen, part of the counties’ willingness to respond to troop levies must have depended on the fact that they were only ordered in response to specific and urgent military situations – to defend the Dutch, or repress the Irish rebellion, rather than

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties simply contributing to an undifferentiated army. Geography also provided England with an advantage, since it enabled very rapid responses to events on the Continent, particularly in the Netherlands, a theatre of war dominated by slow-moving siege warfare. An English force could usually be prepared to counter any siege the Spaniards chose to lay in less than a month, if necessary. By comparison, the Spanish military machine was lumbering. The duke of Alva took four months to being his army from Spain via Italy to the Netherlands in 1567, and Parker writes that he ‘had made good time’; Spanish troop movements were indeed proverbially slow: ‘“Poner una pica en Flandes”, to get a soldier (a pike-man) to ‘Flanders’ … means “To do the impossible.”’ Additionally, the troops inevitably suffered from the rigours of so long a march, a problem avoided by English troops.155 The English administration was fast-moving not so much because of superior administration, but by geographical circumstance and the decision to fight an essentially defensive war: the reverse of ‘strategic overstretch’.156 The ability to keep demands within reasonable limits also made the decision to use civil rather than military systems easier to manage. The counties played their part in this too: they could act with great speed and flexibility. Both the council and the lieutenancies were able to deal with essentially loose administrative arrangements, and they coped with constant variation in what was done, and how, at every level of activity. Few troop levies followed exactly the same pattern (although they came to be much more standardised during the last few years of the Irish wars). This demanded a relatively high level of capability on the part of local officials, and a degree of goodwill, in order to ensure successful outcomes. Nevertheless, the council could make use of this flexibility because it trusted the counties and the lieutenancies to rise to the demands. The speed of troop mobilisation was quite remarkable – in 1585, the first English troops, levied by the lieutenancies, must have been in the Netherlands by about 15 August, less than two weeks after the conclusion of the treaty of Nonsuch (although preparations began in July); in 1589, England put 3,600 men in Normandy in less than four weeks – ordered by the council on 9 September, they were all landed in Dieppe by 4 October; in 1601, 1,000 men were ordered on 7 July and landed in France by 16 July.157 The corollary to this, however, was that since English mobilisation could be managed on the hoof, the system never gave rise to more highly developed (and potentially more efficient) institutions. Military administration remained very ad hoc, and much was carried out by civil officials – JPs, mayors of towns and so on. The privy council remained in direct control of army business, often on a very detailed level, and it never spawned a council of war to parallel the navy board.158 For all this, troop levies were a heavy burden on the counties, not only difficult, but unprecedentedly so. Warfare had developed substantially since

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies England’s last major conflict, under Henry VIII. Troops required complex and specialised equipment to cope with increasingly specialised warfare. Elsewhere, such troops were provided by military professionals, but in England, the council called upon provincial civilian amateurs. Furthermore, this system developed in remarkably short order. In the levy for the Netherlands in 1587, the counties provided only 10s towards swords and daggers for their recruits; by the early 1590s, they were providing full, complicated sets of equipment for pikemen or muskets; and by the end of the 1590s the council was routinely demanding money in lieu. Towards the end of the period, local officials became extremely practised at these processes: the letterbook of Bassingbourne Gawdy, for example, demonstrates great regularity in the process: letters from the Queen and council, agreement between commissioners, rating, the issue of warrants, drawing up of indentures and finally a report to the council (with request for repayment of coat and conduct money) follow each other in regular succession.159 This may well have helped counties deal with the stresses of the final period of the war, since, although the demands were heavy, they were highly experienced in the process. The machinery, therefore, went through a remarkable evolution across little more than a decade, and it is hardly surprising that the level of compliance was sometimes limited. Yet, overall, the troops provided were somewhat better than they are usually given credit for, as the mixed verdicts of Maurice Kyffin show. The analysis of what exactly the counties did in response to these demands reveals a multiplicity of tasks carried out by the lieutenancies. Local officials had to satisfy a complex web of demands: the maintenance of compliance in the counties, relations with the local gentry and with the military officials, and the provision of acceptable men for service without unduly disrupting the social cohesion of the county. All of this was but one aspect of the local official’s role, aside from acting as tax assessor and collector, supervisor of recusants, active JP and so on. The conscientious deputy lieutenant such as John Leveson had a difficult job and genuinely tried to please both sides, representing both the county to the council, and the council to the county. Although clearly some officials took less care than others, their correspondence shows that they were not dismissive of the centre’s wishes and did not think they were doing a bad job.160 Indeed, the increasing experience of local officials was a very important development, a civil counterpart to the nurturing of a cadre of experienced military officers which has been cited as a significant success of Elizabethan warfare.161 Furthermore, although this was a regime whose formal resources of personnel and oversight were poorly developed and weak in many areas, potential problems were often bridged by informal networks and administrative methods: a culture of hierarchy and paternalistic care towards social inferiors, as when Lord Cobham was called in to supervise a fractious contingent of soldiers from

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Sussex; or the personal commitment of office-holders or commanders such as Leicester, Essex or John Norreys. This may have been less effective than in former periods, when these procedures had benefited from the bonds of lords and men, but it was real.162 This helped to maximise the practical resources of the regime, and was effective partly because the ruling classes were broadly supportive of the policy. The council itself also operated better than it has often been given credit for. Despite its difficulty managing its multifarious responsibilities simultaneously, and the frequent failures when it came to low-priority matters, the council was reasonably efficient in military affairs, since it was always a high priority. It clearly learned from its mistakes as the period went on, seeking to iron out faults and plug gaps in the process through detailed instruction to counties and coordination of relevant officials. Additionally, a major success of the council’s was keeping the crown solvent, since its ability to promptly repay money laid out in the counties for coat and conduct, billeting and so on was crucial not only in minimising discontent but also in keeping the wheels of administration turning – someone like Leveson would surely not have laid out £500 of his own money for billeting troops had he not been confident of prompt repayment. The broader significance of this development should also be noted. Over this period, the counties provided and equipped almost 100,000 men for service overseas, funded primarily by hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of government-authorised local taxes. This was not only a significant expansion of prerogative taxation, but a significant expansion of the role of the state – in quantitative if not in qualitative terms. In some ways, the use of the lieutenancies to raise troops was a modernising development, since it removed this function from the hands of the nobility and gentry per se and brought it into the sphere of royal administration. This is very much in line with the overall policy in military affairs to move towards a ‘national’ approach – to remove military power in all areas from undesirable local nobility or other networks of power, and centralise their control in hand-picked royal officials. Yet, in the sense that the counties were still contributing in kind, rather than paying taxes so that troops could be raised by the central government, it was far from the classic model of the modernising bureaucratic state. These developments were, to say the least, idiosyncratic. How far the system came under strain over the period is difficult to assess precisely. Since demands were relatively light before about 1595, it is probably fair to say that there was little serious problem before then. Later in the period, when levies became so much heavier and more regular, it is still difficult to identify widespread problems. In the main, county authorities continued to be broadly cooperative, although as we saw in chapter 2 there were particular circumstances in which this could break down. There seems to be little reason

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies to think that there were practical reasons (actual shortages of men, money or equipment, for example) causing the system to break down, although they could of course cause difficulties at times;163 any real problems would surely be political. It may have been only during the climactic years of 1598–1602 that troop raising became really burdensome. Indeed, during those years, there were various hints of the difficulties which existed or were believed to exist. The approach to distributing demands, for example, shows clear signs of seeking to minimise discontent by spreading burdens as widely as possible, often over all forty-eight counties outside the far north; by tapping alternatives to the counties such as the gentry, recusants and lawyers; and by occasionally freeing counties from having to pay for weapons and equipment. Although complaints still do not exist in profusion, nor dominate contemporary letters, there was a real growth in reluctance to pay amongst ratepayers, and additionally a decline in the level of compliance by some local officials.164 Thomas, Lord Burghley, thought in 1601 that in Yorkshire a troop levy would ‘brede great dyscontentment in these northe partes, where they saye yt [is] nothyng daylye but paying and punishyng’.165 It is telling that in the final years of the war, sums of money owed by various counties for the apparel or equipment of soldiers remained unpaid into the next reign.166 The quality of the troops, too, seems to have become notably worse at the very end of the period. Yet even all of these examples amount merely to a tiny proportion of the total number of counties levying troops, at this point several times per year, and however much these may represent the tip of the iceberg of real discontent, the fact remains that the wheels continued to turn and the troops were provided; the lieutenancies provided the means for an army of over 17,000 men (a considerable force by sixteenth-century standards) to be maintained in Ireland, alongside commitments in the Netherlands and at sea.167 Furthermore, as we have seen, the war scarcely dominated the Parliament of 1601, which instead raged about monopolies. Ultimately, the lieutenancies bore the burdens placed on them surprisingly well, given the weight of the demands. The ways that they worked, the nature of their successes and failures, were all consequences both of the demands placed on them by the council, but perhaps more significantly of the nature of the institution itself: given the amateurism and decentralisation, a degree of compromise on the part of both council and counties was necessary. Its failures were not surprising; its successes rather more so. Furthermore, many of its flaws were shared by contemporary European systems. Given the fundamental structural problem of Elizabethan government – its shortage of money, and consequent dependence on the counties for military resources – the outcome was reasonably high up the scale of potential outcomes: in other words, it could have been a great deal worse. The regime did, after all, achieve

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties almost all of its war aims in the Netherlands, France and Ireland. This can be attributed, at least in part, to the skilful and sensitive management of the counties, the lieutenancies and the national finances on the part of the regime and its local allies. NOTES 1 M. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), 196–202, quote at 196–7. This latter verdict, however, deals not only with the lieutenancy’s role in troop-raising, but also the structures used to administer the army in the field, for pay, victualling and supply, which were far more corrupt. See a similar verdict in Braddick, ‘Uppon this instant’, 430, 434–5. 2 Braddick, State Formation, 201. 3 J. S. Wheeler, The Making of a World Power. War and the Military Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England (Stroud, 1999), 66–8. 4 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 244–53, esp. 247 and 252–3 (quote). Mark Charles Fissel, English Warfare 1511–1642 (2001). 5 I. A. A. Thompson, War and Government in Habsburg Spain 1560–1620 (1976), chapter 8, esp. 257–8. 6 The figures for table 4.1 are based on a systematic re-examination of every levy over the period, summarised in the appendix. Space does not permit every source to be listed, but the figures are drawn from the APC, SP 12, SP 63, HMC Salisbury, TNA E 407/12 and Ian Archer, ‘Gazetteer of military levies from the City of London, 1509–1603’, http:// weblearn.ox.ac.uk/site/human/modhist/personnel/785598/research/; in almost every case, figures have been tallied against the local sources cited throughout this chapter. The most important sources for each levy are noted in the appendix. Existing treatments of this issue have been treated with caution; no full recalculation of the figures appears to have been attempted since Cruickshank’s, whose sources are not cited. A particular pitfall is that troop levies were often ordered but later altered or rescinded altogether; in July 1601, for example, the council records mention a levy of 5,000 troops, a figure which has been quoted by several historians; yet it is clear from closer study of the records that only 2,000 troops were despatched at that time (APC XXXII, 70, 106–8; Wernham, Return, 375; Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 224). Note: Troop levies often included ‘dead pays’, whereby 6 or 10 per cent of the strength of a company existed only as fictions and so did not have to be raised or equipped by the counties, a practice intended to provide the captain with a fund for bonuses to troops. It is not always clear whether a troop levy incorporated dead pays, but where it is clear, they have been deducted from the total number of troops raised. 7 These figures are lower than those cited by Cruickshank (Elizabeth’s Army, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1966, appendix 1), David Trim (‘Fighting “Jacob’s Wars”. The employment of English and Welsh mercenaries in the European wars of religion: France and the Netherlands, 1562–1610 (PhD thesis, University of London, 2002), 517), and Hammer (Elizabeth’s Wars, 246), and are more relevant to assessing the work of the lieutenancies than the total number of troops in pay at any point, or the impact of troop raising on population or local society. 8 APC XX, 39–40. Wernham, Return, 168–9.

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies 9 SP 12/270/53 (8 March); APC XXIX, 667–8 (22 March). See a similar incident in 1592: J. Stevenson (ed.), Correspondence of Sir Henry Unton (Roxburghe Club, 1847), 319; APC XXII, 256–7. 10 See e.g. Wernham, Return, 151, noting that orders for the 1589 expedition to France appear to have gone out the same day the decision was made to send them, 9 September; all 3,600 were landed in France by 4 October. 11 D. Hirst, ‘The privy council and problems of enforcement in the 1620s’, Journal of British Studies 18 (1978), 46–66; B. W. Quintrell, ‘Government in perspective: Lancashire and the Privy Council 1570–1640’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 131 (1982 for 1981), 35–62. 12 SP 12/226/62, at fol. 81v. (Buckhurst to Burghley, 22 September 1589). 13 Letters were issued on 29 April for both 450 men for home defence (Leveson Papers 46/1, 46/3; Twysden LP, 110–11) and 600 men to defend Boulogne (Leveson Papers 46/3; Twysden LP, 111). On the confusion, see Leveson Papers 10/36, Samson Lennard to Leveson, 20 May 1597. 14 E.g. Chester RO, zM/MP/8/54, relating to an abortive levy of September–November 1596. 15 Twysden LP, 105. 16 Leveson Papers 40/2/1. 17 Leveson Papers 40/4/4, 40/1/9 (John Collier (apparently a conductor) to Leveson, 30 April 1596). 18 Leveson Papers 40/1/5 (the council to Cobham, 17 April 1596). Cf. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 194, on this debacle. 19 Leveson Papers 40/5/18 (the queen to Cobham, 23 May 1595). 20 Leveson Papers 69/6/5 (the council to Leveson, 19 October 1601); HMC Buccleuch III, 37, 41–2. 21 APC XVIII, 97–100, 106, 113–17, 124, 126–7, 132–3, 137–9. 22 See for example SP 12/268/124, 12/271/37. 23 HMC Salisbury VII, 200. 24 E.g. SP 63/178/73; SP 12/242/113. 25 Cf John McGurk, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: The 1590s Crisis (Manchester, 1997), 56–7. 26 APC XXX, 795–9; TNA E 407/12 (unfoliated). 27 APC XXVIII, 582–4, 586–9; XXX, 13, 27–31, 53, 434–40 (183 gentry); XXXII, 275–86 (290 gentry). 28 SP 12/255/84, fol. 157r. (Burghley’s ‘Meditation on the state of England’, 1595); it was contemplated in 1584, however: Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (1960), 308. See also T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I (Leicester, 1995), II, 274; J. Hawarde, Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata 1593–1609, ed. W. P. Baildon (1894), 33. On Henry VIII and Edward VI, see David Potter, ‘The international mercenary market in the sixteenth century: Anglo-French competition in Germany, 1543–50’, EHR 111 (1996), 24–58.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 29 Simon Adams, Leicester and the Court. Essays on Elizabethan Politics (Manchester, 2002), chapters 9 (esp. 185), 12, 16. BL Add. 48084, fol. 100r. BL Cotton, Titus B. VII, fol. 67. 30 Neil Younger, ‘If the Armada had landed: a reappraisal of England’s defences in 1588’, History 93 (2008), 342–4. 31 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 180, 193; ibid., ‘The Catholic threat and the military response’ in Susan Doran and Norman Jones (eds), The Elizabethan World (Abingdon, 2011), 637; FSL L.a.465 (Essex to Richard Bagot, 18 July 1591). 32 Chamberlain Letters, 42, 51. 33 Helen Miller, Henry VIII and the English Nobility (Oxford, 1986), ch. 5, esp. 136–7, 151, 156–7; Adams, Leicester and the Court, 186–7; Chamberlain Letters, 49. 34 APC XVIII, 86–9. BL Harleian 703, fols 65v., 75v. (the Queen to Howard of Effingham and Buckhurst, lord lieutenants of Sussex, 20 February 1592 and 16 July 1594); Leveson Papers 30/1/11 (unsigned note, 20 February 1592), 30/1/8 (Cobham to Leveson, 22 February 1592), 46/7 (the Queen to Cobham, 31 October 1597); Cambridgeshire LL, 220–2. 35 BL Harleian 703, fols 58r.–v. (Buckhurst to his Sussex deputy lieutenants, 11 September 1589), 65v.–66v. (the Queen to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 19 February 1592; Buckhurst to his deputies, 20 February and 12 March 1592). 36 Leveson Papers 22, fol. 19v. (Leveson to Cobham, 28 August 1591); Wernham, Return, 153. 37 Leveson Papers 11/6/7 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 6 January 1591). 38 Somerset LB, fols 25v.–26r. (Somerset deputies and JPs to the earl of Pembroke, 16 July 1591); SP 12/270/60 (Richard Molyneux to Sir Robert Cecil, 19 March 1599); also HMC Salisbury IX, 43; National Library of Wales, Wynn of Gwydir, Panton Group, 9051E, no. 178 (a petition from Anglesey that their trained bands be not sent overseas). 39 See also Leveson Papers 54/2 (Thomas Roberts to Leveson, 9 October 1601). 40 Wernham, Return, 204. 41 Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567–1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2004), 32–3; Frank Tallett, War and Society in Early-Modern Europe, 1495–1715 (London and New York, 1992), 69–75. 42 Adams, Leicester and the Court, 179. CSPF 1583–84, 625–6, 647. On contracting in general, see Trim, ‘Fighting “Jacob’s Wars”’. 43 BL Add. 48084, fols 100r., 134r.–v.; Add. 48129, fols 94–5; BL Harleian 703, fol. 40v. (the council to Howard of Effingham, lord lieutenant of Sussex, 8 September 1585); see also Trim, ‘Fighting Jacob’s Wars’, 162–6; W. A. Leighton (ed.), ‘Early chronicles of Shrewsbury, 1372–1603’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 3 (1880), 239–352, 303. 44 APC XIV, 55; for the full text of this letter, see ‘Derbyshire musters’, 9–10. Adams, Leicester and the Court, 181. Discrepancies in the records make it impossible to be certain how many troops were raised: the council granted 23 commissions to raise 4480 troops (APC XIV, 55–6, 62, 65–6, 70, 80, 82, 107, 110, 115, 119), but only 15 seem to have been used, to raise either 3,250 or 4,000 troops (BL Add. 48084, fols 99r., 134v.). 45 APC XVI, 297, 316. Norreys’s role in this levy is ill-documented – and not mentioned in J. S. Nolan, Sir John Norreys and the Elizabethan Military World (Exeter, 1997) – but

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies see CSPD 1581–90, 550; SP 12/222/45; Tudor Royal Proclamations III, 26–7. Confusingly, Norreys was simultaneously beginning preparations for the Portugal expedition, which also involved him in extensive troop levying. 46 Essex: CSPD 1598–1601, 136; HMC Salisbury VIII, 515; APC XXIX, 668. Mountjoy: CSPD 1598–1601, 380. 47 The counties had been ordered to provide money in lieu of horse by letters of 9 January 1600; the warrant to pay Mountjoy the money is dated 11 January, so a connection seems likely. 48 BL Harleian 703, fol. 111v. (Buckhurst, lord lieutenant of Sussex, to his deputies, 23 December 1598); HMC Salisbury VIII, 514. Kent provided armour itself: Leveson Papers 49/3 (Leveson to the constables of Bromley and Beckenham, early January 1599). 49 APC XXIX, 667–8; CSPD 1598–1601, 167–8. 50 On Henry VIII, see Fissel, English Warfare, 82–4. On Leicester, see Adams, Leicester and the Court, 176–7, 241–2. 51 APC XV, 61; for other examples, see APC XVII, 161; XX, 69, 197; XXVIII, 366; XXV, 274 (mariners). For examples from Kent, see APC XXII, 150–1, Leveson Papers 35/3/1 (the council to Cobham, 20 October 1592). Similarly, Thomas Finch was commissioned to raise 150 ‘volunteers’ in Kent for service on the continent (Leveson Papers 11/5, Sir Thomas Heneage to Kent JPs, 8 January 1589). 52 R. B. Wernham (ed.), The Expedition of Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake to Spain and Portugal, 1589 (Navy RS, 127, 1988), 36. HMC Salisbury VI, 114, 117–18, 121, 125–6, 162–3, 201, 203–4. 53 HMC Salisbury VI, 126. Neil Younger, ‘The practice and politics of troop-raising: Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex and the Elizabethan regime’, English Historical Review forthcoming 2012. 54 APC XIV, 75. 55 Leveson Papers 46/4 (note of costs, 26 July 1597). Cf. Trim, ‘Fighting Jacob’s wars’, 232–3. 56 Leveson Papers 52/2/5–6 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 9 April 1602, and to Canterbury and Sandwich, 10 April 1602). 57 See J. R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe 1450–1620 (1985), 122–4. 58 Northamptonshire LP, 7. 59 For troop-raising prior to 1585, see for example Lancashire Lieutenancy, 22–3, 62–7, 132–9; Herts. Musters, 3. 60 See above, 76–7; Penry Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), 398. Wernham, Return, 204–5. Fissel, English Warfare, 91–4. The issue became much more controversial in 1628: ibid., 82. 61 Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army, 5–13. 62 E.g. Twysden LP, 90. Herts. Musters, 144, 146, 151. 63 I. H. Jeayes (ed.), Letters of Philip Gawdy … to Various Members of his Family 1579–1616 (Roxburghe Club, 1906), 120–1; Chamberlain Letters, 131. The council ordered an enquiry. This was clearly exceptional: see Trim, ‘Fighting Jacob’s wars’, 231. 64 CSP Spanish, 1580–6, 9. On the Spanish difficulty in finding men, see Parker, Army of

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Flanders, 30, 34–5. See also Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army, 11. 65 For contemporary references to population growth in this context, see BL Lansdowne 81, fol. 37 (Sir John Peyton to Burghley, 25 July 1596); Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 79. Penry Williams, The Later Tudors. England 1547–1603 (Oxford, 1995), 1–4. 66 SP 63/194/23, fol. 133v. (Maurice Kyffin to Burghley, 16 October 1596); SP 63/205/105 (the council to Sir Francis Darcy, 9 July 1599); Leveson Papers 10/40 (Roger Twysden to Leveson, 16 January 1599). 67 Fissel, English Warfare, 97; McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, 35; cf. deeply unconvincing assurances about Ireland in royal letters: Cambridgeshire LL, 219. 68 Somerset LB, fol. 15r.–v. (Sir George Sydenham to Francis Hastings, 4 March 1590). Calendar of the Wynn (of Gwydir) papers, 1515–1690, in the National Library of Wales and elsewhere (Aberystwyth, Cardiff and London, 1926), no. 710. See also a warrant to arrest a man who failed to appear for possible recruitment: Cambridgeshire LL, 241–2. 69 Leveson Papers 20/2 (Lambarde to Leveson, 5 January 1589). 70 H. E. Rollins, Old English Ballads 1553–1625 (Cambridge, 1920), 381. 71 APC XXVI, 162, 241. The debacle of Essex’s abortive relief of Calais in 1596 was blamed partly on a failure to observe this rule, though this may well have been misdirection: Leveson Papers 40/53 (Cobham to Leveson and Thomas Walsingham, 24 May 1596). An exception was a 1601 levy of horse, when the council requested Northern men. APC XXXI, 313. 72 APC XIV, 75; XXX, 799–801. 73 W. T. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I: War and Politics 1588–1603 (Princeton, 1992), 43. On military literature, see Cruickshank, Elizabeth’s Army, 26–30. APC XXIX, 95. G. B. Harrison and R. A. Jones (eds), De Maisse: A Journal of All that was Accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse … 1597 (1931), 109. 74 John Webb (ed.), The Town Finances of Elizabethan Ipswich: Select Treasurers’ and Chamberlains’ Accounts (Suffolk RS 38, 1996), 146, n. 3 states that this practice was used in 1586 and 1601–2. See also Fissel, English Warfare, 86. 75 APC XXXII, 27, 73, 74; Cambridgeshire LL, 229–30 (23 April 1602); Loseley 6729/4/114 (the council to Surrey deputies, 18 July 1597). Leveson Papers 52/2/2 (the council to Cobham, 15 March 1603), 52/2/3 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 19 March 1603, quote). This levy was for the Dutch, with only the men to be provided, and all costs covered by the States. 76 LPL 3204, fol. 340r. (confession of William Warde, 4 March 1599). See also Gloucester LB, fol. 66r., noting four Gloucestershire soldiers who ‘gave xxxs apeece for their releasse’ in 1588. 77 Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 32–4; J. E. Neale, ‘Three Elizabethan elections’, EHR 46 (1931), 220–2. Cf. a complaint in the 1601 Parliament about the same practice by JPs, quoted in R. H. Tawney and E. Power (eds), Tudor Economic Documents (1924), II, 235. W. J. Smith (ed.), Calendar of Salusbury Correspondence (Cardiff, 1954), 37. See also BL Lansdowne 82, fol. 38 (the earl of Kent, lieutenant of Bedfordshire, to Burghley, 28 September 1596). 78 Leveson Papers 22, fol. 32v. (Rivers to Leveson, 12 March 1592). 79 J. Bruce (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester (Camden Society, old series, 27, 1844), 86–7.

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies 80 BL Lansdowne 1218, fols 114 r.–v., 119 r. and fols 113r.–140v., passim; W. J. Hardy (ed.), Notes and Extracts from the Sessions Rolls 1581 to 1698 (vol. I, Hertford, 1905), 44–5, 56. See also Fissel, English Warfare, 177–80. 81 Gloucester LB, fols 35v., 50v., 58v., 64v., 69v., 80v. 82 HEHL HM 50657, fol. 11. 83 See for example HMC Rutland I, 352. 84 C. R. Markham, The Fighting Veres (1888), 220; Stephen and Elizabeth Usherwood, The Counter-Armada, 1596: The Journall of the ‘Mary Rose’ (1983), 129. See also SP 63/179/26 (George Beverley to Burghley, 11 April 1595). 85 These recruits were compared with the exceptionally detailed general muster and trained band rolls from Edwinstree, which give indications of social status and occupation. Obviously there are potential shortcomings in this analysis, due to different spellings of names, potential false matches etc. All data derived from Herts. Musters. 86 On this particular finding, cf. James Wood, The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562–1576 (Cambridge, 1996), 97. 87 HEHL HA Military Oversize box 9/4 (indenture, 29 December 1600). 88 Herts Musters, 148. 89 Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 58. 90 Hale, War and Society, 107. 91 F. J. Fisher (ed.), ‘The State of England, Anno Dom. 1600, by Thomas Wilson’, Camden Miscellany XVI (Camden 3rd series, 52, 1936), 34. 92 See for example R. B. Manning, An Apprenticeship in Arms: The Origins of the British Army 1585–1702 (Oxford, 2006), 7 n. 16, citing a highly atypical case mentioned by John Stow. For another relatively positive assessment of troop raising, see David Grummitt, ‘War and society in the north of England, c. 1477–1559: the cases of York, Hull and Beverley’, Northern History 45, 1 (2008), 128–9. 93 Leveson Papers 49/3 (Leveson to the constables of Bromley and Beckenham, early January 1599). Along with imprest, and conduct expenses, the cost of a complete pikeman was £3 4s 4d; for a fully equipped musketeer the cost was £2 17s 8d and for a caliver £2 13s 8d. 94 LPL 3204, fol. 305r. (‘Remembrances for the musters in Comit: Derby’, 9 September 1595); ‘Derbyshire Musters’, 30; BL Add. 34224, fol. 7r.–v. (Sir Francis Godolphin to John Nance, 8 February 1590). 95 Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 58; Herts. Musters, 138, 140–3. 96 See LPL 3204, fol. 276r. (Richard Bagot to the earl of Shrewsbury, 11 July 1590). 97 When the levy was cancelled in October 1592, the armour already bought and transported to Rye had to be retrieved and stored (see Leveson Papers 32/16–18, 32/10, 35/3/2, 32/23, 32/19). See a similar example in 1593: Leveson Papers 22, fol. 57. In 1594, a levy of 250 men were equipped substantially by equipment already in store (probably from the three abortive levies of the previous years): of 85 corslets required, 75 were in store; of 65 muskets, 40; of 100 calivers, 20; and of 250 coats, 135 (Centre for Kentish Studies, U1115/O6/52). In 1596, a levy of 180 which had been ordered and then cancelled in April was ‘recycled’ into a levy of 135 in September and sent to Boulogne (Leveson Papers 40/5/8, Cobham to Leveson, 15 September 1596).

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 98 Leveson Papers 40/4/11 (accounts, May 1596), 54/3 (note of conference, 6 May 1601). 99 Loseley 6729/4/84 (Howard to his Surrey deputies, 21 July 1593). 100 Leveson Papers 48/3/7 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 23 January 1599). 101 Leveson Papers 40/5/16 (Cobham to Leveson, 29 May 1596). 102 Leveson Papers 22, fol. 32v. (John Rivers to Leveson, 12 March 1592); BL Add. 48591, fol. 92v. (Norfolk muster commissioners to the council, 28 July 1601). 103 Cheshire RO zM/MP/8/54. 104 Leveson Papers 53/1 (William Beswick to Leveson, September 1595); 46/1 (Gladwell’s bill, June 1597). 105 BL Add. 26886, fol. 48v. (Essex to the Lancashire muster commissioners, 30 January 1599); ‘Derbyshire Musters’, 30–31; Cheshire LB, fols 49v., 51r.–v., 77r. 106 APC XXVII, 301. 107 CSPD 1598–1601, 151 (16 January 1599); Babington and Bromley would provide apparel to 10,000 soldiers in Ireland: summer apparel on 1 March at £14,848 19s, winter on 24 July at £24,833 12s, and the same again yearly, pro rata according to the number of soldiers; also to pay £4,869 6s 8d for apparel for 2,000 to be shipped at Flushing for Ireland. For earlier examples of large-scale clothing contracts, see F. C. Dietz, English Public Finance 1558–1641 (1964), 73. Cf. R. W. Stewart, ‘The “Irish Road”: military supply and arms for Elizabeth’s army during the O’Neill rebellion in Ireland, 1598–1601’ in M. C. Fissel (ed.), War and Government in Britain, 1598–1650 (Manchester, 1991), 16–37. 108 Babington and Bromley seem to have contracted with the lieutenancy in Kent to supply coats in 1591. Leveson Papers 11/6 (Captain Edward Brooke to Sir John Leveson, 20 February 1591). 109 Loseley 6729/4/123 (Nottingham to his Surrey deputies, 6 October 1601). 110 APC XXVII, 309–10, XXXII, 81, 85; Cambridgeshire LL, 192–7, 243 (check); The Montagu Musters Book, 214–16. 111 Cambridgeshire LL, 207; BL Add. 48591, fol. 95v. (Norfolk muster commissioners to the council, 5 October 1601); Leveson Papers 54/2 (Cobham to Leveson and Walsingham, 1 and 6 October 1601); APC XXXII, 263–4. 112 APC XXX, 26. 113 Archer, ‘Levies’, no. 116 (London); APC XXX, 20–2, a stinging rebuke to Lord Chandos for disregarding council orders in such a case. 114 Leveson Papers 66/3a (four Kent JPs to Leveson, 2 September 1598). See also Leveson Papers 54/1 (Kent deputies to Cobham, 28 July 1601). Of course, the London contractors were profiteering: see McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, 103, n. 44, 211–12. 115 CSPD 1598–1601, 403; SP 63/207, pt 4, fol. 154v. (Buckhurst to Sir Robert Cecil, 11 August 1600); Leveson Papers 54/2 (Leveson to the council, 17 October 1601); BL Add. 29315, fol. 3 (Norfolk muster commissioners to the council, 28 July 1601). See also APC XXX, 59. 116 APC XXXII, 264. 117 BL Kings 265, fol. 301v. (Norfolk muster commissioners to the council, 28 July 1601). 118 Conrad Russell, ‘Monarchies, wars and estates in England, France and Spain, c.1580– c.1640’ in Unrevolutionary England (1990), 125.

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies 119 LPL 3204, fol. 210r. (Richard Bagot to the earl of Shrewsbury, 28 February 1590); Leveson Papers 36/3/10 (Sir Thomas Scott to Leveson, 29 July 1594); SP 12/251/3 (Richard Holland and Ralph Assheton to Burghley, 9 January 1595). 120 Leveson Papers 69/5 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 23 July 1601); also Leveson Papers 67/3 (same to same, 28 August 1598); APC XXX, 799–801. 121 SP 12/181/35 (Gloucester JPs to the council, 12 August 1585). 122 SP 12/181/52 (John Wanton, Searcher of Greenwich, to Walsingham, 17 August 1585). 123 APC XXVI, 162; HMC Salisbury IX, 48–9; BL Cotton Galba C VIII, new fol. 80 (comments on troop levying by Thomas Digges). 124 Carrington, ‘Derbyshire musters’, 30; Loseley 6729/4/84 (Howard to his Surrey deputies, 21 July 1593). Leveson Papers 52/2/1 (Captain Edward Trevor to Leveson, 7 July 1600). 125 See Leveson complaining that the captain’s absence was a hindrance: Leveson Papers 46/7 (Leveson to Cobham, 2 November 1597). 126 Twysden LP, 80. Leveson Papers 40/5/18 (William Cromer and Michael Sondes to Leveson, 6 October 1596). 127 Leveson Papers 36/2/10 (Thomas Fludd to Leveson, 18 April 1594); 46/1 (Thomas Roberts to Leveson 13 June 1597 and the lieutenant’s reply to Leveson, 18 June 1597). 128 SP 12/226/73 (Buckhurst to Burghley, 28 September 1589). 129 Leveson Papers 22, fols 30r.–32r. 130 APC XXV, 263; Leveson Papers 52/2/8 (the council to Cobham, 23 April 1602). Indentures survive in Leveson Papers 46/1 (1597), 69/2 (1600). See APC XXX, 138, 247, and surviving indentures in TNA E 101/65–66. These overwhelmingly date from the last few years of the reign, however, suggesting that they were not always kept very carefully. Eight Bedfordshire indentures from 1591–1602 are printed in N. Lutt (ed.), Bedfordshire Muster Rolls 1539–1831 (Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical RS, 71, 1992), 43–56. 131 Leveson Papers 66/5/2 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 24 December 1598). 132 CSPD 1581–90, 642–3 (SP 12/230/14, 22). 133 APC XXX, 799–801. 134 As in the 1589 expedition to France, when a number of unusual demands were made by the council, due to the extraordinary speed required: SP 12/226/41 (Buckhurst to Burghley, 18 September 1589). See also APC XXVIII, 530. On transportation and the roles of Chester and other ports, see also McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, chapter 6. 135 See letters from various mayors of Chester to London: BL Lansdowne 83, fol. 37; SP 63/202 pt 3, 87; 63/207 pt 1, 111; pt 5, 43; Cheshire RO zM/MP/7, 8, 13; P. Thomas, ‘Military mayhem in Elizabethan Chester: The privy council’s response to vagrant soldiers’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 76 (1998), 226–47. 136 See Leveson Papers 11/5 (Cobham to Leveson, 23 January 1589), 54/1 (Sir Thomas Wilford to Leveson, 7 August 1601); HMC Salisbury XI, 319. 137 SP 63/207, part 1, 111 (1600), 63/207, part 5, 43. The Chester quarter sessions records show a remarkable spike in recorded petty crime by soldiers in 1600–01, although this may be due to the vagaries of the surviving records (Cheshire RO calendar of quarter sessions papers, consulted online).

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 138 See letters between the council and the deputies, Leveson and Walsingham, 12–23 October 1601 in Leveson Papers 54/2 and 69/6; J. J. N. McGurk, ‘Rochester and the Irish levy of October 1601’, Mariner’s Mirror, 74 (1988), 57–66. 139 Though see one complaint from Kent that ‘the souldiors … be often bylleted in townes and villages … which many tymes is never payde for’, which suggests that the practice was unpopular, but this is hardly surprising: SP 12/245/69; also MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I. War and Politics, 37. On 1628, see T.G. Barnes, ‘Deputies not principals, lieutenants not captains: the institutional failure of lieutenancy in the 1620s’, in War and Government in Britain, 58–86; Fissel, English Warfare, 108–9. Part of the difference between the 1590s and the 1620s may, of course, relate to the fuller sources available for the later period. 140 Leveson Papers 69/7/6, 54/2 (accounts for billeting and replacing the defective Norfolk armour, ?October 1601). 141 For another example, see Leveson Papers 11/9/14 (Robert Byng to Leveson, 7 August 1593). Repayment of money to the counties is discussed more fully in chapter 5. 142 SP 12/226/41, fol. 54v. (Buckhurst to Burghley, 18 September 1589). 143 Leveson Papers 36/4/1, a complaint by Captain Morton to Sir John Norreys, 8 August 1594, notes that owing to Leveson’s supervision, ‘the men of West Kent be much better chosen and appointed and apparalled than the rest of East Kent, where many have slenderly regarded how they serve her Majesty’. 144 CSPF XX, 33; SP 63/179/29 (Captain Mostyn to Burghley, 13 April 1595), 63/202, part 3, 111 (Captain Francis Stafford to Sir Robert Cecil, 11 October 1598). For other negative reports, see APC XXIV, 65–7; SP 63/207, part 1, 106 (Lord Deputy Mountjoy to the council, 15 January 1600), 111 (Henry Hardware, mayor of Chester et al. to the council, 16 February 1600); HMC Rutland I, 338; APC XXIX, 43–4, XXX, 152–3, 160–1; HMC Salisbury XII, 169. 145 L & A, III, no. 320; HMC Salisbury VIII, 524; IX, 107–8; XI, 443, 474. 146 SP 63/202, part 3, 88 (Cheshire JPs to the council, 30 September 1598). HMC Salisbury XII, 164. 147 SP 63/194/23 and i-x (Maurice Kyffin to the Council, 16 October 1596). On Kyffin’s honesty (and unpopularity), see ODNB, s.v. Kyffin, Maurice; APC XXVIII, 277. 148 SP 63/178/100 (Lord Deputy Russell to the council, 20 March 1595). H. A. Lloyd, The Rouen Campaign 1590–1592 (Oxford, 1973), 95–6. APC XXVI, 163. Cf. McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, 138. 149 See Norfolk’s claim to that effect: BL Add. 48591, fol. 111r. (the muster commissioners to the council, 14 January 1602). 150 Inspecting: SP 12/251/61 (the mayor of Chester to the council, 17 March 1595); APC XXXII, 126–8; CSPD 1598–1601, 94. Demands for improvement: SP 12/250/49 (the mayor of Chester to the sheriff and JPs of Lancashire, 21 December 1594), APC XXIX, 668; CSPD 1598–1601, 408 (SP 12/274/69). 151 HMC Salisbury IX, 107–8; CSPD 1598–1601, 215, 243. 152 HMC Salisbury IX, 31. 153 Wernham, After, 147–8, 160. This was often because they were unpaid, of course. 154 See e.g. SP 12/249/34 (Burghley to Cecil, 21 July 1594).

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Fighting Elizabeth’s wars: Troop levies 155 Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (pbk. edn, 1988), 103. Parker, Army of Flanders, 70 (quote). Hugo O’Donnell y Duque de Estrada, ‘The Army of Flanders and the invasion of England, 1586–8’ in England, Spain and the Gran Armada. Essays from the AngloSpanish Conferences, London and Madrid 1988 ed. M. J. Rodriguez-Salgado and Simon Adams (Edinburgh, 1990), 230–1. 156 For the naval version of this, see N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea. A Naval History of Britain, 660–1649 (1997), 329. 157 See above and Wernham, After, 156; Wernham, Return, 374. 158 There were, of course, meetings of councillors and/or military men which were regarded as councils of war, but there was never a standing council with specific responsibility for the war. 159 BL Add. 48591, fols 106v.–110v., 112r.–116v., 130r.–34v. 160 See e.g. Leveson Papers 22, fol. 32r. (Thomas Willoughby to Leveson, 12 March 1592); LPL 3204, fol. 276r. (Richard Bagot to the earl of Shrewsbury, 11 July 1590). 161 Cf. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 257–8. 162 See for example Lord Buckhurst’s care for the interests of his Sussex levies: SP 12/226/41 and 12/226/69 (Buckhurst to Burghley, 18 and 26 September 1589). Cf. Fissel, English Warfare, 86. 163 The large levies for Calais in 1596 and Ostend in 1601–02 must have led to real shortages; Trim, ‘Fighting Jacob’s Wars’, 231–3; also APC XVI, 32; Loseley 6729/4/123 (Nottingham to his Surrey deputies, 6 October 1601). 164 APC XXIX, 484–5, XXX, 32, 37–9, 65–7, 90, 124–6, 129–30, 142, 269, 317–18, 357, 551–3, 650–1. Many of these were over non-payment of money for equipment provided centrally for troop levies, an indication that this policy may have backfired somewhat. 165 SP 12/281/28 (Burghley to Sir Robert Cecil, 27 July 1601). 166 TNA E 407/12 (unfoliated). 167 Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 212.

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Chapter 5

.

The costs of war Lieutenancy finance

A

s we have seen, the work of the lieutenancies grew rapidly during the Elizabethan wars into many areas of activity, many of them very expensive. The issue of local finance is perhaps the most neglected aspect of the impact of war on the Elizabethan state; no county historian has addressed it fully, which is particularly striking given the very large amounts of money concerned.1 This chapter aims to fill this gap, looking, firstly, at how much money was raised, when and why; secondly, at how this was done; and, finally, at the role of finance for the lieutenancy as an institution and an element in a developing early modern state. We must begin with the sources. In comparison with the sources for national finance, lieutenancy finance is poorly documented. In many cases there is a straightforward shortage of material, but where sources do survive, they are difficult to interpret: often scattered, usually incomplete both geographically and chronologically, and often vague. All of the figures in this chapter are based on the building up of data on particular counties from incomplete sources; all involve a degree of estimation or extrapolation from one part of a county to the county as a whole. This is also problematic given that lieutenancy spending was highly irregular and varied massively from year to year. These problems have had a major impact of the historiography of lieutenancy finance, especially since many historians have largely relied on published lieutenancy papers, none of which provides a complete picture of lieutenancy finance: the widely used Northamptonshire sources, for example, do not contain anything like a complete set of figures. Estimates of cumulative local costs are not only rare, but generally extremely vague. The only overall estimate by a modern historian for any county is Peter Clark’s suggestion that the war cost Kent in excess of £10,000 – certainly an underestimate.2 This section is primarily concerned with taxation raised by the lieutenancy for military purposes, and this will be examined mainly through case studies

The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance of lieutenancy taxation in Cheshire, Kent and Norfolk. Attention should also be paid to national taxation, however, both because the bulk of this was itself for war purposes, and in order to place lieutenancy taxation in the context of the cumulative tax burden on the counties, not least because this casts light on the local reaction to lieutenancy taxation. A sketch of the fiscal background to lieutenancy taxation is therefore called for. The late Elizabethan wars necessitated higher taxation than at any time during the reign. No major changes were made, however, to the overall structure of national taxes, which remained based on two well-established taxes, the subsidy and the fifteenth and tenth. The fifteenth and tenth was a quota tax, which raised a fixed sum of around £29,000 each time it was collected, in a fairly unproblematic manner. The subsidy, however, was a directly assessed tax on personal wealth. For reasons that will be explored presently, the yield of Elizabethan subsidies continually fell, especially during the war years, even as military costs expanded in line with the expansion of the war into the Netherlands, France and then Ireland. For this reason, the customary package of one subsidy and two fifteenths which Parliament had granted six times before 1585 was quite insufficient to meet the government’s needs. Rather than altering the taxation system, recourse was simply made to it more often, and during the war years, no fewer than fourteen subsidies were granted, each with the customary two fifteenths. Thus, in 1584–85 and 1586–87, Parliament granted single subsidies, each payable over two years; in 1589 it granted two subsidies, each payable over two years, 1590–93; the 1593 Parliament (called exactly one week after the final payment of the second 1589 subsidy) granted three subsidies, the first two paid in single instalments, the third in two, over 1594–97; the 1597 Parliament granted three subsidies, each in single instalments in 1599–1601 (leaving the country a taxation holiday in 1598); and finally the 1601 Parliament granted no fewer than four subsidies, the first paid in one instalment, the other three in two instalments each.3 Thus taxation was becoming due ever more frequently – either part or a whole subsidy, or one or more fifteenth, or more commonly both, every year during the war period, with a markedly increasing trend towards the end of the period. Because of the way these instalments were structured, however, the burden falling upon the counties in any given year varied widely. In 1597, only the smaller instalment of a subsidy was due; the following year two fifteenths. In 1599 and 1600, whole subsidies and two fifteenths were due each year; in 1602, a full subsidy and the larger part of a second subsidy and three fifteenths; the following year a full subsidy (in effect) and two fifteenths. Since the payment dates were specified in the subsidy act, these variations did not take account of the course of the war and other payments associated with it (the expensive defence mobilisation and many troop levies of 1599, for example, came in

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties an already expensive year) or of economic variations, such as the plague and dearth of the 1590s. In this way, the subsidy was a crude instrument. The means whereby the worth of the subsidy fell are well-known. In order to collect it, every taxpayer was assessed on his landed income or the value of his possessions, a fixed proportion of which was then payable: a system of considerable complexity, which depended on the marshalling of a remarkable amount of information. The point of assessment was its great weakness, since it was assessed by commissioners appointed from the localities themselves.4 As was the case for so many Tudor officials, therefore, commissioners’ loyalties were divided between loyalties to the state and to their communities. Thus there was a gradual process of attrition in the value of the subsidy, as fewer individuals were assessed as liable for the subsidy and individual assessments decreased, especially after the practice of declaring one’s worth under oath was abandoned. The practice was ubiquitous, even amongst the nobility and privy council, who paid derisory low sums; it was so widely acknowledged that the council threatened to raise individuals’ assessments ‘to the true value of the same, which wilbe litle to their ease’, if they withheld cooperation from the council’s requests.5 The precise reason why subsidy assessments were reduced so markedly remains somewhat unclear. Although the decline began well before the war, the regularity of subsidy payments after 1585 must have been a contributory factor. But as table 5.1 and figure 5.1 show, the rate of decline varied markedly. Whereas in Kent, London and Norfolk, the subsidy declined by 50 or even 60 per cent over the period, the Cheshire subsidy largely held its value, and in Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire the decline was much less marked, particularly up to the second 1601 subsidy – only 20 to 25 per cent. The work of the assessors who collectively regulated the subsidy yield may reflect local responses to a variety of factors. Table 5.1 The yield of the subsidy in selected counties, grants of 1585–1601.   Cambs Cheshire Kent

1585 1587 1589 1589 1593 1593 1593 1597 1597 1597 1601 1601 1601 1601 I II I II III I II III I II III IV 1891 737

2101 2032 2028 1899 1930 1821 1665 1659 680

708 686 697 704

712 705

6153 6136 5820 5406 5035 4797 4579 4207

733

1561

1512 1463 1349

715 686

681 663

1231 657

4151 3944 3747 3565 3284 3078

London

12253 12807 11904 11665 10705 8787 7755 6567 6199 5800 5840 5446 3965 4483

Norfolk

7443 7289 6735 6279 5668 5415 5146 4867 4659 4412 4119 3913 3432 3081

Northants 1297 1346 1236 1170 1096 1105 1097 1073 1052 1024 1000 974

934 920

Source: TNA E 359/54, 56–7; Braddick, Parliamentary Lay Taxation; Archer, ‘Burden of taxation’.

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance It is notable, for example, that the decline of the subsidy was much more pronounced in large, front-line counties like Kent and Norfolk than in smaller, inland counties. The feeling here was surely that, considering the great costs incurred by such counties in coastal defence and other charges, they either needed to or were justified in reducing their direct taxation. If this is the case, then it underlines the impact of war taxation on the wider taxation of the period. In this context, it is interesting that two of the best subsidy yields of the period (relative to the rate of decline) came in years of peak danger to the realm. The yield of the 1587 subsidy, administered whilst the realm was expecting imminent Spanish invasion, rose or held steady in all of the samples, suggesting willingness to contribute to the national purse in the face of the Catholic threat, and the yield of the second 1597 subsidy (assessed in October 1599, during another invasion scare year) fell markedly less steeply than usual in Cambridgeshire and Kent, and even rose a little in Cheshire. The subsidy yield may, therefore, indicate local elites’ perception of the government’s needs and their inclination to support its policies.6 The 1601 subsidies demonstrate the reverse: the granting of four subsidies occasioned the council to write to assessors, ordering them to raise ratings, but this appeal, dated 21 December, was entirely superseded three days later, when the fall of Kinsale marked the beginning of the end of the Irish war.7 Under the circumstances it is not surprising that the first 1601 subsidy continued the steep decline. It is also interesting that the patterns are consistent in the six, rather diverse samples given, suggesting that if these can indeed be taken as a measure of public opinion, it appears to have been reasonably consistent across the country. Figure 5.1 The decline in the yield of the subsidy in selected counties. 120 110 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30

1585

1587

1589 I

1589 II

Northants

1593 I

Cambs

1593 II
1593 III

Kent

1597 I

Norfolk

1597 II
1597 III

Cheshire

1601 I

1601 II
1601 III

1601 IV

London

The 1585 yield=100.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties A comparable phenomenon has been pointed out by Conrad Russell, who notes that godly members of early Stuart Parliaments tended to be ‘rather more enthusiastic for subsidies than other members’, in order, as one MP put, ‘to enable the king to fight the Lord’s battles’.8 In such cases, the shared concerns of local and central governors could coincide to produce a consensus (albeit a limited one) on approaches to national problems. The subsidy demonstrated a dysfunctional dynamic, in which the ruling classes granted more and more subsidies whilst sitting in Parliament but consistently subverted the system whilst sitting as subsidy commissioners in the counties. There was also a strong suspicion that poorer taxpayers suffered from this far more than the wealthy. Nevertheless, this was not in itself a disaster for the government: the declining value of individual subsidies was ultimately less important than the total income, which continually rose during this period, because Parliament was induced to grant multiple subsidies, increasingly payable in one year rather than two. Thus the government managed to keep its head above water, albeit by occasionally meeting shortfalls by sales of land. The real problem came when James I sought subsidies and found that the limited grants which Parliament thought appropriate to peacetime were worth very little. Insofar as the Elizabethan wars contributed to the subsidy’s decline, this was a problematic legacy for Elizabeth’s successor. THE BURDEN ON THE COUNTIES Although this section seeks to provide a fuller analysis than has previously been made of local finance, a number of important aspects of the full picture of local taxation have been omitted. One is clerical taxation. A second is local taxation for non-military purposes: churchwardens’s funds, local rates for the poor, for wounded soldiers, for the upkeep of roads, bridges and so on. These came to substantial sums – a minimum of around £725 per year in Norfolk, which could rise greatly for extraordinary purposes, and £8,500–10,000 in London in the 1590s.9 Also omitted is purveyance, the traditional right of the royal household to purchase food and other goods at well below market rates. This resulted in significant hardships for unlucky individuals, and may have been seen as the most egregious financial burden on the counties.10 During this period, purveyance was in flux as the household sought to negotiate ‘compositions’ whereby the counties provided set proportions of goods at the common cost of the county, thus removing the element of randomness and guaranteeing the household the goods. Since the goods varied in price yearly, so did the cost of the composition, and it is difficult to estimate the costs, particularly because both Kent and Norfolk compounded reluctantly and late. As a rough guide, Norfolk seems to have paid roughly £600–700 per year,

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance and Kent around £2,000; Cheshire was very lightly charged.11 Ship money (the costs of ships provided from the ports or counties for defence in invasion scares or for overseas expeditions) is also omitted. This was not strictly a lieutenancy matter, but in some years added very considerable extra burdens to local economies. The main focus of this section, however, is the finances of the lieutenancies themselves. The lieutenancies were expected to cover the costs of almost everything they did, or ensure that they were covered by others in the county. This included costs for musters, militia training, payment of muster-masters, invasion defence, beacon maintenance, and the costs of troop levies. This was not wholly unprecedented in Elizabeth’s reign. There were periodic levies of troops from the counties for service in Ireland, for example, in which military costs had been passed on to the counties. To some extent, such demands could have been met from existing supplies (town armour, for example), thus minimising the necessity of local taxes. During 1585–1603, however, the scale of demands was unprecedented, and regular local taxation was unavoidable. This called upon counties to establish much more regular mechanisms for doing so: in Kent, for example, opinion was sought on rating policies from ‘auncient justices’.12 At the same time, local taxes were increasingly made for other purposes: composition for purveyance became much more common in the 1590s, and the poor laws of 1597 and 1601 added further demands. The war coincided with other developments to mark a new and very significant development in local taxation, which became a regular reality in a quite unprecedented way. Existing assessments of the burden of these costs are often impressionistic, as we have seen, and are often powerful: the £8,000 spent by Devon in just 8 months in 1596 (half of that on ships for Cadiz).13 Here, however, more detailed case studies have been made of military costs in three relatively welldocumented counties, Cheshire, Kent and Norfolk. These figures deal only with money handled by county authorities, and do not include costs covered by individuals – that is, provision in kind. In some counties, for example, trained bandsmen seem to have paid for their own powder. Across the country, militia armour was paid for by individuals or parishes. Senior gentry furnished complete horsemen for service on a number of occasions. The real cost of war to the counties and to the individual was therefore significantly higher even than what has been established for counties as a whole. Firstly, Cheshire, whose military costs are very well documented, firstly in an audit of lieutenancy spending between 1585 and 1595, and then in Sir Hugh Cholmondeley’s lieutenancy book, a uniquely detailed and complete record of local military spending between 1595 and 1600. Expenses after 1600 were fairly minimal and have been estimated. These military costs and subsidy payments (Cheshire was not liable for fifteenths and tenths) were as shown in table 5.2 and figure 5.2.14

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Table 5.2 Cheshire lay subsidies and military costs, 1585–1603. Lay subsidy

Musters etc.

Troop levies

Total

1585 1586 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 1600 1601 1602 1603

483 254 0 445 234 460 248 446 240 697 704 463 249 0 705 733 715 1,129 669

? 1,041 ? 783 ? ? ? ? ? ? 130 210 82 0 430 0 0 0? 0?

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ? 599 0 600 803 565 210 0 0

483 1,295 0 1,228 234 460 248 446 240 697 835 1,272 332 600 1,938 1,298 925 1,129 6,69

Total

8,876

2,677

2,777

14,330

Source: See chapter 5, note 14.

Figure 5.2 Cheshire lay subsidies and military costs, 1585–1603. 2000

Taxation (pounds)

1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200

206

Musters etc.

Lay subsidy

03

02

16

01

16

00

Year

Troop levies

16

99

16

98

15

97

15

96

15

95

15

94

15

93

15

92

15

91

15

90

15

89

15

88

15

87

15

86

15

15

15

85

0

The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance It will be seen that military costs formed a very substantial proportion of total taxation, on some occasions even exceeding the total of national taxation, although this was relatively rare. Cheshire was of course far from a front-line county, and was not perceived to be wealthy, so it escaped the heavier burdens of some counties. It is notable, however, the large extra burdens imposed by muster costs before and during the main years of invasion scares, 1588 and 1599, as well as the peak of troop levying in the years around the turn of the century. These trends are also very noticeable in the figures for Norfolk (table 5.3 and figure 5.3) and Kent (table 5.4 and figure 5.4).15 Thus the ability of the lieutenancies to extract money from the counties was substantial. It will be noticed that according to the available sources, the three case studies cover different categories of spending. In particular, the costs of musters and training have been largely omitted from both the Norfolk and the Kent figures for lack of reliable evidence. This was due to the different ways in which such costs were covered. In counties such as Lancashire and Cheshire, training costs were covered by county rates.16 Elsewhere, these were met either by parish rates (as in Hertfordshire17) or by the trained bandsmen themselves (or rather, the man who provided the armour); Lord Cobham noted in 1586 that in Kent, the trained bands were composed of wealthier men, so there should be no need to charge the county for them.18 In Norfolk, costs for musters and training seem to have been handled by high constables, but no figures have been found to indicate totals, apart from the figures quoted for 1588 and 1599. Therefore the figures for Kent and Norfolk are much less complete than those for Cheshire, and in this respect the latter offer a more realistic view of the total costs. A number of points arise out of this evidence. All three counties show a clear (though not uninterrupted) upward trend in the total financial burden. Much of this is accounted for by the greater frequency of subsidy and fifteenth payments, especially subsidies payable in single instalments, which has a noticeable impact in 1594 and 1595, making 1594 the heaviest year in the war to date in Kent and Norfolk. On the other hand, the vagaries of the demands also gave taxpayers occasional breaks, as in 1597–98. Despite this overall upward trend, the burden varied very considerably from year to year. In terms of military spending, there were noticeable peaks in the invasion years, 1588 and 1599. The inclusion of muster costs in the Cheshire figures is particularly interesting, illustrating the extent of militia activity in 1595–99. The heaviest years of the period were clearly those at the height of the Irish wars, 1599–1602; again, much of this was accounted for by national taxation, but there were very high levels of troop levies. 1599, in particular, combined a full subsidy and two fifteenths with not only heavy troop levies for Ireland but a full-scale invasion scare, making it the most expensive year of the period in Norfolk and Cheshire, and the same would probably be true for Kent if the costs of invasion defence were known.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties Table 5.3 Norfolk lay subsidies, fifteenths and tenths and local military taxation, 1585–1603.

Troops

Invasion defence

Beacons/ mustermaster

 

Subsidy

15th and 10th

1585 1586 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 1600 1601 1602 1603

4,642 2801 0 4,739 2,550 4,378 2,357 4,081 2,198 5,668 5,415 3,345 1,801 0 4,867 4,659 4,412 6,663 3,601

2751 2751 2751 2751 2751 2751 2751 2751 5,502 5,502 2751 2751 0 5,502 5,502 5,502 0 8,253 5,502

333 0 75 0 200 0 1,027 0 0 827 180 0 900 720 2315 1,190 2,245 400 0

0 0 0 4,240 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 700 0 0 4,032 0 0 0 0

313 313 313 313 513 513 513 513 513 513 513 513 513 513 513 513 513 513 513

8,039 5,865 3,139 12,043 6,014 7,641 6,648 7,345 8,212 12,510 8,858 7,308 3,214 6,735 17,229 11,863 7,169 15,828 9,615

Total

68,175

68,773

10,412

8,972

8,941

165,273

Total

Source: See chapter 5, note 15.

Figure 5.3 Norfolk lay subsidies, fifteenths and tenths and local military taxation, 1585–1603. 20000   18000   16000   14000   12000   10000   8000   6000   4000   2000  

Invasion  defence  

3  

2  

16 0

  01

16 0

16

 

0  

16 0

 

99

15

 

98

15

6  

97

15

 

15 9

4  

95

15

3  

Troops  

15 9

15 9

2  

 

15th  &  10th  

15 9

0  

91

15

 

15 9

 

89

15

 

Subsidy  

208

88

87

15

15

  85

15 8

15

6  

0  

Beacons/  muster  master  

The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance Table 5.4 Kent lay subsidies, fifteenths and tenths and local military taxation, 1585–1603. Year

Subsidy

15th & 10th

Troop levies

Total

1585 1586 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 1600 1601 1602 1603

3,978 2,176 0 3,977 2,139 3,792 2,027 3,511 1,895 5,035 4,797 2,988 1,591 0 4,207 4,151 3,944 6,021 3,533

1,554 1,554 1,554 1,554 1,554 1,554 1,554 1,554 3,108 3,108 1,554 1,554 0 3,108 3,108 3,108 0 4,662 3,108

250 0 150 0 1,832 0 524 753 180 336 150 1,473 1,225 120 2,040 705 1,737 185 0

5,782 3,730 1,704 5531 5,524 5,346 4,105 5,817 5,184 8,479 6,501 6,015 2,816 3,228 9,355 7,964 5,681 10,868 6,641

Total

59,761

38,851

11,659

110,271

Source: See chapter 5, note 15.

Figure 5.4 Kent lay subsidies, fifteenths and tenths and local military taxation, 1585–1603. 12000

Taxation (pounds)

10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0

1585 1586 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 1600 1601 1602 1603

Year

Troop levies

15th & 10th

Subsidy

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties The evidence for Norfolk is slightly more complicated. Here, military rates formed a much smaller proportion of the total burden, because Norfolk’s national taxes, particularly the fifteenth and tenth, were very high: a double fifteenth came to considerably more than a subsidy. This was unusual, and made parliamentary taxation much more burdensome than elsewhere, possibly accounting in part for its general sense of grievance.19 It seems possible that the proportionately high level of spending on musters in Cheshire, as well as its robust subsidy assessments, were results of being relatively lightly burdened in other respects. This adds another factor to the complex of considerations which guided a county’s response to national demands. The total burden on these counties is summarised in table 5.5, which shows the totals of national and military taxation, and the respective proportions of the overall totals. Table 5.5 Summary of taxation of Cheshire, Kent and Norfolk, 1585–1603. Cheshire Norfolk Kent

National

per cent of total

Local military

per cent of total

Total

8,876 136,948 98,612

61.9 82.9 89.4

5,454 28,325 11,659

38.1 17.1 10.6

14,330 165,273 110,271

Source: Figures taken from tables 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4.

The financial burden of local military rates on the counties was thus a considerable proportion of the burden of national taxation, particularly since, for Kent and Norfolk, the ‘military’ column does not include the costs of musters and is therefore only a minimum figure. Since the Cheshire figures do include musters, they may represent a more realistic indication of the overall picture, although Cheshire’s national taxation was unusually low, since they did not pay fifteenths. On the other hand the subsidy in Cheshire did not suffer the precipitous decline experienced in Kent and Norfolk. There must be an extent to which this was because Cheshire did not feel unduly overtaxed, but of course Cheshire would have felt a proportionately greater shock from the increases in overall cost. Yet it was in Norfolk that the loudest complaints were voiced – perhaps underlining that, sometimes at least, it may not have been the money itself so much as the principle which inflamed local opinion. This said, it is unclear how far people had clear ideas about how much was spent: Henry Cocke told Lord Burghley that he had calculated how much Hertfordshire had spent on troop levies since 1585 and then invited his fellow deputies to guess; they had suggested £3–4,000, but he showed that it was just £1,636 18s 4d, ‘wherat they dyd not a little marvell’.20 Overall, however, the proportion of the total tax burden accounted for by the lieutenancies probably fell somewhere between the Norfolk and the Cheshire proportions: the Norfolk figure shown here is certainly too low, since muster

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance costs are not factored in, but Cheshire’s are probably unusually high. In summary, at a time when national taxation was the highest of any point in the reign, local military spending added a substantial proportion on top of this. As Lord Buckhurst, by then lord treasurer and earl of Dorset, told Parliament in 1606, the war had laid on the counties a ‘heavie burden of continuall leavying, arming, apparelling and setting forth of soldiers, A burthen more heavie then manie subsidies’.21 The question, then, is how the counties responded to this need for money? LOCAL FINANCE IN ACTION As in so much of its work, the lieutenancy received little guidance about how to pay for the tasks imposed on it. The council never gave specific instructions as to how to administer county rates, beyond stating in vague terms that they should be rated only on the richer inhabitants, or based on the subsidy book.22 Nor, since few areas of the lieutenancy’s work were grounded even roughly on statute, were there guidelines in law: the 1558 militia statute, which assumed provision in kind, not financial contribution, was of no help here. Royal and council warrants, with local consent and local precedent, were expected to carry the lieutenancies through. Methods varied from county to county, or even from parish to parish.23 The authority for raising money within the county was often vague, again due to the lack of statutory authority. For major ‘one-off’ projects such as troop levies or invasion mobilisations, a specific royal warrant was provided, signed by the Queen herself, which was clearly very difficult to argue with. More problematic were the endless sums of money, often relatively small, which had to be expended by the conscientious county on training, the purchase, maintenance and carriage of armour, powder, wages for the muster-master or provost marshal, beacon watches, and so on. General letters from the council might be proffered, but there was no mention of power to raise money in commissions of lieutenancy or muster. Although ancient duties of personal military service were gradually being replaced by monetary payments, the legal position had not kept pace with the practice. Following its usual practice of blithely ignoring legal or constitutional inconveniences, the council never tackled this, but there was uncertainly in some quarters. Even lord lieutenants might be unsure: Lord Chandos, for example, wrote in 1588 to ask for the council’s ‘aucthorytie for the levyinge of more money’ to purchase gunpowder, ‘for otherwyse I dare not attempt to do yt’.24 The lack of a legal framework for raising money is also clear in the variety of approaches taken in the counties. The procedures for deciding on how much needed to be raised, and how this was to be apportioned (‘rated’) within the county varied widely. The most common approach was straightforward

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties executive decision making by the lord lieutenant, deputy lieutenants or muster commissioners, although in places such as Norfolk, it may have been customary to seek the approval of the bench of JPs at quarter sessions.25 This seems to be very much the exception, however: if it was the practice in Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Kent, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, Sussex or Yorkshire, no record survives of it. Care was taken, however, to issue formal warrants for the raising of money, signed by deputy lieutenants, muster commissioners or JPs.26 How much money was needed to carry out the council’s orders, how it was to be apportioned among the available taxpayers, and who was to be liable to contribute were all decided locally, by county officials.27 Little is known about how county authorities determined the sums to be raised to fulfil specific orders: clearly, in most cases, estimates would be made on the basis of previous costs, which could if necessary be augmented by further taxations, or reduced as necessary.28 In some places, this problem was solved by raising money retrospectively: in Kent, three separate troop levies of October 1596 to July 1597 were paid for by a single rate collected in September 1597, and retrospective rates were used in again in Kent in 1598 and in Norfolk in 1599.29 The method of apportionment across the county varied widely. Again, no clear procedure was laid down on the national level, and neither of the two main national taxes (the subsidy and the fifteenth and tenth) provided entirely suitable models for raising a predetermined sum.30 The method also varied depending on the type of service being carried out. In a troop levy, for example, counties could either raise the total sum required on the county as a whole, or delegate the administration down to lower levels, such as hundreds, and order them to provide a given number of fully-equipped soldiers, leaving them to determine how to do so.31 Similarly, many of the costs could be delegated to individuals personally, both in musters (trained bandsmen could cover their own costs for transport, powder and so on) and in troop levies (sometimes unlucky individuals seem to have provided equipment for levies without recompense). The most usual practice seems to have been to divide the total required between established subdivisions of the shire, and allow each to divide its quota up within itself. These could be hundreds or even parishes, depending on the particular case. Norfolk divided most militia costs between the hundreds, whose constables then divided their quota between the parishes.32 Parish rates were also used at least once in Kent.33 In many cases, each hundred’s proportion was based on long-standing rates, and in some cases such rates were becoming established during this period. Norfolk, for example, had not only a method of dividing sums between its thirty-three hundreds which was described in 1626 as ‘accordingly as they have been for 60 or 80 years’, but ‘an ancient precedent what every hundred in Norfolk hath been rated for beacon

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance watch in Norfolk and to what beacon’ supposedly dating from the fourteenth century.34 In Furness, public burdens appear to have been rated according to ‘auncient yerely rentes’ there.35 Cheshire had a system called the mize, which provided fixed quotas for each hundred and township, which could be divided or multiplied to raise any given sum. It had been fixed since the mid fourteenth century, and its legitimacy was unchallengeable.36 A similar approach developed in Somerset during Elizabeth’s reign. There, the ‘Hinton rate’, ‘a proportion devised at Henton … 13th of July [1569] … for levying of one hundred men to be imployed in servise for Ireland’ became the standard.37 The advantage of rates like the mize and the Hinton rate was that, because they were so wellestablished, they avoided ratings disputes; on the other hand, they naturally tended to become inequitable over time.38 Kent did not have such a system, and often held conferences of deputy lieutenants and JPs to decide exactly how to carry out rating for particular purposes. It tended, however, to divide burdens either between the east and west halves of the shire, each of which was normally provided with a pair of deputy lieutenants, or between the five lathes.39 From that level, the burden could be divided into either hundreds or groups of hundreds.40 In this large and well populated county, it was convenient to delegate much of the work that elsewhere was done by deputy lieutenants onto JPs in their divisions. The main alternative to delegating burdens was to use individual subsidy ratings, which were theoretically a record of the wealth of everyone of any means in the county. Since it was known how much each subsidy raised, an appropriate proportion could be demanded to raise a given sum: if, for example, a recent subsidy had raised £1,000, and £400 needed to be raised, a payment of four-tenths of every subsidy payment ought to raise the sum needed. There is evidence of such calculations being made in Kent and Northamptonshire.41 When a meeting was convened in Kent in 1595 to discuss the raising of light horse, alongside the captains of the light horse bands, JPs who had taken part in the collection of the last subsidy were to be present, with the subsidy records.42 The rates were of course much lower than the usual subsidy rate of 4s in the pound on land and 2s 8d on goods. The 1588 defence preparations in Kent were paid for by a rate of 3d in the pound lands and 2d goods; in 1592, 6d in the pound was demanded; in 1596, 16d in the pound on land and 12d on goods; again in 1596, 8d on lands, 5d on goods; and in 1601 18d lands, 16d goods.43 In Hertfordshire, in 1595, 5d on lands and 4d on goods was charged.44 In 1599, different parts of Kent paid slightly different rates: in the Four Hundreds, in central Kent, 2s 4d on lands and 2s on goods was charged, whereas 2s 2d was charged across the board in Aylesford.45 Given that the subsidy rating was the only comprehensive list of individual worth, it was a convenient approach, and it also solved the problem of who was liable to pay, fixing the taxpayer base at the subsidymen, which also met the council’s direc-

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties tion to lay burdens only on wealthier people, since the poor did not pay the subsidy. In Kent, rates were laid primarily on the roughly 5,000 subsidymen, although earlier rates may have been distributed more widely.46 It is unclear how widely subsidy ratings were used. There are examples from Northamptonshire in 1584, Gloucester and Essex in 1588 and for troop levies in Hertfordshire in 1595, Hampshire in 1598 and Ipswich in 1602.47 Indeed, this practice was cited in the 1593 Parliament as one reason for the declining value of the subsidy: men were reluctant to have their subsidy rating raised, since this would incur higher rates for myriad local taxes.48 Even in Kent, however, where the subsidy seems to have been unusually commonly used, some military costs seem to have been covered by parishes.49 It is difficult to say which approach – the devolution to hundreds or parishes, or the subsidy approach – was more widely used. Given that local elites were perfectly capable of using different approaches to rating the subsidy, the fifteenth, and local rates, there was no doubt flexibility in military rates too, at different times or for different reasons, as was the case in London and apparently in Hertfordshire too, where the subsidy rate seems to have been used only for a levy of horse.50 The subsidy may have been favoured when the sum to be raised was particularly large or ‘extraordinary’ – in the case of the 1588 ship money in Gloucester and in Essex, for example, and for the replacement of missing armour for the trained bands in Kent in 1592, which was paid for by a contribution from wealthy men.51 On the other hand, when the Yorkshire muster commissioners made a massive investment in new weaponry for the trained bands, the costs were laid on the townships which were to receive the armour.52 Parish rates seem to have been more common for trained bands and militia costs.53 As a further example of flexible ratings, cavalry levies were widely regarded as being the responsibility of wealthy men only, particularly JPs. The five light horse levied in Kent in 1595 were charged only on men rated in the subsidy at £10 or more in land or £15 in goods, ‘except where the assessment is known to have been too low’, and similar policies were followed in Cheshire and Derbyshire.54 The issue of ratings policy leads to the question of resistance to taxation, since many taxpayers were naturally reluctant to pay military taxation, particularly if they were unaccustomed to doing so. Objections to taxes could be made at the outset, to the very principle of the taxation; at the stage of rating; or at the stage of collecting.55 The most dangerous form of resistance was challenge to the principle of the taxation itself, its legal or constitutional basis. Such challenges, as we have seen, were rare, but in counties such as Norfolk it does seem to have hindered the work of the lieutenancy at times. The most straightforward type of resistance was a simple refusal to pay. There are plenty of examples of individuals doing this, not surprisingly, since

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance heavy demands were being imposed on a society which had become accustomed to peace and low taxation. Examples of this in the Leveson papers included some very senior individuals – Lord Abergavenny and Sir John Scott, for example.56 Certain factors made the collection of rates noticeably more difficult: when rates had to be raised in quick succession, or even overlapping, or when contributions were demanded for levies which had been cancelled.57 The reasons given varied; the simplest was to claim that one could not afford it; another was that one was not liable for assessment. Royal servants and members of the household (real or purported) often tried to claim exemption since they were exempt from the subsidy (paying as part of the household rather than in their home counties); this was not supposed to extend to county rates, but despite efforts to prevent it, they sometimes got away with it.58 There was a fine line between this type of protest and ratings disputes. The most basic type of rating dispute was to claim that one ought not to be liable for reasons of precedent – one had not been charged with, say, providing a light horse before and so one should not be charged now.59 More often, however, ratings disputes arose over the proportions to be paid by different divisions of a county, particularly given the unsystematic and nonstatutory nature of so many local rates. JPs often protested that their hundred or division was over-assessed, as in 1599, when the JPs of the lower division of Sutton-at-Hone complained that they had to pay more than was customary.60 Such complaints could of course have political aims, either as a tool of local politics or to express discontent with government policy (local or national) whilst avoiding an explicit protest. Robert Byng, a JP in Kent, waged a longrunning ratings dispute against the deputy lieutenant Sir John Leveson. Byng first protested in 1592, over the distribution of the burden of providing ten men from the lathe of Aylesford. Leveson had asked for five men from the southern division of the lathe, a request Byng challenged, saying ‘you have too too much overcharged us in laying the one half of the burden of this lathe upon us. It had been more tolerable if you had charged us with four men and any of the other two divisions with three’.61 Byng tried to go over Leveson’s head to Sir Thomas Scott, a deputy lieutenant from the other end of the shire whose family was of great antiquity and prestige, writing the following day that ‘at my first coming into the commission [of the peace], almost 34 years now past’, the south division was charged with six-sixteenths of the burden, and the north and east with five-sixteenths each. The appeal to Scott, accompanied by a supporting letter from Sir Thomas Fane, hinted that Leveson’s motive was to lessen the burden of his own division, the north; Byng told Leveson that he hoped for ‘a more indifferent consideration of us from henceforth’.62 Byng was no doubt in the right, but Leveson was supported by Lord Cobham and prevailed.63 Byng continued his sniping, sending complaints to fellow JPs, and there was clearly a slightly sour note in the air for the next few years.64

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties On the other hand, there is no evidence that the work of the lieutenancy was substantially hindered. Particularly in large counties, JPs felt that they had to defend their parts of the county and maintain a general vigilance against the possibility of being cheated by other JPs or higher authorities: Byng wrote to Roger Twysden, when a collection for the relief of soldiers was to be rated at the Sessions at Canterbury, that some JPs from west Kent must attend, ‘least they of the East end should seeke to over Lode us and ease themselves’.65 Indeed, as Peter Lake has shown, in the context of ship money in the 1630s, such posturing could be used to raise one’s profile by posing as the champion of one’s county or, as here, division.66 It could even be used to request appointment as a JP, as one Humphrey Glaseour wrote, ‘not for any glory but onely to right my self and my tenantes, in the taxacions of money and such other charges imposed upon the contrey, wherein I fynd great partiality used’.67 But there may well be something more in the Byng-Leveson dispute; there is a sense of a clash of approaches, as well as of personalities. Byng had been a JP almost since the beginning of the reign and was more than twenty-five years older than Leveson. He was also a native Kent gentleman, whereas Leveson was something of an arriviste in the county. He clearly felt that, despite Leveson’s rank and close relationship to the lord lieutenant, Cobham, he had the right to protest in forceful terms. Alongside Byng’s stance as the defender of his corner of Kent, there may have been something of a clash between the justices of the peace and the lieutenancy, similar to that identified by Smith in Norfolk. There are certainly legalistic overtones in the writing of Byng’s colleague William Lambarde which suggest unease with the lieutenancy’s programme.68 In this sense, Byng may well have been using this dispute to register broader dissatisfaction with lieutenancy policy. Barnes has argued that wider, principled resistance to ship money in the 1630s was first expressed by apparently innocuous complaints about inequitable rating, and something similar may well have been going on here.69 Nevertheless, ratings disputes should not automatically be taken to indicate opposition to the policy as a whole: they may equally reflect an understandable wish to pay less tax. No-one likes to pay taxes, and individuals often go to considerable lengths to minimise their liabilities, but they usually pay up in the end. Ratings disputes were generally dealt with by mediation. A second potential flashpoint for opposition or conflict came at the time of the collection of the money. This could never have been an especially easy or pleasant task for JPs or constables. Partly for this reason, there was a keen concern to have a proper and sufficient warrant, ‘to assure us of our doinges and proceedinges therin, that we might stand uppon a playne and sure grownde; to avoyde blame, mischeif or misdealing in any respect’.70 But cases of non-payment were inevitable, and for this reason, enforcement was necessary. Again, the issue was difficult, because of the non-statu-

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance tory basis of the rates. First steps could be informal or semi-formal, such as an intervention from the lord lieutenant, or a hearing before one or two JPs.71 Sometime offenders were summarily committed to prison on the authority of the lord lieutenant.72 If necessary, the next steps would be prosecution at quarter sessions and distraint of goods to recover the money owed: one Richard Biddulph, for example, was prosecuted at the Staffordshire sessions in 1601 for four years’ non-payment of military and other rates, and a warrant was issued to distrain. Other examples have been found from Kent, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire, but not in great numbers.73 Probably less formal approaches were more common, but the problem seems to have been far from endemic. The final recourse was to report offenders to the council. This was routinely threatened by the council, as a way of encouraging compliance.74 It was acted upon more rarely; in these circumstances, the council could either summon them to appear before the board directly, or alternatively order a local enquiry backed up by the threat of being summoned. The council dealt with a significant number of cases, but by no means an overwhelming number – it was very much a last resort, to be employed sparingly.75 Probably it was reserved for more prominent individuals, whose evil example, it was often noted, led their inferiors into similar delinquencies.76 One well documented case is that of Thomas Lovell of Harling, Norfolk, who was accused by the muster commissioners of repeatedly defaulting on local military obligations. The council summoned him on 17 July 1600 and he appeared on 5 August; witness statements were prepared in September, and after a council meeting on 26 October, Lovell was committed to the Marshalsea, where he remained until he submitted to the council on 2 November, ‘fawning’, in the words of his rival Philip Gawdy, ‘more lyke a dog than a man’, almost four months after first summoned. Clearly, this was not only a huge inconvenience, but a humiliation as well. But this was no ordinary non-payment: Lovell was a leading gentleman in the county, a JP and later a muster commissioner, and this was part of a longer-standing rivalry between Lovell and the Gawdy family.77 So whilst the council’s intervention was more often threatened than employed (not least because the council could easily be snowed under with such petty complaints), it was a real possibility. In fact, provided one remained low profile, and evasive rather than aggressive, it may have been possible to avoid paying altogether. In many cases, local attempts to overcome the stubborn non-payer would fail either on poor record-keeping or on poor enforcement.78

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties MANAGING LIEUTENANCY FINANCES The principle that the costs of lieutenancy business be covered by the counties had only one major exception: coat and conduct money, which covered two elements of the cost of a troop levy, one wholly and the other in part, for purely traditional reasons, and which was repaid to the counties from royal funds. The ‘coat’ money was a contribution by the Queen of 4s in order to provide a coat for soldiers. By this period, this was a largely nominal contribution: a good quality coat cost at least 10s, and a footman’s total outfit up to 40s, at the council’s own estimate.79 The ‘conduct’ element was a payment of 8d per man for each day spent marching from the county to the port, to cover billeting and victualling, which the Crown paid in full.80 These were almost invariably paid by the Crown as a matter of inviolable precedent – the council only once requested the counties to waive their customary due.81 Coat and conduct money thus covered only a relatively small part of the total cost of a levy: the cost for setting forth a footman was usually around £3–4, and coat and conduct consisted only of 4s for the coat plus a few multiples of 8d for conduct, which can seldom have come to more than 10s or so per man. It did not reduce the burden on the counties to any significant degree. Whether it was in practice returned to taxpayers is also doubtful – it may well have been left in officials’ hands to be used ‘for some other rates’, as Clement Spelman, a JP in Norfolk, feared when planning to repay coat and conduct directly to the parishes, ‘which I thinke will come unlooked for because they have not beene used to have money come back againe’.82 The money was repaid to a representative of the county, who requested a warrant from the council which he could present at the Exchequer.83 On other occasions, the council delegated repayment to a treasurer-at-war, or officials such as the Mayor of Chester (for troops heading to Ireland), the collector of a privy seal loan, or even the captain designated to lead the troops.84 In most cases, coat and conduct was repaid promptly, on demand, and it did not become a contentious matter. In 1593, for example, the coat money due to Kent for a troop levy ordered in July was repaid in October, and on other occasions in 1601 (when the pressures on the Exchequer were at their greatest), the money was paid within a few days of it being requested.85 It is revealing that privy seal warrants authorising payments were issued to the Exchequer in advance of claims being made.86 Indeed, since the sums were often relatively small, counties might take many months or even years to claim them.87 Nor are delays in repayment of coat and conduct referred to in letters of complaint to the council. This issue ties in with issues of financial management in the counties, which was in many cases very ad hoc. Left-over sums of money – some as large as £70 – were fairly informally stored by local officials, a practice sanctioned by the council, and used for later military expenses or other county charges.88

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance Equally local officials often laid out their own money on government business and reclaimed it later – in effect, loaning the government money. Walter Bagot paid out £90 for a levy of three light horse in 1600 and had some difficulty recovering it, and during a troop levy in 1601, as we have seen, John Leveson laid out no less than £530, apparently of his own money, to cover billeting costs incurred by the delay in transporting the men.89 In 1599, Norfolk JPs decided that constables should be obliged to cover the costs of a troop levy before a rate was levied for the money, to allow the correct amount to be levied later.90 Merchants who provided military supplies also gave credit. A degree of financial flexibility was vital to keep the wheels of the lieutenancy and the war effort turning. Local officials’ willingness to give the government credit shows that they had confidence in receiving fairly prompt reimbursement, and that the central government, which often faced short-term cash shortages, could keep its financial head above water. This was surely an important factor in keeping the counties doing their job; how clearly this was recognised in the centre is not clear, but it may be observed that considerably more care was taken in seeing the counties quickly repaid than in (for example) paying the wages of troops on active service. These were comparatively small sums, but still important to local elites. When it came to accounting, the lieutenancies were again in an awkward position, having responsibility for handling very large sums of money, but no procedures for ensuring fiscal accountability. In their usual way, they improvised, developing semi-formal local systems of accounting, backed up at times by council oversight. John Richers, a middle-ranking JP, described the practice adopted in Kent when, in 1618, an enquiry was held into alleged embezzlement of money during the Elizabethan wars: When soever any monye was levied in our lymit, for setting owt of soldiers, or otherwise, we made an exacte accompt therof, so soone as the service was performed, indented betweene us, and the deputie Leiuetenantes, which at the nexte assembly of the countrie, we redd openly, that the countrie might knowe bothe what monyes the Queene allowed towardes that service, and howe bothe that, and the countrie’s monye was bestowed.

He claimed to be able to produce copies of all the relevant letters from the Queen and council, proving the legitimacy of the rates levied (the importance of preserving such evidence accounts, of course, for the survival of collections such as Leveson’s). Richers noted, however, that officials in Norfolk, where he then lived, were not so conscientious: ‘our deputie Lieuetenantes here are questioned in the same poynt, but wyll not be able so well to discharge them selves’.91 Richers’s account may seem implausibly neat, and it probably represented an ideal, but there is plenty of evidence that the accounts of local officials were supervised and approved by local JPs, or superior officials such as the lord

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties lieutenant.92 The approach he describes, of openly declaring accounts at local assemblies, was certainly used: in 1596, for example, the ‘particulars’ of the cost of the Calais debacle were ‘entended to be manifested to the assemblie, for this next Subsidie’.93 In 1592, John Leveson’s accounts were inspected by four local JPs, and many sets of accounts by deputy lieutenants and JPs in Kent and elsewhere can be found in the papers of their contemporaries: those of Leveson in the papers of Roger Twysden and Thomas Willoughby, those of Byng in Twysden’s, one of Twysden and John Scott in Leveson’s and so on.94 Similar care was also taken over the issuing of receipts for money handling, for otherwise, as William Cromer wrote in 1594, ‘I can not see how we may give any account to our neighbours’.95 Thus, whilst there was no formal legal status to these arrangements, local officials were very capable of developing their own systems of accounting. It is also clear that when money was not accounted for, or demonstrably spent on what it was raised for, considerable discontent could be aroused amongst constables or the wider political classes.96 It was not only JPs who had to account scrupulously for their handling of county funds. Many examples of detailed constables’ accounts survive – all the more remarkable since many of them were illiterate.97 JPs in Norfolk were especially vigorous in this regard, partly because of the controversies over military affairs there. Accounting by constables began no later than 1577, was carried out periodically, and was very detailed: in 1588, constables had to account for no fewer than 27 categories of spending.98 The primary focus was on high constables, but petty constables might also be involved.99 There was often suspicion in the counties that the large sums of money levied were misspent, especially since many gentry knew how ad hoc the systems were.100 Accusations of fraud were relatively common, and complaints were often taken seriously enough for investigations to be made, as early as the demobilisation of forces in 1588, when the council ordered local officials to carefully account for the money raised and ensure the soldiers had been paid.101 There are well-documented examples from Norfolk in 1594 and Cheshire in 1596; in the latter, all lieutenancy finances from 1585 to 1595 were examined, with JPs, former deputy lieutenants, and captains all ordered to declare their accounts.102 These suspicions lingered long into the next reign, as in the 1618 investigation in Kent which has already been noted. A number of officials were prosecuted in Star Chamber for corruption. In 1594, the attorney general, Edward Coke, brought a case against (among others) William Gresham, a Norfolk JP, for taking bribes to release men from overseas service. In September, depositions were taken which strongly suggest that the accusations were sound. In November, the council ordered an enquiry, and in December the hundred constables were questioned about their money handling, to see what was done and under whose authority. The

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance outcome of the case is not known, but some of the lesser officials appear to have been fined, and Gresham was dropped from the commission of the peace in 1595.103 In 1597, Star Chamber fined Robert Long and others up to 500 marks and ordered them to be pilloried for releasing about 30 soldiers during the invasion scare.104 The probity of lieutenancy officials in Wales appears to have been particularly questionable. Sir Richard Trevor and Sir Thomas Jones, deputies in Denbighshire and Carmarthenshire, were both prosecuted in Star Chamber, although again, no verdict survives.105 There was a major enquiry into accounts in the Welsh Marches in 1601, which turned up ‘mutche abuse’ in embezzling coat and conduct allowances from the Queen.106 In 1598, two deputy lieutenants in Merioneth, Cadwallader ap Rice (alias Price) and John Lewis Owen were accused of fraud to the tune of several thousand pounds. They were tried in Star Chamber and eventually outlawed and replaced as deputy lieutenants.107 In the view of Williams, they owed their positions to one of the more indefensible pieces of patronage on the part of the Lord President, Pembroke; he quotes a local gentleman who ‘considered that the accusations were exaggerated’, but ‘they had both embezzled money and taken bribes’; indeed Owen ‘depended on the deputy-lieutenancy for his living’.108 The relative poverty of the Welsh gentry probably explains the prevalence of these cases in Wales; another possible reason is the comparative weakness of local oversight, the relative lack of an educated, vigilant local gentry able to challenge deputy lieutenants – particularly if these officials could count on the patronage of great nobles such as the earls of Pembroke or Essex. Thus there are a significant number of examples of small- and mediumscale corruption on the individual level. Coat and conduct money was particularly vulnerable to this, since it came into officials’ hands after all the work had been done (and paid for) in the counties. At the same time, there were strong cultures of accountability in the counties, and a perception of corruption could be very damaging to an individual’s reputation and indeed the conduct of further business. Few of the enquiries into lieutenancy finance exposed corruption on any significant scale, but the authorities were in a bind here, wishing to avoid the appearance of corruption but wary of forcing petty offenders out of government service altogether.109 But lieutenancy corruption was undoubtedly trifling by comparison with the appalling sums (tens of thousands in some cases) embezzled by officials of the central government, notably treasurers-at-war, ordnance officials and Exchequer tellers, and in the military sphere by company captains.110

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties CONCLUSION The development of effective local financial machinery was a significant success of the Elizabethan policy towards the lieutenancy. It was far from perfect, and generated significant discontent, whether publicly expressed, as in Norfolk, or not, but it served its purpose and exacted large sums from the counties over the period. Good management on the part of the central government, in minimising discontent, clearly helped – the prompt repayment of coat and conduct money is a case in point. Ultimately, the lieutenancies succeeded in their objective of raising enough money to do what the regime asked of them. Yet the regime’s overall fiscal policy was curious in many ways. As Archer points out, the late Elizabethan government taxed relatively lightly: in London, in an average year, Henry VIII exacted three times as much in the 1540s as Elizabeth in 1585–1603.111 Does this mean that Elizabeth undertaxed? It is very difficult to assess how burdensome the weight of taxation really was. Richard Hoyle has argued that mid-Tudor taxation had a serious economic impact on the towns at least.112 Both sides were argued in late Elizabethan England: Essex pointed to the ‘sumptuous buildings … infinite plate, and costly furniture of houses’ – a comment directed at the Cecils, perhaps, but applicable to many of the gentry and indeed yeomanry, whose prosperity was famously described by William Harrison; Lambarde, by contrast, lamented the excessive burden of taxation.113 Lambarde was probably right with regard to the poor, for whom these burdens were more serious. The wealthy were universally agreed to be underassessed, but they made other contributions to the war effort. Providing cavalry for the militia, for example, was very costly, since senior gentry might have had to provide (perhaps) two light horse and a demilance; light horse for Ireland typically cost £30 to set forth, and demilances were yet more expensive. These were not constantly recurring costs, but they were significant. The nobility’s contributions in 1588, for example, must also have been costly. The picture of local taxes presented here ultimately suggests that while lieutenancy taxation added a significant sum to central taxation, it was in no way as overwhelming as, for example, Russell suspected when he commented that national taxation was ‘the tip of a fiscal iceberg … nationally England was a lightly taxed country, but locally it may have been another story’.114 The sums raised locally were significant, but scarcely overwhelming; given that an annual income of several thousand pounds was common among the greater gentry, the Elizabethan war effort, like the early Stuart state in Cogswell’s formulation, ‘ground down on the shoulders of the local gentlemen with all the weight of a feather’.115 Despite the strain on the state, little was done to deal with the disastrous collapse of the yield of the subsidy. Nor were large, politically difficult ‘projects’ (such as the Amicable Grant, the Forced Loan of 1626, Ship Money, or even

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance the Dissolution of the Monasteries) attempted. Ministers effectively connived at low subsidy rates, and the emergency response to cashflow problems was to resort to forced loans or sell royal lands. Elizabethan financial policy was conservative to the point of negligence. The reasons for this are debateable; Ian Archer argues that the regime had a deliberate policy of low taxation, Richard Hoyle that it feared unrest or rebellion.116 It could be argued that the Elizabethan government knew its political limits, but the lieutenancy’s ability to extract many thousands on flimsy legal premises may suggest that it was unduly unambitious. Furthermore, as the data presented in this chapter show, despite the decline in the subsidy yield, total tax income rose steadily (though not uniformly) throughout the period, helped by more regular subsidy payments and local taxation. This could well be viewed as a short-termist policy, but the regime always hoped that the war would be short. The war placed unprecedented demands on the fiscal machine, and taxation policy in this period must be viewed as an emergency policy; to that extent, it served the purpose. Furthermore, it is difficult to find cases of the regime identifying an urgent military need and being prevented from answering it by a shortage of money or of political support in the counties. Many of these responses (expeditionary forces, attacking fleets) were smaller than would have been ideal, but the interventions did, after all, largely succeed in their military objectives. On the whole, local financial mechanisms operated remarkably successfully and with remarkably little fuss. Again, this may be down to a degree of national consensus that these costs were necessary. While the regime’s coercive power (or the will to exercise it) was limited, its persuasive power had some success. The need to fund national defence when invasion was threatened was a powerful factor in encouraging compliance with local demands, as the high levels of local taxes exacted in years such as 1588 and 1599 demonstrate. Local taxation surely responded to events in a similar way. The particular circumstances in which local taxation was raised may, despite its often questionable legality, have encouraged compliance. Whereas subsidy payments were set remotely and far in advance, and disappeared into royal coffers without any tangible reward, local taxes were much more immediate. They were raised in response to a demonstrable and urgent need, which was reflected in the specific legitimation provided from above, and indeed in the sources of news available locally; local taxpayers could see that the money was being spent locally; and there was a tangible outcome (soldiers marching off to Chester or wherever it happened to be). These may all have helped to make local taxation palatable. In the sphere of overseas interventions, similarly, by taking part only in ventures which were clearly necessary and in some sense defensive – the support of the Dutch and Henry IV, for example – and by keeping those interventions relatively small scale, the minimum necessary support was achieved. In that sense, the regime was certainly ‘weak’ – and yet successful.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties NOTES 1 M. J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558– 1714 (Manchester, 1996), 22–3; John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), 385. The most important recent work in this field (indeed, the only work to address it as fully as it deserves) is that of Ian Archer on London: ‘The burden of taxation on sixteenth-century London’, Historical Journal 44 (2001), 599–627, and his ‘Gazetteer of military levies from the City of London, 1509–1603’, http://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/site/human/modhist/ personnel/785598/research/. See also Thomas Cogswell’s work on early seventeenthcentury Leicestershire: Home Divisions: Aristocracy, the State and Provincial Conflict (Manchester, 1998), esp. 108–28, 180–4, 301–10. 2 Clark, English Provincial Society, 225. This appears to derive from BL Add. 34218, fols 87v.–88r., notes on costs in Kent, which is evidently very incomplete, since it covers only troop levies and some invasion defence from 1596 to 1602. John McGurk has made some calculations of costs (mainly those for troop levies for Ireland from Kent, Lancashire and Cheshire): The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland (Manchester, 1997), chapters 4–5, esp. 100–2, 125–8. See also Boynton, Militia, 157–9; Smith, County and Court, 278; Archer, ‘Burden of taxation’. 3 TNA E 179 database, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/e179/. Much of the 1601 grant fell due after Elizabeth’s death. 4 M. J. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England (Woodbridge, 1994), chapter 2. 5 E.g. APC XXV, 272, 277. 6 Cf. Simon Healy’s use of the rate of payment of the 1626 Forced Loan to assess public opinion on a micro scale: ‘Oh, what a lovely war? War, taxation, and public opinion in England, 1624–29’, Canadian Journal of History 32 (2003), 439–65, at 446. 7 Loseley, 6729/10/109 (the council to Surrey subsidy commissioners, 21 December 1601). 8 Conrad Russell, James VI and I and His English Parliaments (Oxford 2011), 55. 9 Norfolk: BL Add. 48591, fols 61v., 64v. (notes of charges in Norfolk, 1599 and 1600). London: Archer, ‘Burden of taxation’, 601–3. 10 Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 73, 80. See also A. Woodworth, Purveyance for the Royal Household in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, 35:1, Philadelphia, 1945). 11 BL Add. 48591, fols 61v., 64v.; Clark, English Provincial Society, 227, 451, n. 23; J. McGurk, ‘Royal purveyance in Kent’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 50 (1977), 58–68. 12 BL Add. 34218, fol. 29v. (Robert Richers to Sir Christopher Allen, 26 August 1585). 13 HMC Somerset, 27. Devon’s first 1601 subsidy was £6,500. 14 Sources for table 5.2: Lay subsidy: Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, appendix 2, with missing figures supplied from TNA E 359/57. Note: Braddick gives only total figures for each subsidy, but to establish annual payments, those subsidies which were paid in two instalments must be split into their unequal parts. The division was roughly, two-thirds to one-third; in practice, a 65/35 division has been adopted. Military expenditure: The £1,041 outlay in 1586 is based on a list of the costs of setting up the trained bands, laid down for the earl of Derby’s lieutenancies in Lancashire and Cheshire (HMC Foljambe, 15). The £783 1s 6d outlay in 1588 was for the costs of setting up bands totalling 500 men ‘for service then intended into Scotlande’ (Cheshire LB, fol. 41v.). According to an

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance enquiry of 1596, the Cheshire lieutenancy spent in total £2,140 7s 4d over the period 1586 to early 1595 (Cheshire LB, fols 40r.–41v.). Unfortunately, this total is not itemised. It is assumed that the figures already quoted for 1586 and 1588 were part of this total. This would leave £316 5s 11d which was apparently spent at other times during 1586– 95, a surprisingly low sum. The only troop levy required from Cheshire in this period appears to be a levy of 200 men for Ireland in March 1595, which would easily account for a larger figure than £316. Since this remainder cannot be accurately distributed, it has been excluded. The Cheshire LB covers the period 1595–1600, so the final few years of the war are not covered. This is relatively unimportant, since both musters and troop levies were rare during this period. The only sizeable costs are likely to have been levies of 20 men in December 1600 and 60 men in October 1601, both for Ireland, for which costs have been estimated. Summary: the figures given must be treated with varying degrees of confidence. The military figures for 1586 to 1595 are almost certainly underestimates. Overall, the figures for the period after 1595 can be regarded as very sound. In this respect, they are virtually unique. 15 Sources for Norfolk (table 5.3): Subsidy: Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, appendix 2. Military costs: BL Add. 23006 and 48591, BL Lansdowne 58, fols 156r.–157r., Nathaniel Bacon Papers III-IV, Smith, County and Court. The costs of beacons and muster-masters may well be overestimates; muster-masters may not have been in place (or not paid) every year, and beacons may not have been watched every year. Sources for Kent (table 5.4): Subsidy: TNA E 359/54, 56–7 (a few missing figures from parts of the county have been filled in by calculating simple means of the preceding and following subsidy figures for the relevant division). Of local military costs, only troop levy figures can be established accurately; these have been obtained for almost all levies, either from the Leveson Papers or Twysden LP, although the total has often been extrapolated from figures for one or more divisions. These figures can therefore be regarded only as sound estimates. There is no evidence on which to base estimates for muster costs. 16 BL Add. 26886, fol. 24v. Cheshire LB, fol. 12r., 29v. 17 Herts. Musters, 49. 18 The Leveson papers contain voluminous accounts for troop levies, but not for militia training, which is particularly noteworthy as Leveson was responsible for administering costs in several capacities (deputy lieutenant, JP and militia captain). Cobham: Leveson Papers 11/1/4 (Cobham to Leveson, 10 August 1586). On occasions there were local rates to cover the costs of powder, match etc. for training: Leveson Papers 13/2 (Cobham to the hundred of Shamele, 20 July 1586), 12/7 (militia papers, 1585). 19 The council noted in 1596 that ‘wee maie note more backwardnes in you then in anie of the rest’ (APC XXVI, 64). 20 BL Lansdowne 81, fol. 152 (July 1596). 21 D. H. Willson (ed.), The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606–1607 (Minneapolis, 1931), 375. It is interesting that, although Dorset also mentioned that ‘wee have bene quiet from the continuall toile and charge of trayning’, it was troop levies rather than the militia that he highlighted in connection with military expenditure. 22 See for example HMC Foljambe, 30; APC XXV, 349; HMC Somerset, 52. 23 Similarly, the Elizabethan poor laws did not specify how to raise the rates it specified, and responses varied from parish to parish: see Jan Pitman, ‘Tradition and exclusion: parochial officeholding in early modern England, a case study from north Norfolk, 1580–1640’, Rural History 15 (2004), 27–45, at 37.

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 24 SP 12/209/60 (Chandos to Walsingham, 1 April 1588). 25 Smith, County and Court, 95–9. Since the JPs would often have to be involved in the collection of a county rate, this may be regarded as a formalisation of the need for JPs to give their cooperation and implicit consent to a rate. 26 Examples of warrants include Leveson Papers 11/5 (Leveson and Lambarde to the constables of Chatham and Gillingham, January 1589), 46/6), 48/3/4; Cheshire LB fols 39v., 42v., 53v., 70v.; BL Add. 48591, fols 29v., 38r.; HMC Buccleuch III, 32. 27 An exception to this is when, during the late 1590s, the council ordered counties to provide fixed sums of money in lieu of the more usual provision in kind. 28 E.g. Leveson Papers 48/3/1 (estimate by Leveson of the cost of levies of horse, 17 January 1599); Twysden LP, 82; cf. Archer, ‘Burden of taxation’, 617–18. 29 Leveson Papers 46/6 (Leveson and Lambarde to high constables, 16 September 1597); 67/2 (Leveson to the constables of Hoo, 30 March 1598). BL Add. 23006, fol. 28r. (Clement Spelman and John Townsend to ?Bassingbourne Gawdy, 13 June 1599). 30 The fifteenth and tenth did raise a predetermined sum, but since the ratings had been fixed in 1334 and not updated, they were badly outdated. The subsidy was fully up to date, since it was newly assessed every time, but it was difficult to be sure exactly how much to assess on it to raise a given sum. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 23; P. Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), 56. The problem identified by A. H. Smith, that subsidy assessments might be out of date, cannot have been too great, since ubsidies were assessed almost every year during this period. Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’, 98. 31 Kent usually took the former approach, whereas the latter appears to have been usual in Norfolk: see BL Add. 48591, fol. 29r. (rating of Norfolk for the provision of 100 men, 24 January 1600: each hundred was to provide a set number of men and pay £5 to furnish each man). 32 See Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 250–9 for very detailed evidence on this practice in Brothercross hundred. 33 In January 1589, 6s 8d was rated on each parish in Chatham and Gillingham towards a troop levy. Leveson Papers 11/5 (Leveson and William Lambarde to constables, January 1589). 34 W. Rye (ed.), State Papers relating to Musters, Beacons, Shipmoney, &c. in Norfolk, From 1626 Chiefly to the Beginning of the Civil War (Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1907), 27, 205, 207–8. A table was drawn up to divide any sum between the hundreds to an accuracy of tenths of a penny: 161–2. On the beacon rate: BL Add. 48591, fols 66r.–67r. (dated 19 Richard II) and see a new rate made in 1601 at fol. 93r. 35 APC XXIX, 342–3. 36 B. E. Harris, ‘The Palatinate 1301–1547’ in VCH Cheshire (Oxford, 1979) II, 24; ‘Palatine institutions and county government 1547–1660’, ibid. 36–55. For the mize in use, see Cheshire LB, fols 1r., 7r., 17v., 26r., 29v., 39v., 46r., 69v. 37 The Hinton rate was used regularly for county rates up until the the raising of Charles I’s ship money - see T.G. Barnes, Somerset 1625–1640: A County’s Government During the ‘Personal Rule’ (1961), 109 n., etc. It is printed in Barnes (ed.), ‘The Hinton rate, 1569’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset 27 (March 1959), 210–13. 38 Rates could, however, be revised, as was the Hinton rate in 1597: T. G. Barnes, ‘Deputies

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance not principals, lieutenants not captains: the institutional failure of lieutenancy in the 1620s’, in M. C. Fissel (ed.), War and Government in Britain, 1598–1650 (Manchester, 1991), 58–86. 39 In a levy of three light horse in 1601, for example, the £90 required was divided between the five lathes, at £18 each; rating then was done, lathe by lathe, according to the subsidy books. Leveson Papers 54/3 (note of a conference, 6 May 1601). 40 Leveson Papers 66/3b (breakdown of costs by Leveson, 26 August 1598). 41 Leveson Papers 12/7 (various notes on finance, 24 July 1585); BL Add. 25079 fol. 32v. (notes on a letter of Lord Mordaunt to Sir John Spencer, 9 September 1584). 42 Twysden LP , 95. 43 1588: Leveson Papers 12/1 (instructions for defence by Cobham and Sir Thomas Fane, July 1588). 1592: Twysden LP, 79–80. 1596: Twysden LP, 108; Leveson Papers 40/2/1–5 (Leveson and Lambarde to local constables). 1601: Leveson Papers 54/1 (note of money received, 25 July 1601). See also Leveson Papers 54/3 (note of a conference, 6 May 1591). 44 Herts Musters, 146–7. 45 Leveson Papers 48/3/8 (note of conference, 23 January 1599), 66/2 (list of contributors, c. 17 January 1599). 46 Twysden LP, 93. The number of taxpayers was derived from subsidy assessments (TNA E 179). 47 Northamptonshire: BL Add. 25079, fol. 32v. (this was probably but not certainly for military purposes). Gloucester LB, fol. 15v. APC XVI, 60. Herts Musters, 146–7. Hampshire RO, Jervoise of Herriard papers, 44M69/G5/20/45 (from online catalogue, http://calm. hants.gov. uk/DserveA/search.htm). John Webb (ed.), The Town Finances of Elizabethan Ipswich: Select Treasurers’ and Chamberlains’ Accounts (Suffolk RS, 38, 1996), 146, n. 3. 48 Smith, ‘Militia rates and statutes’, 98. 49 See above, 212. 50 Archer, ‘Burden of taxation’, 617–20. Herts. Musters, 146–7 (subsidy); 139–45 (parish rates). 51 Gloucester LB, fol. 15v. APC XVI, 60. Kent: Leveson Papers 35/1/4. 52 BL Add. 36293, fol. 30v. (Lord Eure and Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby to Dr Gibson and Henry Bellasis, 21 July 1599). See also above, 139. 53 See C. Drew (ed.), Lambeth Churchwardens’ Accounts 1504–1645 and Vestry Book 1610, pt II (Surrey RS, 43, 1941), 155, 171–3. The parish was charged with two men, and musters, training and maintenance of equipment cost £2 9s 8d over thirteen days of activity in 1588. 54 Twysden LP, 95, 100; Leveson Papers 48/3/2–4 (Twysden, Sedley and Richers (JPs) to the constables of various hundreds, 18 January 1599); Cheshire LB, fols 79r.–81v.; HMC Rutland I, 328–9. 55 This section has been informed by Michael Braddick’s analysis of resistance to taxation in early modern England: Nerves of State, 180–8. 56 Leveson Papers 11/9/13 (Thomas Willington to Leveson asking for advice on dealing with non-payers, 5 August 1593), 40/1/1 (William Cromer and Michael Sondes to Leveson, 13 January 1597), 66/5/5 (Samson Lennard and Thomas Potter to Leveson, 4 January 1599), 66/2/13 (list of non-payers for the July 1598 horse levy, including Abergavenny

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties and Scott). Gloucester LB, fol. 54v. 57 Leveson Papers 54/2 (Sir Thomas Wilford to Leveson, 3 October 1601). Twysden LP, 93. 58 APC XXI, 319; APC XXIX, 601–3. Leveson Papers 66/5/13 (Cobham to his Kent deputies, 27 February 1599). Herts Musters, 147. 59 See for example Leveson Papers 38/1 (Thomas Engeham to Thomas Scott, 6 September 1595). 60 Leveson Papers 66/5/5 (Samson Lennard and Thomas Potter to Leveson, 4 January 1599). 61 Leveson Papers 32/29 (Byng to Leveson, 10 October 1592). This issue was not new, having been raised as early as 1585: BL Add. 34218, fol. 29v. (Robert Richers to Sir Christopher Allen, 26 August 1585). 62 J. R. Scott, Memorials of the Family of Scott of Scot’s Hall (1876), Appendix, viii-ix; Leveson Papers 32/28 (Thomas Willoughby to Leveson, 11 October 1592). See also Leveson’s awareness that he was being accused of ‘the oppressing of your division’: Twysden LP, 94. 63 Twysden LP, 90. 64 Ibid., 90–1, 94, 96. Byng died in 1595, but the dispute outlived him: see Leveson Papers 53/1 (Sir John Scott et al. to Leveson, 13 September 1595). 65 Twysden LP, 92. 66 Peter Lake, ‘The collection of ship money in Cheshire during the 1630s: a case study in relations between local and central government’, Northern History 17 (1981), 44–71, at 45–52. 67 BL Lansdowne 82, fol. 134 (Glaseour to Michael Hicks, 4 May 1596). 68 Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 74. 69 Barnes, Somerset, 209–10. The second stage was to refuse altogether to pay, and the third the refusal of royal officials to cooperate with the policy. 70 Leveson Papers 10/36 (Samson Lennard and Thomas Potter to Leveson, 20 May 1597), 53/1 (Edward and John Boys to Leveson, 8 August 1595). 71 Twysden LP, 95; BL Harleian 4271, fol. 35v. (order by Herefordshire JPs, 3 June 1600); Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 30; Leveson Papers 19/12 (Thomas Finch to Leveson, 14 November 1596). 72 Leveson Papers 12/1 (Instructions for defence by Cobham and Sir Thomas Fane, July 1588). 73 S. A. H. Burne (ed.), The Staffordshire Quarter Sessions Rolls, vol. 4 (Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 3rd. series, 26, 1935), 297–8; Twysden LP, 109; H. C. Johnson (ed.), Minutes of Proceedings in Sessions, 1563, 1574–92 (Wiltshire RS, 4, 1949), 120, 121–2, 153–4; J. W. Willis Bund (ed.), Calendar of the Quarter Sessions Papers 1591–1643 (Worcestershire Historical Society, 1900), 44. 74 For threats: Twysden LP, 95; BL Harleian 703, fols 77v.–78r. (the council to the lord lieutenants of Sussex, 14 June 1595), 113r. (same to same, 20 May 1599); Leveson Papers 20/8 (the council to Henry, Lord Cobham, 11 May 1600). For actual summonses: Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 112. For summons to the council for non-payment of purveyance rates, see Smith, County and Court, 298.

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance 75 For examples, see APC XVII, 77. On occasion, the council could be surprisingly sympathetic or engage in creative negotiation: see APC XIV, 203–4, 265; APC XVI, 219, 294; APC XXI, 201–2, 319. 76 BL Add. 48591, fols 40v.–41r. (Norfolk muster commissioners to the council, 9 July 1600); Leveson Papers 37/1 (Thomas Peyton to John Leveson, 8 August 1595); Staffordshire RO D868/39 (John Ayscough to Leveson, 7 June 1596); LPL 3204, fol. 175r. (John Manners to the earl of Shrewsbury, 6 May 1589). 77 Smith, County and Court, 181–92; Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 137–9. Smith rather downplays the significance of this process, and does not emphasise its duration, for which see BL Add 48591 fols 58r.–61v. On the Gawdys’ glee at Lovell’s misfortune, see I. H. Jeayes (ed.), Letters of Philip Gawdy … to Various Members of his Family 1579–1616 (Roxburghe Club, 1906), 104–6 (quote). 78 See for example Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 184–5, noting that several townships rated for powder in 1599 had by 1601 ‘never payed penne’. See also Archer, ‘Burden of taxation’ 619–20. 79 Leveson Papers 54/1 (the Queen to Cobham, 20 July 1601); APC XXXII, 77–9. 80 Occasionally, early in the period, ½d per mile might be offered instead. APC XX, 361. Leveson Papers 11/6/32 (Cobham to Leveson, 27 March 1591). 81 APC XXVII, 162; this was the rather anomalous levy of troops for the Islands Voyage. 82 BL Add. 48591, fol. 35r. (Clement Spelman to Bassingbourne Gawdy, 1 November 1599). 83 The warrants are only entered into the council register after August 1598 (see APC, XXIX-XXXII, passim) but a similar technique must have obtained earlier. 84 For repayment by a treasurer at war (Sir Thomas Shirley), see Leveson Papers 22 fol. 53 (Leveson to some JPs or constables, 7 October 1592). By a local loan collector: APC XX, 361 and Leveson Papers 20/3 (the council to the collectors of the loan in Kent, 24 March 1591). By the Mayor of Chester: Leveson Papers 69/1/6 (receipt by the Mayor of Chester, 30 July 1600), plus similar examples in Cheshire Archives, for example zM/MP/8/93. In a levy of September 1596, the captain, John Brooke, was given the coat money in advance, and the JPs were to receive it from him: Leveson Papers 40/5/9–10 (Kent deputies to JPs, 2 October 1596 and William Cromer and Michael Sondes to Leveson, 6 October 1596). 85 Leveson Papers 11/9/19 (receipt by Sir Thomas Scott and Leveson, 22 October 1593). Council warrants for repayment can be cross-referenced with Exchequer tellers’ records; payments seem to have been made on demand. In July 1601, for example, the council gave Ranulph Wolley a warrant for £20 14s due to Shropshire on 2 July and he was paid on 7 July; Richard Bolton of Staffordshire received a warrant on 30 June and was paid on 8 July, and Thomas Clarke of Herefordshire received the warrant on 5 July and was paid on 9 July. (APC XXXII, 6, 17, 19; TNA E 403/1697, Pells issue book, not foliated, under 7, 8 and 9 July 1601). See also HMC Laing, 86–92. For other examples of warrants for repayment issued very shortly after troop levies, even during 1598–1602, see FSL X.d. 30, nos 21–2, 27, 29, 36–7, 39, 56. 86 See examples from 1598 in FSL X.d.30, nos 21–2 (council warrants to the Exchequer to make the payments). 87 Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 247. 88 Leveson Papers 40/8 (sums remaining in the hands of three JPs, ranging from 12s

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 6d to £70). APC XVI, 250, 253, 258. See also APC XIV, 388; Cheshire LB, 40r.–41v.; Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 184–5; Loseley, 6729/4/171–2 (accounts of money raised in Surrey, 1598). 89 FSL L.a.1011 (? to the council, 1600). He was commended by the council for his forwardness: L.a.743 (the council to Staffordshire muster commissioners, 25 May 1600). Leveson Papers 69/7/6 (Leveson’s accounts, October 1601); also Leveson Papers 40/2/1–5 (Leveson and Lambarde to constables, 12 August 1596), 66/2/12 (Sir Thomas Fludd to Leveson, 27 July 1598), 54/2 (Sir Thomas Wilford to Leveson, 8 October 1601); SP 12/226/41, fol. 54r. (Buckhurst to Burghley, 18 September 1589). For JPs left out of pocket as a result, see APC XXII, 312. 90 BL Add 23006, fol. 28r. (Clement Spelman and John Townsend to ?Bassingbourne Gawdy, 13 June 1599). 91 Leveson Papers 63/1/1 (John Richers to Hugh Southern, Leveson’s clerk, 8 October 1618). Leveson had died in 1615. 92 LPL 3204, fols 273–4 (Richard Bagot to the earl of Shrewsbury, 21 April and 11 July 1590). 93 Leveson Papers 40/2/1 (Leveson and Lambarde to constables, 12 August 1596). 94 Leveson Papers 22, fol. 58, 10/38; Twysden LP, 75, 79, 84–9 etc. Sevenoaks Public Library, MS U1000/3/O5/44. See also Loseley, 6729/171–2. 95 Leveson Papers 36/3/1 (William Cromer to Leveson, 3 December 1594). See also Leveson Papers 66/2/4 (Robert Edolph to Leveson, 31 July 1598). 96 See LPL 3204, fols 210–13 (Richard Bagot to the earl of Shrewsbury, 28 February and 7 March 1590), concerning constables ‘factiows and mutenous’ about such a case four years previously; see also examples cited in chapter 1, 83–4. 97 See many constables’ accounts for escorting conscripted troops to their rendezvous in 1597 in Leveson Papers 46/5. The greater part of the constables made their marks rather than signing. 98 Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 2–4, 63–5, 78–9. For the detailed accounts of the high constable of Brothercross hundred, see ibid., 291–4, Nathaniel Bacon Papers IV, 250–9. 99 See HMC Somerset, 44. 100 See, for example, BL Lansdowne 57, fol. 115 (Francis Wyndham to Burghley, 5 September 1588). 101 APC XVI, 249. Examples of accusations: APC XXIX, 298–9, 521–2. For a prosecution of a high constable for unlawful exactions, see J. Lister (ed.), West Riding Sessions Rolls, 1597/8–1602 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record series, 3, 1888), 207. 102 Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 281–4, 287–8, 290–4, 305–7. Cheshire LB, fols 32r. (the council to musters commissioners, 26 July 1596, ordering the enquiry), 32v. (‘Dyreccions at Northwich the 23th of September [1596] uppon this letter of Accounte’), 40r.– 41v. (data of the sums levied and spent by the deputy lieutenants); cf. APC XXVI, 61–2. Cf. McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, 125–6. 103 TNA STAC 5/A13/31; BL Lansdowne 78, fol. 48; Nathaniel Bacon Papers III, 281–4, 287–8, 290–4, 305–7; Smith, County and Court, 284, 352. J. Hawarde, Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 1593–1609, ed. W. P. Baildon (1894), 32–4. For another enquiry in Norfolk in 1596, see Smith, County and Court, 284.

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The costs of war: Lieutenancy finance 104 HEHL EL 2679 (Star Chamber proceedings, 3 June 1597). 105 P. Williams, The Council in the Marches of Wales under Elizabeth I (Cardiff, 1958), 124–5. Hawarde, Reportes, 115–16. See also two Jacobean Star Chamber corruption cases against Radnorshire deputies: Hasler, Commons, III, 248; also complaints against Richard Bulkeley, deputy in Anglesey, for unfair rating for armour: APC XV, 375. 106 FSL X.d.146 (Richard Lewkenor to the council, 23 May 1601); BL Harleian 4271, fol. 44r.–v. The investigation was carried out by Robert Berry, a minor Exchequer official and general government odd-job man, who was paid £20 ‘towards his charges and travail in discovery of sundry abuses committed by the deputy lieutenants in the Marches of Wales and other shires in England touching the coat and conduct money allowed by her Majesty … to the which the several counties of the realm which hath not been accordingly paid or employed to their common benefit’: TNA E 405/535, fol. 46v., and see Hasler, Commons, I, 433–4. 107 APC XXVIII, 448–9, 457, 460, 463. TNA C 231/1, p. 168. 108 Williams, Council in the Marches, 125–6. 109 SP 12/272/7, fol. 13r. (instructions to Thomas, Lord Burghley, 1599). T.G. Barnes, ‘Deputies not principals’, 62. John McGurk claims to find significant corruption in Cheshire, but his account is unconvincing in its attempt to impose undue precision on Elizabethan accounting methods, and in any case involves very small sums of money. McGurk, Elizabethan Conquest, 125–6. 110 For examples of massive corruption by Exchequer and Wards officials, including ‘George Goring, receiver-general of the court of wards … [who] died owing the Crown £19,777’, see Guy, Tudor England, 394–5. For treasurers at war, see Hasler, Commons on Richard Huddleston (II, 350) and Thomas Shirley (III, 376). On William Painter and his son, who embezzled up to £27,000 from the Ordnance, see Roger Ashley, ‘Getting and spending: corruption in the Elizabethan Ordnance’, History Today 40 (November 1990), 47–53. 111 Archer, ‘Burden of taxation’, 624. 112 Richard Hoyle, ‘Taxation and the mid-Tudor crisis’, Economic History Review 51 (1998), 649–75. 113 Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, An Apologie of the Earle of Essex (1603), STC (2nd edn), 6788, sig. D3. Penry Williams, The Later Tudors. England 1547–1603 (Oxford, 1995), 206. Younger, ‘Lambarde’, 72–3. 114 Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), 175. 115 Cogswell, Home Divisions, 305. The impact on poorer and middling-income people may have been more severe, however. 116 Archer, ‘Burden of taxation’, 611; below, 238.

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Conclusion

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his book has been primarily a study of the effectiveness of the politicalmilitary machinery of the Elizabethan state. In this final section, it is time to make an overall assessment of the war effort and to consider the consequences of that assessment for the wider picture of our knowledge of early modern England and Europe, for these issues bear on a number of important debates. In the first place, it has been argued here that the Elizabethan war effort was far more effective than it has been painted by scholars such as Boynton and Cruickshank. The regime’s most important response to the challenges of war was the establishment, continuation and maintenance of the lieutenancies. These were organisations which, as we have seen, were carefully revived in 1585 as a highly loyal and highly trusted network of the regime’s supporters, under which the council gathered the various functions which the counties contributed towards the war effort. In the militia, in invasion defence, and in troop levies, they provided imperfect but effective machineries for military activity. Furthermore, the response to the demands of the state both by local governors and by the wider population was neither so grudging nor so ineffective as is assumed by scholars such as Hassell Smith; there was indeed a substantial degree of voluntarism in, for example, provision of weapons for the militia. The government’s achievement in maintaining war for eighteen years without succumbing to military defeat, fiscal collapse, rebellion or functional breakdown must be acknowledged as a significant success and one which many early modern regimes could not lay claim to. Many aspects of Elizabethan military practice compare poorly with modern standards, but, as John Nolan points out, many of these flaws were shared by contemporary European systems; rather than judging them by modern standards, armies should be assessed on whether they achieved the aims set them by the state.1 To stress that the lieutenancies were ultimately successful, however, does not mean that they were without problems. There were clearly flaws in the system, not least the variation between the performance of different counties. Much of this was down to the personality of the individuals running the machinery (not, of course, a phenomenon limited to early modern institutions). The regime’s local representatives had widely varying levels of effectiveness. Some were highly effective, well-informed, vigorous; many were not. Undoubtedly, the same was true for lesser officials, although the sources

Conclusion make it more difficult to make such assessments. It has been argued here that the establishment and continuation of the work of the deputy lieutenants, in particular, made a real difference to the capacity of the regime to pursue its policies. We have still, however, seen many instances in which local elites, even those who have been pointed to as standard-bearers of the Elizabethan regime, failed to meet the demands placed on them; these were clearly ardent supporters of the regime, but they were not always ready to make the sacrifices necessary to translate their support into the practical measures required by the regime. Rather than seeking to paint an unduly rosy picture of the success of the regime, it is perhaps more accurate to say that such successes as the regime achieved were surely down to the work of these local allies of the council; they were never unstinting agents of the state, but they were the best that could be found. More subtle analyses of the shortcomings of local officials are also possible. In some cases problems may have arisen from a simple lack of knowledge in the localities: they were not military experts and may not have understood what precisely the council wanted them to do, what equipment military men now required and so on.2 In the case of a troop levy in Staffordshire about which the captain complained, Richard Bagot defended himself thus: Some of the armour I must confesse was not of the best, nether so bad as he maketh report, yet the best we could provide at that instant … As for the men, I thinke, they wer as sufficient of personage and agilitie, as any the rest sent thither … emongest which nomber, thoughe some be not well inclyned, yet not so bad as he termeth them.3

Local officials and military officials might judge these matters by very different standards; Bagot clearly did not think he had done a bad job or had abandoned his duty, he simply applied his own (perhaps by then obsolete) yardstick. There was a dissonance between what the centre demanded and what was carried out in the localities; the council demanded compliance on their terms, but local elites chose to provide it on theirs. This was particularly evident in responses to militia policy, which were clearly guided by local assessments of the threat. Local officials cooperated on their own terms, and perhaps as much for their own reasons as for service to the state. They also demanded respect for the proper forms, as the ship money affair showed. They were not mindless servants – the council had to persuade. This was a strength in some ways, helping to encourage a genuinely motivated response, but it also limited the regime’s ability to choose its battles. Furthermore, many of the problems in local responses came not so much from recalcitrant local officials as from the unwillingness of the wider populace to contribute. The difficulties Conrad Russell has highlighted about a genuine lack of understanding between crown and country about the true

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties costs of war may be relevant here: local officials refer at times to real failures of communication.4 Sir Henry Cocke, a deputy in Hertfordshire, wrote to Burghley in 1594 that our countrey is daly charged with many paymentes yet verie necessarie … if men will uprightly consider of those dangerous tymes they shall playnly see that the best and surest way to preserve themselves their landes and goodes (which to many do esteeme of better then of them selves) is willingly to departe with that litle which is in a verie reasonable sort required of them, but fewe of our old rich countrymen will easelye understand that language.

Sir Henry Cromwell, too, told his lord lieutenant, Lord St John, how difficult it was ‘to persuade men to any forwardness in these martial causes’.5 Yet evidence has not been found to support Smith’s case that separate factions of supporters of the court on the one hand and defenders of the county on the other developed; or if they did (as may have been the case in Norfolk), lines of communication between the camps remained open, and both could cooperate in business.6 Nor does it appear that local officials who sought to meet the demands of the centre found their local reputations suffering as a result, as Russell suggests they did in the 1620s.7 In the face of such problems, however, the council could probably have achieved better outcomes by giving local officials the tools they needed to do the work they were tasked with. Clear statutory authority to (say) demand armour provision according to an up-to-date and uniform scale based on wealth, perhaps to be declared on oath, would have made the jobs of local officials vastly easier.8 As it was, there was a natural tendency to try to exploit the weaknesses of the system, since there was a perception that others did so; taxpayers were perhaps not so much reluctant to pay at all, but reluctant to be charged more than others, to be forced to bear an unfair share; this could lead to vicious circles of decline, as in the case of the subsidy. Yet the regime’s success in simply surviving so long a period of war with national consent still largely in place must be recognised; the problems of maintaining domestic support for a war inevitably grew and grew over years and indeed decades. The greatest crisis of the war was perhaps the climax of the Irish wars, from 1598 to 1602. These five years accounted for almost half of the troops raised over the period, as well as very high taxation. There does seem to be a sense that during these few years, a genuine crisis threatened. There is certainly evidence of growing war-weariness in the counties over this period; the greater frequency of demands inevitably led to more refusals or complaints.9 Yet the complaints were not overwhelming and there was in no sense a breakdown: the troops still arrived at the ports, money was still collected and disbursed; the militia still turned out on the risk of invasion; taxes still flowed into the Exchequer. As ever, it is difficult to assess the typicality of complaints: does the survival of one complaint suggest the

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Conclusion existence of many others, now lost, or of widespread similar feelings underlying apparent compliance; or on the other hand does it in fact suggest that complaints were rare? Ultimately, it is difficult to criticise a regime which was largely successful, and the Elizabethan military system did meet the limited, mainly defensive aims for which it was intended, and at times went further and was an effective offensive force, especially in Ireland. It could also work very speedily indeed when occasion demanded. This casts some doubt on the claims that the war years constituted a ‘crisis of the 1590s’. It is easy to lapse into generalisations about the problems of the period. The plague was a real problem for only one year (1593), harvest failures for just four. The decline in living standards was not as severe as once thought; only in 1597, after four successive bad harvests, does mortality seem to have been abnormally high, in London at least.10 The much-vaunted Essex– Cecil rivalry is now widely accepted as having been a major factor for just a few years at the end of the 1590s.11 And whilst the war was an irritation, it scarcely brought the nation to a halt; if at some levels, there was certainly real poverty, it did not stop huge investments in (for example) privateering, or (as Essex pointed out in his Apologie) extravagant spending by the wealthy and the construction of great houses such as Hardwick or Montacute.12 The claim that the period witnessed a more authoritarian style of government, with less consensual decision-making in the council and more aggressive claims for the royal supremacy is also questionable.13 While persuasive in certain contexts (such as Archbishop Whitgift’s more repressive ecclesiastical policy), it remains unproven that the practical experience of government changed in meaningful ways. It has been argued in this book, indeed, that the council in fact sought to approach the problems raised by war as sensitively as possible; it did not rely primarily on aggressive appeals to royal sovereignty to justify its demands, resting them instead on the need for action in the face of obvious threats, and it tried to minimise demands as far as possible. War-weariness was clearly a problem, but it can be overstated. It is certainly not difficult to caricature the period as war-weary: it is easy to find examples of problems, of counties or individuals complaining about the demands placed on them because of the war, or seeking to avoid paying their share; many historians have done so. It is more difficult, however, to explain how, if the mood of the country was so uniformly hostile, the regime continued the war for so long. The key point is that complaints or reluctance did not necessarily lead to non-cooperation. It is not surprising that Elizabethans complained about having to pay taxes, to work without pay, to turn out for musters or whatever it might be. Nor should historians be surprised that they highlighted the poverty of their counties, their insupportable charges. Nor yet should they be surprised that complaints abound in the archives: it is far more common to record complaints or grievances than the absence thereof. All of these are

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties entirely predictable; expressions of enthusiasm for paying taxes are hard to come by in any period. All of these reactions need to be weighed against the fact that complaining about something is not the same as refusing to do it. In fact complaints served as acceptable means of venting unhappiness within the counties; in some cases this may have been the unhappiness of some rather than all within the county elite, in others it may have reflected the need for county governors to be seen to be doing something in response to unhappiness within the lower orders and thus fulfil their role as champions of their counties’ interests.14 Complaints – particularly at this relatively low level – do not automatically suggest breakdown. It was a very large step from bemoaning burdens to defying the orders of Queen and council. The evidence suggests that to a large extent the nation continued to comply, even if that compliance did not always meet the council’s expectations. This is all the more remarkable considering the extent of the regime’s dependence on consent rather than coercion in its fiscal and governmental systems. The regime had no means to impose its policies on the counties, and if a county’s gentry refused to cooperate, the council was largely impotent to bring them to heel. The central question at the heart of the war effort is why local governors did not refuse to cooperate, why MacCulloch’s picture of Suffolk was so unusual. The answer surely lies in a combination of habits of obedience to the crown and the political circumstances of the demands themselves. Amongst these latter, two must be highlighted. Firstly, there was a widespread acceptance that the war was necessary and justified, helped by the government’s provision of clear legitimation for demands. It is easy to spot structural conflicts in the Elizabethan state (that the counties did not want to pay and could not be forced to do so), but these could be manifested in very different ways depending on the dictates of day-to-day politics. Current historiography on the period increasingly recognises that the gentry and indeed the middling and lower sorts had extensive access to news (often foreign news) through both oral, manuscript and printed sources and that they used this knowledge to guide their behaviour in the political sphere; indeed, the council explicitly invoked public knowledge of the international situation when legitimating demands.15 Although the precise dynamics of these interactions between local elites and the wider political community are often obscure, there seems no reason why significant sectors of society should not have made links between this news and the demands which the government made in response, or why information (about an imminent threat of invasion, for example) should not affect their responses in meaningful ways. This is not to say that local governors or gentry thought of this news constantly, or in the same terms as those at the centre, or that they were not equally or more interested in local news (whether at the level of the county or

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Conclusion even more local) or indeed family news; this has never been the case and is not now. Nor did they necessarily prioritise such wider concerns at the expense of local interests. Nevertheless, the claims of the ‘county community’ school of English local history must be modified; local governors were not ignorant of wider concerns and not always reluctant to heed them in their actions, as historians such as Everitt and Clark have suggested and as Hassell Smith also tended to imply in his work on Norfolk.16 Furthermore, the county was not necessarily the framework for their thinking; educated early modern people could think about politics in a wide variety of spheres, and act upon them.17 Secondly, the government helped its case by keeping demands as light as possible (and making a great virtue of advertising that it did so), even holding back local allies at times to prevent the risk of discontent by overburdening the populace.18 This surely helped to encourage trust that when demands were made, they were not capricious or wasteful or without reason. Thus it has been argued throughout this book that the political mood of the late Elizabethan period has been badly misread by many historians. The regime’s care to make its demands as palatable as possible highlights the role of the council and, perhaps especially, the Queen herself, in calibrating the nature of the impact of war on the nation through their military, fiscal and governmental policies. Although the nature of the sources for a study such as this mean that Elizabeth’s role is often obscure, there can be little doubt that her role remained central throughout. It has sometimes been claimed that Elizabeth was losing her grip towards the end of her reign.19 There is no doubt some truth in this, but neither the reports of the French ambassador, de Maisse, nor her celebrated invective against the Polish ambassador, both in 1597, suggest excessive decrepitude.20 All decisions were ultimately approved by her, passed by her hand, were legitimated by her signature. Equally, it was her inclination (and those of the majority of the councillors she appointed) that kept the war a minimal and essentially defensive one, and she consistently rejected the plans of her more aggressive councillors, such as Essex’s 1596 plan to hold Cadiz as a permanent thorn in the Spanish side (she was fortunate, of course, that her wars could be fought on this relatively small scale).21 Elizabeth’s caution, even hesitancy, has often been remarked, and cannot be denied, but it is difficult to point to examples of clear and immediate threats in which the Queen might have acted but did not: she hesitated over the Dutch and French interventions, but ultimately accepted that they were necessary, and she sanctioned the creation of an unprecedentedly large army to crush the Irish rebellion. Indeed many of the military disasters of the period arose when the regime attempted military initiatives which were beyond its grasp, such as Newhaven in 1563 and Portugal in 1589. This limited war was a sensible and realistic policy, a response to Elizabeth’s and her ministers’ sense of how far (and in what circumstances) the political

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War and politics in the Elizabethan counties nation would go along with war (of course, the lieutenancy was an important point of contact to allow the regime to monitor the mood of the country). It was famously lamented by individuals such as Ralegh and Essex, men who had vested political interests in war, and surely unrealistic ambitions to bring the Spanish monarchy to its knees. On the other hand, the enthusiasm which an individual such as Essex could generate for an exploit such as Cadiz suggests that the regime may have underplayed its hand, and that support could be generated for aggressive policies if they were handled in the right way. Yet these policies also flowed from the underlying priorities which Elizabeth’s regime followed throughout the reign. Ultimately, the regime was not interested in making war; its priorities were always social stability and defending English Protestantism. As we have seen the regime entered the war only reluctantly and sought to make peace when it safely could. For this reason (as well as its instinctive conservatism), the regime eschewed radical reforms which might have improved the nation’s military capability. First among these, perhaps, would have been reform of the taxation system, since wider reform could only have proceeded with better funding. But the regime made no significant innovations in taxation (other than asking for subsidies more frequently), and the response was to make economies or sell royal lands.22 This may well have been a result of a genuine concern for the economic well-being of the nation, especially the poorer sort. But it also reflected the government’s disinterest in war for its own sake and its prioritising of stability. One of the costs of higher taxation was usually discontent, and often social unrest. ‘Fiscal-military’ approaches to warfare were usually implemented in the face of considerable hostility among much of the population. Monarchs such as Henry VIII were prepared to risk some domestic unrest or rebellion as the acceptable price of higher taxes; France endured endemic rebellion throughout the seventeenth century, and the problems with the Spanish system are well known.23 The Elizabethan government was apparently not prepared to stomach this; as Richard Hoyle suggests, this may well have been because rebellion could threaten the regime and its religious policies.24 They seem to have believed that popular discontent and internal threats were more dangerous than Spain, in view of the dire consequences of the Queen’s sudden death. The overall approach was summed up by Walsingham, who stressed in 1587 that in militia policy, he and Burghley had ‘dealt to remove … all such matters as might breed discontentment in the subjects of this realm’.25 These social and religious concerns may also be reflected in the approach taken to running the war: the regime preferred civilian administration of the local war effort because, despite its military shortcomings, it guaranteed social stability more effectively, and of course its religious priorities dictated the choice of individuals made within the lieutenancy machines. Thus whilst it might be supposed that the creation of lord lieutenancies could help to estab-

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Conclusion lish a kind of Elizabethan royal absolutism, the intention was actually largely the reverse – they were intended to limit the risk of overly high-handed rule by tying the practice of government into the political nation’s perception of what was acceptable. Whilst it is usually assumed that the conduct of the war was dictated by the regime’s fiscal weakness, therefore, this is only part of the story. It may be equally the case that, concerned with maintaining social stability and popular consent, the regime chose to pursue a limited war. Even under these limited circumstances, however, the war was difficult to manage. It was just possible for Elizabethan England to run a medium-sized war such as this using existing governmental and fiscal approaches. But this could only be done with the compliance of the political nation, which meant extensive persuasion and careful management. In a sense the Elizabethan regime should be regarded not as a ‘modern’ state in which commands simply flowed from the centre, and more as an alliance or coalition within which there was a common acceptance by rulers and ruled (or at least between central and local elites) that the circumstances of the time demanded the action taken. This is a case of the negotiation and compromise which is now so widely seen as characteristic of early modern states. Viewed in this light, it was very useful to the regime that this was a relatively small polity; the lieutenancies were crucial, in that deputy lieutenants or JPs who really knew the mood in the counties were in very close touch with lord lieutenants and councillors who were in the Queen’s presence daily.26 Thus claims that the regime was increasingly ‘authoritarian’ during the war period are highly questionable with regard to its relationship with the counties. Thus it is clearly problematic to fit Elizabethan government into a conventional model of warfare driving the development of stronger states, as the proponents of the ‘military revolution’ might seek to do. Some of what the regime did fits well into the model of the ‘modernising’ state. The development of the machinery of the professional navy is one example (this was, after all, the real mainstay of national defence). The regime’s ability to choose its local representatives is also a characteristic ‘modernising’ development. This was of course limited; the regime in no way dispensed with the services of the nobility altogether, using them as lord lieutenants and commanders of foreign expeditions. Yet the regime could (and did) dispense with noblemen they distrusted, and institute mechanisms for running the war which circumvented them (as we saw in the cases of Northamptonshire and Sussex in chapter 1). The demand for religious conformity had the unintentional effect of sharply limiting the nobility’s role in government; as in so many aspects, the regime operated in a transitional state, making use of the nobility at times, by-passing them at others. But alongside these ‘modernising’ developments, much remained more archaic. Many of the systems on which Elizabeth’s regime relied (notably

239

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties the use of the counties to provide troops) can be regarded as forms of fiscal feudalism which were adopted because of the shortage of money. A further problem with fitting the Elizabethan war effort into a military revolution model is that when the wars ended, the military machine (ad hoc as it was) withered away; although the lieutenancies themselves were kept on by James I, the lord and deputy lieutenants whose accumulated skills and experience made possible the successes in Ireland gradually died off. Thus Elizabethan military practice has only limited relevance to later developments. Although writings on the military revolution often focus on innovation, the notion of progress through military revolution towards the development of modern states depends implicitly on continuity. Thus it is easy to fit the Tudor navy into these conventional narratives, since it had (and has) a continuous existence. Conversely, the Elizabethan military system fits badly, since it was leading towards a historical dead end, and many of the assumptions on which it was based would be swept away forty years later and eventually replaced by something much more ‘modern’ (and effective). Yet, if the Elizabethan system failed to follow conventional paths of development, it did the job asked of it, according to its own lights. Furthermore, in more intangible ways, the burdens of the war encouraged the development of habits of government and almost imperceptibly drove the development of the state, the extent of central control and the responsiveness of local society to the state’s demands. The war prompted a multitude of tiny acts of government which reached into every community in England: very simple acts such as deputy lieutenants sending their orders to JPs and high constables, high constables passing orders onto petty constables, petty constables going round the village collecting shillings and pennies towards the war effort, reports being passed back up the chain, men appearing at musters at the state’s behest. All of these encouraged a subtle but significant process of acculturation, accustoming county and village to regular demands from the state. Local officials from the lieutenants and gentry to the parish officers became ever more used to executing the demands of the central regime and to working as a network of officials, not simply as office-holders with discrete and self-contained responsibilities. In these more subtle ways, chains of command were forged and reinforced and England continued to become a more intensely governed state.27 Thus the Elizabethan system lacked coercive power and could only work effectively within a broad base of support from the political classes. Running a war with this fragile coalition demanded not only demonstrable response to urgent circumstances and demonstrable restraint in the demands that were made, but also the maintenance of genuine trust between the political classes and the government, over religion, tax policy and foreign policy. This brings us to the obvious comparison between the Elizabethan wars

240

Conclusion and those of the early Stuart period. The relative success of the Elizabethan government in managing warfare begs the question of how to account for the dismal failures of their Stuart counterparts to do so in both the 1620s and after 1638.28 This failure in the nation’s military capability has been seen as part of a wider breakdown in government and in relations between centre and localities as well as crown and Parliament, and thus the operation of government. Conrad Russell has made the case that the inherent problems, shortcomings and contradictions in the system of local government made it fundamentally flawed and an example of ‘functional breakdown’.29 In this view, these problems emerged when local government had to meet the demands of warfare, to the point where (in Penry Williams’s words) it was ‘incapable of waging war’.30 Russell writes ‘a successful war could not readily be combined with the local self-government which was the tradition of the English counties’, and he argues that in the disastrous campaigns of 1626–8, ‘large scale conscript warfare overseas was perhaps being seriously tested for the first time’. This, and his comment that ‘the English fought no effective land war on the Continent between the development of gunpowder and the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough’, do less than justice to Elizabethan military achievements.31 This book has argued that this verdict is fundamentally inaccurate as regards the Elizabethan wars; as Williams also argues, ‘while this may have become true by the early years of Charles I, it was not so under Elizabeth: large-scale war, of the kind waged by Philip II, was far beyond the reach of the English Crown; but limited war could be and was successfully conducted by Elizabeth’s government for eighteen years’.32 Why then did the system which worked for Elizabeth not do so for Charles I? Several differences in the workings of the respective war efforts can be cited to answer this question, and cumulatively they suggest that the contrast in government’s effectiveness across the two periods may not necessarily be surprising. On a straightforward level, it did not help that most of the efforts of the 1620s were unsuccessful in their military objectives, whereas under Elizabeth there were several notable successes. The shortage of money was clearly a problem here, but a lack of experience on the part of both local officials and military officers may also have played a role; Elizabeth was fortunate in being able to call on such experienced men as Drake and Sir John Norreys to put together operations as complicated as major overseas expeditions. The justification for warfare is a further important point of contrast; if news about national and international affairs was widely available amongst the gentry and indeed lower levels of society, the exact objectives or motivations for the wars themselves must have had an important role in their responses to the state’s demands. Put simply, whilst the Elizabethan wars were widely seen as a fight for national survival against Spain, the wars of the 1620s were not nearly so well legitimated. They were in fact clearly inessential, a perception which

241

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties can only have been underlined by shifts in policy towards Spain and France.33 In such circumstances, compliance was bound to be more difficult to achieve. A third difference between the two periods is that many issues which provoked dissent in the early seventeenth century were handled considerably more sensitively under Elizabeth. Ship money, forced loans, billeting, coat and conduct money and forced recruitment were all common to both periods, yet most were of quite different natures in the 1590s. Elizabeth demanded forced loans, and they were naturally unwelcome, but since they were always repaid, they cannot have been too grievous.34 Ship money also stirred up animosity in certain quarters, but as we have seen did not result in a wider breakdown of cooperation. Billeting and coat and conduct were minor issues, and most debts were met promptly. Nor is there evidence that these were at the top of lists of grievances in the 1590s: subsidies were certainly a concern, but it was monopolies that caused the greatest stirs in the Elizabethan Parliaments. Almost no-one of any political significance complained about forced recruiting, since they were not themselves affected by it. It is unhelpful that similarities of nomenclature obscure these distinctions between the two periods, and that assumptions about war-weariness and discontent under Elizabeth are influenced by projecting back these early seventeenth century controversies onto phenomena with similar names in the 1590s. Finally, there is the issue of the nation’s trust in royal government. Elizabeth seems to have largely retained the trust of her people, but James and Charles, in different ways, strained it, often through moves which Elizabeth sedulously avoided. These cannot be discussed in detail here, but issues such as conspicuous profligacy, favouritism and scandal at court, seeking a marriage with the Spanish enemy, permitting Catholic worship at court, and pursuing religious policies which alienated large parts of mainstream political society were not calculated to endear monarch and court to the political nation. Jan Glete has suggested that early modern monarchs can be viewed as entrepreneurs, selling protection to their subjects in return for the funds needed to do so.35 In this perspective, Elizabeth was a credible purveyor with an attractive product: the nation believed in the threat and they trusted her to use their money responsibly. This issue also contributed directly to a further problem whose origins have sometimes been laid at Elizabeth’s door: the weakness of the crown’s principal fiscal resource, the subsidy. It is clear that the subsidy declined precipitately from Elizabeth’s reign onwards, but, as it has been argued above, the problem was not in itself the decline of the subsidy so much as the difficulty of getting Parliament to grant enough of them. Elizabeth managed this, again because the threat was convincing, whereas James and Charles had tremendous difficulties with Parliaments for reasons such as perceptions of waste in royal government, lack of faith in ministers, lack of trust for the king himself and so on.

242

Conclusion Thus, the evidence presented in this book challenges the notion that the early modern English state had in effect become ungovernable. One can agree with Russell that ‘the early Stuart administration system was unsuited to the conduct of a major war’.36 It was hard to fight a war, but it was not impossible. It required monarchs to be very selective about the battles they chose to fight; Elizabeth was happy to do this, but it may have accorded less easily with Charles I’s conception of his royal dignity. In this sense, Charles’s problems were not so much structural, as political.37 Ultimately, the effective functioning of government in early modern England was a product not merely of institutions or structures, important though these were, or even of sensible policy choices, it also reflected the need for trust between different sectors of the governing elite. That Elizabeth and her ministers maintained that trust through a very difficult period of war, and passed over a secure and stable polity to her successor, was not the least of her achievements. NOTES 1 John S. Nolan, ‘The militarization of the Elizabethan state’, Journal of Military History 58 (1994), 391–2. 2 A point made by Lord Buckhurst in 1589: SP 12/226/73 (Buckhurst to Burghley, 28 September 1589). 3 LPL 3204, fol. 276r. 4 Conrad Russell, James VI and I and his English Parliaments: The Trevelyan Lectures Delivered at the University of Cambridge 1995 ed. Richard Cust and Andrew Thrush (Oxford, 2011), 54–5. 5 BL Lansdowne 75, fol. 181. BL Add. 34395, fols 6v.–7v. 6 Smith, County and Court; Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c.1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), 192; above, 90. 7 Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), 324–5. 8 Cf. ibid., 76. 9 John McGurk, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland: The 1590s Crisis (Manchester, 1997), 99–100 and see above, 189. 10 Ian Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), 11–12; M. Power, ‘London and the control of the ‘crisis’ of the 1590s’, History 70 (1985), 371–85. 11 Paul E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), chapter 9; Janet Dickinson, Court Politics and the Earl of Essex, 1589–1601 (2012). 12 Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, An Apologie of the Earle of Essex (1603), STC (2nd. edn), 6788, sig. D3. 13 John Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge, 1995), esp. 13–15.

243

War and politics in the Elizabethan counties 14 Cf. Peter Lake, ‘The collection of ship money in Cheshire during the 1630s: a case study in relations between local and central government’, Northern History 17 (1981), 44–71. 15 Richard Cust, ‘News and politics in early seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present 112 (1986), 60–90. On the relevance of the developing politics of the succession to Catholics’ strategies for dealing with the state’s demands for religious conformity, see for example Michael Questier, ‘The politics of religious conformity and the accession of James I’, Historical Research 71 (1998), 14–30. On the council’s invocation of engagement with political news, see Surrey LB, fol. 31r.–v., 73r.–v. For Dutch comparisons, see Judith Pollman and Andrew Spicer (eds), Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke (Leiden, 2007), especially the essays by Andrew Pettegree and Henk van Nierop. 16 Holmes, ‘The county community’; Smith, County and Court. 17 Richard Cust and Peter Lake, ‘Sir Richard Grosvenor and the rhetoric of magistracy’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 54 (May 1981), 40–53. 18 On the concern to minimise burdens, see SP 12/212/63, 12/243/37; J. Stevenson (ed.), Correspondence of Sir Henry Unton (Roxburghe Club, 1847), 376; above, 126–7, 132, 166. They also tried to gratify reasonable requests from the counties where possible: see for example their response when Cheshire wanted to replace their muster-master: Cheshire LB fol. 46v. 19 Guy (ed.), Reign of Elizabeth, 4; Patrick Collinson, ‘Elizabeth I’, ODNB; Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (Basingstoke, 2010), 2. These tend to make this point with reference to the eighteen years of war whilst drawing evidence (if any) largely from the last year or so of the Queen’s life. 20 G. B. Harrison and R. A. Jones (eds), De Maisse: A Journal of All that was Accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse … 1597 (1931), 23–6; BL Lansdowne 85, fols 37r.–38r. (Sir Robert Cecil to the earl of Essex, 26 July 1597). See also Wernham, Return, 407. 21 Paul E. J. Hammer, ‘Myth-making: politics, propaganda and the capture of Cadiz in 1596’, Historical Journal 40 (1997), 621–42, 629. 22 On which, see Simon Adams, ‘Eliza enthroned? The court and its politics’ in Christopher Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 1984), 56–9. 23 Frank Tallett, War and Society in Early-Modern Europe, 1495–1715 (1992), 179, 181. 24 R. W. Hoyle, ‘Place and public finance’, TRHS 6th series, 7 (1997) 197–215, 207. 25 SP 12/206/2. 26 Cf. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars, 141; Younger, ‘Lambarde’. 27 Cf. Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1640 (Basingstoke, 2000). 28 See John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), 458: ‘whereas Tudor governments got things done, Stuart politicians fumbled’. 29 Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 64–70. 30 Penry Williams, ‘The crown and the counties’ in Haigh (ed.), Reign of Elizabeth, 143. 31 Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 324–5. 32 Williams, ‘The crown and the counties’, 143. 33 Russell acknowledges this distinction: Parliaments and English Politics, 72, 327–8.

244

Conclusion 34 With one exception: the 1596–7 loan was not repaid: F. C. Dietz, English Public Finance 1558–1641 (2nd edn, 1964), 81. 35 Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500–1660 (2002). 36 Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 327. 37 Cf. Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War (2nd edn, Basingstoke, 1998), 30.

245

Appendix Troop levies from the counties, 1585–1602

. Date

Location

Number Comments

Sources.

July 1585 Late 1585

Netherlands Netherlands

4,000 ?

CSPD 1581–90, 253–71; Leveson Papers. SP 12/183/15, 12/186/81–2.

Feb 1586

Netherlands

?

June 1587

Netherlands

4,000

Jan 1589

Portugal

4,500

June 1589

Ostend

500

Sept 1589

France

3,600

Spring 1590

Ireland

1,000

Sept 1590

Netherlands

Spring 1591

Brittany

2,655

Foot. Light horse paid for by recusants. Paid for by the clergy. Foot. Counties provided sword and dagger only. Precise numbers unclear. London only, 13s 4d each for coats. Trained bands. Willoughby's expedition. Numbers slightly unclear – this a best guess. London only; from Archer. 2,950, 10% DPs.

June 1591 June 1591

Brittany Normandy

540 2,700

600, 10% DPs. 3,000, 10% DPs.

Nov 1591 Feb 1592

Rouen Dieppe

350 1,440

Pioneers 1,600, 10% DPs.

Aug 1592

Brittany

600

Oct 1592

France

800

Jan 1593

France

1,200

May 1593 Feb 1594

Channel Is Netherlands

600 1,500

July 1594

Brittany

2,050

400

Raised at the charge of the States; no cost to the counties.

SP 12/183/72; 12/199/33, 74; SP 15/30 fol. 128. APC XV, 118. SP 12. Herts. Musters. BL Harleian 703. Loseley. APC XVI, 418–19; Leveson Papers. Archer, 'Gazetteer'. APC XVIII, 86–9; SP 12; Leveson Papers. APC XVIII, 142, 298, 327–50, 392, 414, 441. Archer, 'Gazetteer'. APC XX, 361–3; SP 12/238/7, 38–42; BL Harleian 703; Herts. Musters; Leveson Papers; Somerset LB. APC XXI, 210. APC XXI, 220; CSPD 1590–4, 76; Gloucester LB; Herts. Musters. BL Harleian 703; Leveson Papers. APC XXII, 256–7; SP 12/241/49–51, 60; Herts. Musters; Leveson Papers. APC XXIII, 132–5; CSPD 1591–94, 253–4. APC XXIII, 223, 247, 249–51; Gloucester LB. APC XXIV, 65–7; SP 12/244/38; Herts. Musters; Gloucester LB. APC XXIV, 236–8; SP 12/260/42. Somerset LB; Surrey LB.

SP 12/271/37; Leveson Papers; Surrey LB.

Appendix: Troop levies Date

Location

Dec 1594

Ireland

188

March 1595 June 1595

Ireland

940

Ireland

990

March 1596

Ireland

1,208

March 1596 March 1596 Sept 1596

Ireland

282

Sept 1596

Ireland

940

April 1597 Ireland

2,560

May 1597

Islands Voyage

4,000

July 1597

Picardy

700

June 1598

Ireland

2,000

July 1598

Ireland

950

July 1598

Ireland

120

Aug 1598

Ireland

940

Oct 1598

Ireland

1,880

Nov 1598 Dec 1598

Ireland Ireland

1,000 2.000

Jan 1599

Ireland

100

Jan 1599

Ireland

3,000

Feb 1599 March 1599

Ireland Ireland

2,000 200

Cadiz Boulogne

Number Comments

4,900 1,800

Sources.

A levy that was Lancashire Lieutenancy, 234. repeatedly delayed, 6% DPs. 6% DPs. APC XXV, 521; SP 12/251/68, 12/252/11; SP 63/196/42. Cambridgeshire LL; BL Harleian 703; Gloucester LB; Herts Musters. APC XXV, 262, 280, 314; SP 12/260/40; Cambridgeshire LL; Herts. Musters. Foot supplied by APX XXV, 258; Cheshire RO. the clergy. HMC Salisbury VI, 114–204; Cheshire LB. 2,000 with 10% APC XXVI, 192–4; SP 12/271/37, DPs. 12/260/8. APC XXVI, 161–4; SP 12/271/37; SP 63/194/46, 49; Cambridgeshire LL; Cheshire LB; Derbyshire Musters. APC XXVII, 21–8; SP 12/271/37, SP 63/194/9–11. Originally APC XXVII, 100, 160; SP 12/262/139– prepared for 40, 12/263/123; Cambridgeshire LL; defence. Leveson Papers; Somerset LB. APC XXVII, 283–310; SP 12/271/37; Cambridgeshire LL; Leveson Papers; Surrey LB. APC XXVIII, 519–31; CSPD 1598–1601, 62; BL Add. 26886; Cheshire LB. APC XXVIII, 584–6, 600–1; Somerset LB; Surrey LB. Horse. APC XXVIII, 582–9; CSPD 1598–1601, 88; HMC Salisbury VIII, 264, 279, 281, 296; Cambridgeshire LL. 1000, 6% DPs. APC XXIX, 94, 155; CSPD 1598–1601, 88; Cambridgeshire LL. 2000, 6% DPs. APC XXIX, 237–40; HMC Salisbury VIII, 427–8. APC XXIX, 312–15. APC XXIX, 388; CSPD 1598–1601, 126; BL Add. 48162, Harleian 703; Leveson Papers, Surrey LB. Horse. APC XXIX, 447, 461, 489, 497; CSPD 1598–1601, 149; BL King's MS 265; Leveson Papers. CSPD 1598–1601, 151, 159; BL Add. 36293, 48162. APC XXIX, 573; Somerset LB. Counties provided APC XXIX, 667; CSPD 1598–1601, 167; £3 per man for Surrey LB. equipment.

247

Appendix: Troop levies Date

Location

June 1599 Ireland

Number Comments

Sources.

2,000

CSPD 1598–1601, 215, 227, 231–2, 243; SP 12/271/69. BL Add. 26886, 48591; Cambridgeshire LL; Derbyshire Musters; Leveson Papers, Surrey LB. APC XXX, 4, 26; TNA E 407/12; SP 63/207 pt. 1, fol. 9. CSPD 1598–1601, 380; BL Harleian 703, 4271; Leveson Papers. APC XXX, 13, 27–32, 53

Jan 1600

Ireland

200

Jan 1600

Ireland

2,000

Jan 1600

Ireland

3,000

Jan 1600

Ireland

86

June 1600 Ireland

2,000

June 1600 Ireland

183

Dec 1600

Ireland

1,000

April 1601 Ireland

40

April 1601 Ireland

1,000

July 1601

Ostend

1,000

July 1601

Ostend

2,000

July 1601

Ireland

2,000

Oct 1601

Ireland

5,000

Oct 1601

Ireland

350

April 1602 Ostend

3,000

April 1602 Ireland

2,500

July 1602

2,000

248

Ireland

Horse; counties provided £30 per horse in lieu.

Horse; number uncertain; based on income generated.

Horse, from individual gentry.

Horse. To be armed with swords only. London provided £3 10s per man for equipment. Counties provided £3 10s per man for equipment. Counties provided £3 10s per man for equipment. Counties paid money (40s per man) in lieu of apparel. Horse (60 from the clergy, 290 from gentry). Counties provided only men; crown covered other costs. Counties provided £3 10s per man for equipment. Counties provided £3 10s per man for equipment.

APC XXX, 412; CSPD 1598–1601, 444; BL Add. 48591, Harleian 703, 4271; Leveson Papers. APC XXX, 434. APC XXX, 789, 795; BL Harleian 4271; Somerset LB; Surrey LB. APC XXXI, 311; BL King's MS 265; Surrey LB. APC XXXI, 311; BL King's MS 265; Surrey LB. SP 12/281/2; Archer, 'Gazetteer'.

APC XXXII, 85; BL Kings MS 265; Cambridgeshire LL; Surrey LB. APC XXXII, 70, 79; SP 12/281/28.

APC XXXII, 222, 239; CSPD 1601–3, 117; BL Add. 48591; Cambridgeshire LL; Loseley; Surrey LB. APC XXXII, 249, 266, 275–86; Chamberlain Letters, 122. BL Add. 48591, Cambridgeshire LL, Leveson Papers, Surrey LB.

TNA E 407/12, SP 12/284/21; J. Wake (ed.) Montagu Musters Book. TNA E 407/12, Cambridgeshire LL, Derbyshire Musters, Leveson Papers, Loseley, Surrey LB.

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257

Index

. Anglesey 76, 77, 103, 183 Anjou, Francis, duke of 14 ap Rice, Cadwallader 221 Aston, Sir Walter 39 Aylesford, lathe of Kent 165, 213, 215 Azores, English attack on (1597) 2, 83, 130, 163–4 Babington Plot (1586) 21, 44, 113 Babington, Ury 178–9 Bacon, Nathaniel 32–4, 42, 43, 45, 83, 90, 113, 145n3 Bacon, Sir Nicholas 34 Bagot, Richard 32–3, 39, 43–4, 67, 74, 134, 233 Bagot, Walter 39, 219 ballads 61, 173 beacons 112, 115, 131, 205, 211, 212–13 Bedfordshire 24, 28, 75, 86–7, 122, 184 Bergen-op-zoom 169, 174 Berkshire 20, 21–2, 24, 107, 117 Bertie, Peregrine, 13th Lord Willoughby de Eresby 34, 168 Berwick-upon-Tweed 174 Bishops’ Wars 59 Blount, Charles, 8th Lord Mountjoy 26, 169 Bodenham, Roger 44 Bolles, Sir John 184 Bossville, Robert 177 Bourchier, William, 3rd earl of Bath 24–5, 87, 88, 154n169, 183 Brabant, estates of 169 Brentwood 118 Bristol 181, 185 Brittany 174 Brockett, Sir John 33 Bromley, Robert 178–9 Brooke, Henry, 11th Lord Cobham 27, 173

Brooke, John 177 Brooke, William, 10th Lord Cobham and lieutenancy finance 207, 215–16 lord lieutenant of Kent 14, 21, 23, 26, 35, 49n37, 53n98, 70, 71–2, 73, 79, 86 and the militia 110, 111, 127, 128, 133 and troop levies 168, 180, 181, 187 Browne, Anthony, 1st Viscount Montague 40–1 Brydges, Giles, 3rd Lord Chandos 24–5, 41, 50n58, 69, 86–7, 100n160, 119, 123–4, 127, 129, 211 Buckinghamshire 24, 28, 40, 75, 183 Bulkeley, Sir Richard 77–8 Byng, Robert 53n98, 100n168, 100n169, 215–16, 220 Cadiz, English attack on (1587) 2, 61, 113 English attack on (1596) 2, 60, 61, 81, 163, 170, 175, 237 see also ship money Calais 116, 118, 128, 165, 220 Cambridgeshire lieutenancy 21–2, 25, 28, 29, 33, 50n43, 56n145, 67, 86, 109 lieutenancy finance 212 militia 107, 109, 138, 142 subsidy 202–3 troop-raising 178 Canterbury 170, 216 Capel, Arthur 144 Capel, Henry 134, 144 Carey, George, 2nd Lord Hunsdon 27, 90, 123 Carey, Henry, 1st Lord Hunsdon 14, 21–2, 51n68, 66, 78–9, 83, 98n122, 119–21, 124 Carmarthenshire 221

Index Carnarvonshire 70, 173, 174 Catholics, Catholicism 59, 60, 125, 133 fear of 12, 20, 33, 44, 68–9, 242 local officials 14, 36–8, 43–4, 46 nobility/gentry 32, 37, 39–42, 68, 75, 167 seminary priests etc 11, 33, 37–9 supervision, disarming of recusants etc 37–9, 41–4, 111, 115, 131, 187 troops provided by recusants 163, 166, 189 Cecil, Sir Robert 27, 35, 40, 43, 142, 155n180, 166, 222, 235 Cecil, Thomas, 2nd Lord Burghley 26, 72, 167, 188 Cecil, William, 1st Lord Burghley 7, 11, 26–7, 43, 60, 77, 119, 222 as councillor 4, 18, 33, 39, 60, 63 militia policy 104, 140, 142, 159n260, 238 troop levies 166 and the lieutenancies 18, 21, 24, 29, 50n43 as lord lieutenant 20, 24, 28 in the ‘alternative plan’ 21–2 of Essex 135 of Hertfordshire 158n247, 210, 234 of Lincolnshire 25, 29 and propaganda 60, 62 supervision of local government 40, 47, 54n106, 65, 73, 75, 110–11, 142 Charles I, king of England and Scotland 6, 7, 241–3 Cheshire 56n145, 184, 205 lieutenancy 14, 20, 26 lieutenancy finance 201, 205–7, 210–14, 220 Cheshire ‘mize’ 213 militia 109, 114, 130, 133, 135–6, 137, 139, 141, 142, 144, 207 subsidy 202–3, 205–7, 210 Chester 113, 177, 181–2, 183, 184, 185, 218 Chichester, Sir Arthur 183–4 Cholmondeley, Sir Hugh 205 clergy, military contributions of 102, 119, 122, 127, 131, 163, 166

260

Cockayne, Sir Thomas 90 Cocke, Sir Henry 34, 68–9, 73, 210, 234 Coke, Sir Edward 220 commissions of musters see muster commissions commission of the peace see Justices of the Peace Compton, Henry, 1st Lord Compton 41 constables 72, 74, 84, 88–9, 172–3, 175, 207, 212, 219–20, 240 Cooper, Thomas, bishop of Winchester 90 Cornwall 14, 17, 21, 24, 25, 26, 99n133, 106, 117, 176 Spanish raid on (1595) 59, 128 council see privy council council of the north 81 ‘county community’ 5–8, 36, 237 Covert, Walter 33, 41, 43 ‘crisis of the 1590s’ 7, 85, 234–5 Cromer, William 129, 220 Cromwell, Edward, 3rd Lord Cromwell 131 Cromwell, Henry, 2nd Lord Cromwell 32 Cromwell, Sir Henry 28, 72, 88, 234 Cromwell, Thomas, 1st earl of Essex 45 Croydon 119–20 Cumberland 24 Cutts, Sir John 33, 56n145 Daniell, John 135–6 Danvers, Sir John 123 Darcy, Sir Francis 185 Darcy, John, 2nd Lord Darcy of Chiche 32 Darrell, William 119 dearth 202, 235 Denbighshire 174, 221 deputy lieutenants 42, 63, 70, 240 appointment 29–30, 31–2, 34, 41, 73, 86 corruption 221 experience and capability of 30, 32, 35, 187, 240 importance 28–9, 233

Index institutional issues 18, 27, 28–32, 35, 66, 89 methods of conducting business 87–9, 90 overlap with other county offices 39 and persuasion in the counties 68, 70, 72, 73, 74 and protest about the war 75, 76, 77–8, 81, 83 range of responsibilities 176, 185, 187 record-keeping 65 role in lieutenancy finance 210, 212, 213, 219–20, 234 role in the militia 68, 87, 109–15 passim, 121–140 passim, 145 role in troop levies 6, 170, 172–3, 174, 176–7, 181–2, 183, 187 support for the regime 32–5, 39–40, 41, 43–4 Derbyshire 214 lieutenancy 14, 20–1, 26, 29, 32, 51n68, 56n145, 90 militia 114, 133, 135–6, 157n220, troop levies 174, 176, 184 Deventer 125 Devereux, Robert, 2nd earl of Essex 62, 142–3, 222, 235 as councillor, patron etc 29, 43, 53n100, 56n144, 167, 221 and the lieutenancy 27, 50n52, military commander 60, 61, 62, 70, 81–2, 163, 167, 180, 188, 237–8 militia reforms (1597) 130–1 rivalry with the Cecils 27, 222, 235 role in troop raising 163, 167, 169, 170, 177–8, 188 views on strategy 2, 4, 61, 237–8 see also Azores, English attack on (1597); Cadiz, English attack on (1596); Ireland, wars in Devereux, Walter 62 Devon lieutenancy 14, 17, 21, 24, 26, 87, 88 lieutenancy finance 81, 205 militia 87, 117, 130 Dieppe 186

Digges, Thomas 23 Dorset lieutenancy 14, 17, 21–2, 26, 81 militia 111, 112, 117, 120–2 Dover 116, 165 Drake, Sir Francis 2, 15, 60, 113, 128, 148n61, 170, 241 Dudley, Ambrose, earl of Warwick 21–2, 25, 28, 129 Dudley, John, 1st duke of Northumberland 16, 19 Dudley, Robert, 1st earl of Leicester Armada crisis (1588) 118–19, 122, 124, 150n88 councillor etc 37, 42–3, 44, 56n144, 56n145, 57n152, 65 expeditions to the Netherlands (1585– 88) 19, 28, 33, 43, 167, 169, 174, 175, 180, 188 lord lieutenant 21–2, 28 of Essex 14, 50n43, 118 of Hertfordshire 14, 50n43 Durham 24 Dutch Republic 1, 14–15, 60, 61, 62, 163, 167, 169–70, 185, 223 Edward III, king of England 172 Edward VI, king of England 16, 167 Edwinstree, Hertfordshire 134, 175 Egerton, Sir Thomas 62 Elizabeth I, queen of England personal ageing 7, 237 defence of person 108, 116–17, 119, 131, 142 disfavour 42–3 favour 65, 67, 119 indecisiveness 27, 164, 165, 237 opinions 60, 173, 237 presence 65, 239 safety 12, 19–21, 23, 33, 59, 63, 238 visit to Tilbury camp (1588) 124 politics and government finance 7, 222–3, 242 foreign policy and strategy 1–2, 4, 15, 60, 223, 238

261

Index lieutenancy policy 17–18, 24, 26–7, 29–31, 65, 238–9 militia policy 85, 108, 124, 142 minimising burdens on the counties 69, 237–8, 242 policy-making 23, 164–5, 237–8 orders from 4, 15, 22, 42, 64–72 passim, 114, 128, 130, 132, 171, 187, 211, 219, 236 troop levies 164, 165, 166, 171, 172 trust in 242–3 English Civil War 3, 4, 6, 85, 240–3 Essex 32, 99n133 Armada crisis (1588) 116–21, 124 lieutenancy 14, 21–2, 24, 44, 50n43, 56n145, 118 lieutenancy finance 214 militia 114–15, 118, 122, 125, 129, 131 troop levies 166

Gawdy, Philip 217 Gladwell, Alexander 177 Glamorganshire 26 Glaseour, Humphrey 216 Gloucester 69 lieutenancy 50n56, 76 lieutenancy finance 214 militia 108–9, 112, 123–4, 127, 128, 138, 139, 152n139 troop levies 174 Gloucestershire 24–5, 26, 28, 50n58, 56n145, 69, 119, 123, 148n56, 180, 183 Gravesend 118 Gresham, William 220–1 Grey, Arthur, 14th Lord Grey de Wilton, 25, 41, 129 Grey, Henry, 6th earl of Kent 25, 75, 86–7

Falstaff, Sir John (Henry IV Part Two) 173 Fane, Sir Thomas 33, 215 Farnese, Alessandro, duke of Parma 116, 118, 124–5, 169 Fermor, Sir George 44, 56n145 Fitton, Sir Edward 119 Flanders, army of 117–18 Flintshire 115 Fludd, Thomas 88 forced loans see privy seal loans France 2, 46, 60, 169, 185, 238, 242 wars in 1, 13, 60, 61, 67, 73, 128, 174 English aims in 1, 2, 67, 73, 190 English intervention in 46, 60, 68, 127, 128, 160, 201, 237 troop levies for 128, 162, 163, 165, 186 Willoughby expedition (1589–90) 34–5, 71, 92n21, 126, 127, 166, 168, 174–5, 182, 186 Freke, Edmund, bishop of Norwich 42

Hales, Sir James 118, 174 Hales, John 184 Hampshire lieutenancy 14, 21–2, 26, 28, 87, 90 lieutenancy finance 214 militia 106, 117, 120 in France (1589) 126, 127, 168 Harrington, Sir James 38 Harrison, William 222 Hastings, Sir Francis 32–4, 42, 43, 53n93, 56n140, 73, 89 Hastings, George, 4th earl of Huntingdon 33, 44 Hastings, Henry, 3rd earl of Huntingdon 24, 25, 70, 86, 109, 126 Hatton, Sir Christopher 25, 31, 41, 49n34, 70, 109, 123, 126, 129 Hawkins, Sir John 128 Henry III, king of France 15 Henry IV, king of France and Navarre 1, 35, 60, 61, 62, 67–8, 126–8, 162, 168, 223 Henry VII, king of England 167 Henry VIII, king of England 16, 59, 63, 167, 170–1, 187, 238 Herbert, Henry, 2nd earl of Pembroke 14,

Gawdy, Bassingbourne (d. 1590) 56n149, 90, 110 Gawdy, Bassingbourne (d. 1606) 110, 187

262

Index 25, 29, 53n95, 70, 73, 79, 86, 178, 221 Herefordshire 25, 44, 229n85 Hertfordshire 33, 56n145, 68, 77 lieutenancy 14, 20, 21–2, 24, 48n22, 50n43, 50n53, 90 lieutenancy finance 207, 210, 213–14, 234 militia 33, 105–7, 122, 128, 134, 136, 138, 144, 155n191, 158n247, 207 troop levies 128, 166, 175, 176, 214 Heveningham, Sir Arthur 83, 90 Higham, Sir John 42–3 High Commission 38 Howard, Charles, 2nd Lord Howard of Effingham and 1st earl of Nottingham 14, 15, 21, 24–5, 41, 70, 131, 134, 142, 178 Howard, Lord Henry 35 Howard, Philip, 13th earl of Arundel 40 Howard, Thomas, 4th duke of Norfolk 22 Huntingdonshire lieutenancy 21, 22, 25–6, 28, 50n43, 72, 88 militia 107, 122, 150n99, 151n113 invasion defence 17, 18, 20, 23, 25–6, 28, 102, 105, 107, 110–15, 135, 143, 144, 232 in 1595 131 in 1596 131 in 1597 80, 131, 221 in 1599 60, 131–2, 134, 142, 201, 203, 207, 223 costs of 201, 205, 207 scares 17, 113, 127 threat of 1, 16, 18, 20–1, 27, 31, 35, 59–60, 62, 67–8, 80, 102–3, 109, 126–7, 128–9, 136, 141, 144, 203 see also Spanish Armada (1588) Ipswich 81, 214 Ireland 20, 57n157, 122, 128 Essex’s campaign in (1599) 70, 167, 169

wars in 2, 13, 46, 61, 62, 67, 68, 84, 160–1, 166, 168, 174, 181, 185–6, 189–90, 201, 203, 207, 218, 234–5, 237, 240 English troop levies for 72, 83, 84, 128, 132, 162, 163, 164, 166, 169, 172–3, 176, 177, 178, 184, 185, 186, 205, 207, 213, 222, 234 Spanish intervention in 2, 80, 203 ‘Islands Voyage’ (1597) see Azores James VI & I, king of England and Scotland, 6, 7, 42, 80, 143, 204, 240, 241–2 Jermyn, Sir Robert 33, 42–3, 52n88, 63 Johnson, Captain 181 Jones, Sir Thomas 221 Justices of the Peace (JPs) 63 corruption of 174, 220–1 council supervision of 36–40, 45 the lieutenancy and 16, 17, 31, 69, 73, 74, 87–90, 240 religion of 14, 36–8, 48n9 role in government 18, 36–40, 45, 59, 63, 65, 74, 187, 239, 240 role in lieutenancy finance 205, 212, 213, 214, 215–17, 219–20 role in the militia 63, 109, 111, 123, 130, 140 role in troop levies 165, 172–4, 177, 179–80, 181, 186 Kent 4, 32, 52n81, 79, 90, 103, 204–5 JPs 11, 31, 36, 73, 89, 100n168, 180, 212, 215–16 lieutenancy 14, 21, 26, 27, 32, 33, 34–5, 70, 77, 86, 88, 89, 100n159, 182, 196n108 lieutenancy finance 100n168, 200–1, 205, 207, 209–10, 212, 213–14, 215–16, 217, 218, 219–20 militia 70, 77, 110, 111, 112, 115, 127, 128, 129, 134, 135, 138, 139–40, 142, 152n139, 207 in 1588 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 152n131, 213

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Index in France (1589) 71, 92n21, 126, 127, 168 invasion scares of late 1590s 131 muster commission 31 subsidy 202–3, 210, 214 troop levies 71–2, 83–4, 88, 164, 165, 166, 169, 173, 174, 177, 178, 180–1, 182, 183, 193n51, 196n108, 198n139, 198n143, 212 war-weariness/protest 6, 71–2, 73, 83–4, 198n139, 215–16 Kinsale 2, 59, 68, 80, 203 Knightley, Sir Richard 32–3, 41–2, 43, 53n93, 56n145, 63, 101n174, 126 Knollys, Dorothy, widow of Edmund Brydges, 2nd Lord Chandos 123 Knollys, Sir Francis 25 Knyvet, Sir Henry 123 Knyvett, Henry 60–1 Knyvett, Sir Thomas 78 Kyffin, Maurice 183–4, 187 Lake, Thomas 128 Lambarde, William 11–13, 33, 34, 73, 77, 90, 133, 138, 155n180, 173, 216, 222 Lambeth, Surrey 109, 135 Lancashire 84 lieutenancy 14, 20, 26, 48n15, 93n43 lieutenancy finance 207, 212 militia 109–10, 114, 130, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 168, 207 muster commission 30, 31, 134, 136 law, legality 64, 76–81, 83–5, 104–5, 138, 211 Leak, Francis 56n145, 135 Leicestershire 25, 26, 33, 34, 86, 109, 175 Leighton, Sir Thomas 62, 110, 111–12 Leveson, Sir John archive 4, 34, 53n93, 215, 219, 220 career 34–5, 216 deputy lieutenant in Kent 35, 73, 90, 165–6, 174, 181, 182, 187, 188, 215–16, 219–20 Puritanism 33, 34, 52n81 service in France (1589) 34–5, 52n88,

264

92n21, 168 support for the regime 32–5 lieutenants, lieutenancies 3, 13, 14, 38–40, 45, 46–7, 64–7, 69–70, 232, 240 before 1585 15–17, 19 as a channel of communication 67–73, 144, 238, 239 as civilian institutions 3, 185, 238 as a command structure 102, 107, 115, 123–5, 130, 143 commissions of 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 29, 65, 211 ‘decline’ of 26–7, 30–1, 129 effectiveness of 86–7, 104, 115, 135, 144–5, 160–1, 177, 189–90, 232–3 enforcement by 64, 73–4, 138, 140, 217 expansion of work 46–7, 89, 200 finance 200–1, 205–23 accounting 219–20 corruption 220–1 enforcement 216–17 financial management 218–19 legality of 211–12, 216, 220 rating 211–13 resistance/disputes 214–17 sources for 200, 205 see also taxation, local; troop levies, costs of organisation of 45, 86–9 resistance to 74–85, 188–9 revival (1585–88) 14–15, 18–21, 24–6, 35, 40–1, 65, 102, 106–7, 232 ‘alternative plan’ for revival 21–4, 25 role in internal security 16, 19–20, 23 role in the militia 102, 106, 107, 110–11, 118, 123, 127, 130, 137 role in troop levies 18, 160, 165–6, 169, 170–2, 177, 181, 185–7 work of see invasion defence, militia, troop levies see also deputy lieutenants Lincolnshire 14, 17, 20, 21–2, 25, 29, 32, 50n43, 99n133, 107, 173

Index London armour supply 106, 139, 157n226, 177, 178–9 gentry and 12, 34, 43, 88, 113, 134 and invasion 25, 65, 109, 113, 117–21, 123–4, 131, 148n59, 149n80 lieutenancy 17 militia 129, 142 in France (1589) 126, 168 taxation 202–3, 204, 214, 222 troop levies 163, 164, 166, 172, 180 Lovell, Thomas 56n149, 74, 90, 217 Manners, Edward, 3rd earl of Rutland 14, 25, 77 Manners, John 29, 32, 43, 90, 135, 157n220 Manners, John, 4th earl of Rutland 25, 26 Manners, Roger, 5th earl of Rutland 26, 167 Manwood, Sir Roger 34 ‘maritime’ counties 17, 20, 21, 106–8, 116–18, 148n58 Mary I, queen of England 17, 19, 167 Mary, queen of Scots 12, 21, 33, 44, 74 Maurice, Sir William 173 mercenaries 166–7, 169 Merionethshire 221 Middlesex 121–2 Mildmay, Sir Walter 34, 39 ‘military revolution’ 5, 7, 185, 239–40 militia, trained bands 3, 13, 18, 23, 32, 102–45, 167, 175, 232 armour, weaponry and equipment 77, 104–5, 106, 108–9, 111–12, 114–15, 122–6, 129–30, 133, 136–40, 168, 179, 210–11, 234 storehouses for 109, 140, 158n257 use in troop levies 176–7 assessments of 5–6, 142–5, 232, 233 captains, captaincies 34, 42, 62, 63, 87, 89, 107, 115, 122–3, 129, 130, 140, 220 character and history before 1558 102–4 funding 124, 130, 133, 139–40, 143, 205,

207, 210–12, 214, 222 horse/cavalry 31, 32, 77, 85, 88, 111, 114, 129, 130, 133, 177, 222 militia acts (1558) 80, 104–5, 137, 139 muster certificates 109, 114, 122, 130, 132 musters/views of men 59, 108, 113, 126–8, 130, 132, 137 reforms of 1597–98 130–1, 141 trained bands 72, 85, 111–15, 118–19, 129, 131, 167 after 1588 126–32, 141 assessment 142–5 developments 1585–88 107–11, 141, 144 membership 119, 129, 133–6, 143 origins 104–8, 141 service overseas 34–5, 71, 108, 126, 127, 133, 167–8 training 33, 73, 104–7, 108–10, 112, 114, 126–7, 130, 132, 141–3, 211 Monmouthshire 25, 26 monopolies 79, 189, 242 Montague, Sir Edward (d. 1602) 32, 34, 38, 41–2 Montague, Sir Edward (d. 1644) 42 Mordaunt, Lewis, 3rd Lord Mordaunt 41 More, Sir William 32, 43, 56n148 muster commissions, commissioners 18, 30–1, 39, 40–1, 42, 77, 88, 90 role in lieutenancy finance 212, 214, 217 role in the militia 104–6, 130, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 145 role in troop levies 172, 175–6, 179, 187 muster-masters 89, 103, 110–11, 130–1, 138–9, 141–2, 143, 181 costs of 205, 211 disputes over wages 77, 79–80, 84, 85 navy, English 2–3, 5, 102, 127, 131, 186, 239–40 Netherlands, English troop levies for 15, 18, 19, 128, 132, 160, 162–4, 167, 169, 173–4, 186–7

265

Index wars in 1, 4, 13, 14, 18, 26, 28, 33, 43, 46, 60, 61, 73, 80, 120, 126, 141, 160, 174, 186, 189–90, 201, 237 see also Dutch Republic Nevill, Henry, 6th Lord Abergavenny 32 Newhaven (Le Havre), English expedition to (1562–3) 174, 237 news 60, 113, 123, 223, 236–7, 241 Nicholson, Edmund 178 nobility/peerage 202 Catholicism and 32, 37, 41–2, 167, 239 lieutenancy and 14, 18, 25–6, 28, 29, 32, 41, 43, 45, 66, 86, 239 military role 4, 13, 15, 18, 86–7, 130, 144, 167, 170, 188, 239 troops provided/raised by 102, 119–20, 122, 125, 131, 133, 167, 171, 222 Nonsuch, Treaty of (1585) 15, 186 Norfolk 237 corruption in 174, 220–1 ‘factionalism’ in 6, 56n149, 90, 99n144, 234 lieutenancy 14, 17, 21–2, 51n68, 66, 70, 78–9, 88 lieutenancy finance 201, 205, 207–8, 210–14, 216, 217, 218, 219–20, 222 militia 87, 110, 112, 117, 121, 129, 131, 134, 140, 145n3, 207 muster commission 32, 90 taxation 202–5, 207, 210 troop levies 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 183 war-weariness/resistance to demands 6, 71, 83, 99n144 Norreys, Sir Henry 111 Norreys, Sir John 111–12, 124, 142–3, 148n56, 169–170, 183, 188, 192n45, 241 Norris, Henry, 1st Lord Norris 25 Northampton 124 Northamptonshire 38, 166 lieutenancy 20, 24, 41–2, 44, 49n34, 50n43, 239, 56n145, 70, 87, 109, 112, 123–4, 126, 142, 147n39, 239 lieutenancy finance 200, 212, 213–14

266

militia 70, 87, 109, 112, 123–5, 129, 142 muster commission 31, 32, 40, 52n78 subsidy in 202–3 troop levies 183 North, Henry 29 north of England 57n157, 166, 189 lieutenancy 24–6, 28, 86 militia 109–10, 122, 126, 152n138 North, Roger, 2nd Lord North 26, 28, 29, 67, 86, 109 Northumberland 24, 112 Norwich 62, 177 Nottinghamshire 25, 26–7, 77 Nowell, Sir ‘Adrian’ 38 oaths, swearing of 36, 40, 45, 111, 133, 202, 234 Ogle, Cuthbert, 7th Lord Ogle 112 O’Neill, Hugh, earl of Tyrone 2, 68, 162, 173 Orange, William, prince of 15, 19, 169 Ostend 168 siege of (1601–4) 67–8, 162–3, 172, 199n163 Owen, George 75 Owen, John Lewis 221 Oxfordshire 20, 24, 123 oyer and terminer, commissions of 38–9 Paget, Thomas, 3rd Lord Paget 32, 39, 44 Palmer, Sir Thomas 41 Parker, Edward, 12th Lord Morley 32 Parliament 16, 33–4, 36, 42, 43, 45, 63, 64, 90, 103, 241, 242 1584–85 20, 42, 201 1586–87 42, 60, 80, 201 1589 34, 79–80, 201 1593 34, 79, 128, 201, 214 1597 79–80, 131, 201 1601 79–80, 189, 201 attitudes to the war 46, 60, 74, 79–80, 84 taxation grants 3, 7, 38, 46, 64, 79, 201, 204, 242 under the early Stuarts 7, 63, 80, 182, 204, 211, 242

Index Paulet, William, 1st marquess of Winchester 17, 19 Paulet, William, 3rd marquess of Winchester 14, 22, 25, 90 Pembrokeshire 75, 76 Percy, Henry, 8th earl of Northumberland 40 Petre, Sir John 44, 56n145 Philip II, king of Spain 2, 15, 18, 59, 63, 113–14, 241 Pigg, Oliver 33 plague 7, 73, 202, 235 Poole, Sir Henry 56n145, 123 poor laws 143, 205, 225n23 pope, the 11, 59, 63, 68 Portman, Sir Hugh 77 Portsmouth 117, 127 Portugal Voyage (1589) 2, 126, 163, 170, 174–5, 237 privateering 61, 235 privy council administrative effectiveness 37, 82–3, 105, 112–13, 115, 124–5, 132–3, 153n149, 161, 164–6, 186, 188, 234 and deputy lieutenants 27, 29–30, 32, 34, 35, 39, 182 enforcement of orders 64, 66, 71, 73–4, 81–3, 87, 103–4, 109, 110–11, 126–9, 140, 141, 142–4, 181, 183, 184–5, 187, 217, 236 financial management 182, 185, 188–9, 203–4, 218–19, 222–3, 232 legitimation for demands 62–73 passim, 82, 223, 233, 235–6 and the lieutenancy 18–19, 20–3, 27, 185, 232–3 and lieutenancy finance 211, 212, 217, 218, 220 management of local government 6, 8, 11–14, 18, 19, 31, 35–46 passim, 62, 73, 76–8, 83, 86–7, 90 members of 14, 17–25 passim, 28, 31, 32, 47n3, 49n37, 65, 78, 86, 164, 202, 237, 239

minimising burdens on the counties 69, 126, 132, 235, 237, 238 and muster commissions 30–1, 40–1, 104, 129 orders from 4, 11, 19, 32, 64–8, 70–1, 81, 87, 164, 172–3, 187, 189, 211, 219, 236 Armada crisis (1588) 116–24 militia 103–9 passim, 111–15 passim, 126–32, 133, 135–8, 140, 141, 144–5 troop levies 164–5, 169–74 passim, 178–9, 181, 182, 184–6, 187, 188–9 policy-making and decisions of 2, 102, 116–17, 126, 137, 140, 160–1, 164–6, 170–1, 172, 176, 178, 185, 187, 235 special commissions of 38–40, 42 privy seal (forced) loans 35, 44, 60, 65, 71, 75, 85, 218, 222, 223, 242, 245n34 propaganda, English government 62–3, 68, 91 Protestants, Protestantism 11–12, 13–14, 19, 20, 21–2, 23, 32–47 passim, 60, 61, 62, 63, 68, 72, 125, 133, 138, 167, 238–9 provost-marshals 89, 131, 211 Puritans, Puritanism 33–4, 42–4 purveyance 38, 69, 73, 79, 88, 204–5 Radcliffe, Henry, 4th earl of Sussex 14, 22, 87, 90, 129 Radcliffe, Thomas, 3rd earl of Sussex 174 Ralegh, Sir Walter 25, 238 recusants, commissions for 38–9, 41 see also Catholics Richers, John 219 Rich, Richard, 2nd Lord Rich 32 Rivers, John 174 Rochester 35, 166, 177, 182 Russell, Francis, 2nd earl of Bedford 14, 17, 21–2, 24, 25 Russell, Sir William, lord deputy of Ireland 184 Rutland 25, 36, 38, 86

267

Index Sackville, Thomas, 1st Lord Buckhurst 60, 62, 90, 211 lord lieutenant of Sussex 25, 30, 40, 70, 120, 165, 168, 180, 182 Scarsdale 156n208, 173–4 Scotland 13, 17, 61, 109–10 Scott, Sir John 100n169, 215, 220 Scott, Sir Thomas 33, 69, 118, 124, 167, 215 sea, war at 1, 46, 60, 61, 160, 189 see also Azores, Cadiz, Portugal, privateering Seymour, Edward, 1st duke of Somerset 16 Seymour, Edward, 1st earl of Hertford 51n68, 77, 80, 84, 134 sheriffs 15, 17, 30–1, 37, 65, 174 ship money (1588) 205, 214 (1596) 71, 77, 79, 81–3, 205, 233, 242 (1630s) 85, 216, 222, 242 Shirley, Sir Thomas 41, 52n88, 56n144, 56n145 Shropshire 25, 34, 183 Sidney, Sir Philip 62, 167 Sidney, Sir Robert 27 Smythe, Sir John 76, 111, 134–5, 172 Somerset lieutenancy 14, 20, 21, 25, 26, 33, 34, 52n88, 53n95, 73, 76, 79, 86, 88 lieutenancy finance 213 militia 106, 107, 115, 117, 120, 132, 134, 148n56, 168 troop levies 173 Somerset, Edward, 4th earl of Worcester 26, 44 Spain, 169, 172, 186, 242 aid to Irish rebels 2, 59 see also Kinsale king of see Philip II war with 1, 2, 14–15, 20, 44, 59, 60, 63, 67–8, 72–3, 80, 82, 90, 113, 127–8, 160, 161, 163, 169, 183, 238, 241 Spanish Armada (1588) 1, 20, 44, 61, 62, 65, 68, 117–21, 123–4

268

English defence against 70, 72–3, 106–26, 133, 140, 143, 167, 207, 213, 220, 223 Spelman, Clement 218 Spencer, Sir John 34, 41–2, 56n145 Stafford, Edward, 3rd Lord Stafford 44 Staffordshire 39, 43, 44, 65, 75 lieutenancy 14, 20–1, 27, 32, 67 lieutenancy finance 217 militia 32, 114, 138 troop levies 176, 233 Stanley, Henry, 4th earl of Derby 14, 20, 84, 87, 109, 129 Stanley, Sir Edward 114 Stanley, Sir William 125 Star Chamber, court of 42, 220–1 speeches in 63, 78 States-General of the Netherlands see Dutch Republic St John, John, Lord St John of Bletso 26, 50n46, 88, 234 Stratford-at-Bow 118, 121 Style, Edmund 100n169, 134 subsidy, subsidies 134, 201–13, 215, 222–3, 238, 242 assessments (ratings) for 71, 137–8, 140, 202 use of in local taxes 211, 213–14 commissions for 35, 38–9, 88, 202, 204, 220 complaints about 73 grants of 46, 64, 79, 201, 204, 223, 238 yield 59–60, 203, 204 decline of 7, 201–4, 210, 214, 222–3, 234, 242 see also taxation, national Suffolk 33, 41, 42, 52n81, 79, 121 lieutenancy 14, 21–2, 65, 66, 88 ship money dispute 71, 79, 81–3, 236 troop levies 178, 185 Surrey 32, 41, 164 lieutenancy 14, 20, 21, 26, militia 70, 107, 117, 119, 129, 131, 138 Sussex lieutenancy 14, 21, 25, 26, 30, 33, 40–1,

Index 52n88, 87, 100n159, 159n269, 239 lieutenancy finance 212 militia 106, 112, 117, 119–22, 128, 131, 148n58, 168 in France (1589) 126, 127, 168, 182 nobility 40–1, 42 troop levies 70, 164–6, 169, 180, 182–3, 187–8, 199n162 Sutton-at-Hone, lathe of Kent 165, 215 Sydenham, Sir George 76, 173 Talbot, George, 6th earl of Shrewsbury 14, 20, 26, 29, 39, 44, 65, 67, 74, 87, 129, 135, 138 Talbot, Gilbert, 7th earl of Shrewsbury 26–7, 70 taxation evasion of 75 local 3, 13, 32, 45, 71, 77, 80, 83–4, 105, 123, 128, 139–40, 188, 200, 204–5 extent of 200, 204–11, 222 see also lieutenancy finance, ship money national 3, 7, 15, 38, 45, 63, 64, 102, 187, 201–4, 210–11, 222–3, 234, 238 see also subsidy Tilbury 118, 121, 134 Tresham, Sir Thomas 42, 44 Trevor, Sir Richard 221 trained bands see militia troop levies 15, 18–19, 59, 60, 65, 67–8, 128, 132, 160–90 before 1585 205, 213 billeting 182, 188, 242 by commission 170–1 by contract 168–71 by the lieutenancies 3, 13, 15, 17, 18, 32, 35, 160–85, 239–40 captains of 180–1, 184, 218, 221 coat and conduct money 182, 187, 188, 218, 221, 222, 242 conductors of 67, 180 corruption in 173–4, 184–5, 221

costs of 6, 80, 164, 170–1, 176, 185, 201, 205, 207, 211–12 dead pays 165 division of burden between counties 76, 164, 166, 189 equipping of 69, 87, 136, 164, 168, 170, 176–9, 181, 182, 183, 184, 187, 205 money in lieu of 169, 178, 189 extent of 162–4, 175, 188–9, 234 horse (cavalry) levies 164, 166, 169, 177, 185, 213, 214, 219, 222 impressment 76, 170, 172, 174, 242 indentures 181, 187 justification for 68, 70 legal status of 76–7, 172 military authorities and 177, 179–83, 187 quality of 183–5, 233 criticised by historians 5, 160–1 recruits for 133, 160, 170–6, 233 desertion 172, 179 speed of 161, 165, 186, 235 transport 181–2, 186 warrants for 76–7, 98n114, 211 Twysden, Roger 100n169, 216, 220 United Provinces see Dutch Republic Vaux, William, 3rd Lord Vaux 41, 42, 44 Wales 66, 57n157, 221 lieutenancy 17, 24, 25, 26, 29, 86 Marches of 17, 25, 26, 122, 221 militia 107, 110, 122, 152n138 troop levies 166, 178 Walsingham, Sir Francis 21, 24, 30, 41, 43, 49n36, 49n40, 62, 71, 73, 90, 119, 142, 238 war-weariness 6, 8, 46, 59, 67, 74, 82–3, 85–6, 189, 232, 234–6, 242 Warwickshire 25, 26, 28, 40, 56n145, 76 Westmorland 24 West, William, 1st Lord De La Warr 40–1 Whitgift, John, archbishop of Canterbury 119, 235

269

Index Wight, Isle of 90, 123, 127 Williams, Sir Roger 111 Willoughby, Charles, Lord Willoughby of Parham 29, 32 Willoughby, Thomas 220 Wilson, Thomas 175 Wiltshire 90, 119, 217 lieutenancy 14, 20, 21–2, 25, 26, 51n68, 84, 86 militia 107, 111, 117, 120, 123 muster-mastership 77, 80, 84, 142 Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal 45 Worcestershire 25, 183, 217 Wriothesley, Henry, 3rd earl of

270

Southampton 167 Wyatt Rebellion (1554) 17, 33 Wyndham, Francis, justice of common pleas 78, 83, 113 Wynn, John 174 Yorke, Sir Edward 139 Yorkshire lieutenancy 24, 26, 72, 81 lieutenancy finance 212, 214 militia 110, 138–9, 144, 152n138 troop levies 174, 177, 189 zouche, Edward, 11th Lord zouche 26, 41