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place appointed by the Parish, and was always ready to be worn 
at a hour’s warning. The Magistrates were required to see that 
the several weapons were maintained in an efficient state, at the 
charge of the townsmen, and Holinshed says :—‘“‘ There is 
almost no village so poor in England be it never so small that 
hath not sufficient furniture in a readiness to set forth three or 
four soldiers as one archer, one gunner, one pike, and a bilman at 
the least. No there is not so much wanting as their very liveries 
and caps, so that if this good order may continue it shall be 
impossible for the sudden invasion to find us unprovided. 
“As for able men for service thanked be God we are not 
without good store, for by the musters taken 1574 & 1575, 
our number amounted to 117,674, and yet were they not so 
narrowly taken but that a third part of this like multitude was left 
unbilled and uncalled. 
“What store of munition and armour the queen’s majesty hath 
in her store houses, it lieth not in me to yield account. 
“As for the armories of some of the nobility they are so well 
furnished that within one baron’s custody I have seen 3 score 
or 100 corslets, at once, besides calivers, hand guns, bowes, 
sheffes of arrows, pikes, bils, polaxes, flaskes, touchbores, and 
targets, the very sight whereof appalled my courage, and there- 
fore both high and low in England. 
“ Cymbala pro galeis pro scutis tympana pulsant.” 
Ben Johnson confirms this account of the historian. 
“ He was so hung with pikes, halberts, petronels, calivers and 
muskets, that he lcoks like a justice of the peace’s hall.” 
Nevertheless the years which preceded the defeat of the Spanish 
Armada were times of great anxiety, and the forces throughout 
the Kingdom were exercised every alternate week to the disloca- 
tion of trade and great expense to the counties and towns. 
Surveys were made in all the shires of weapons and stores, and 
those liable to maintain great horses and Demilances were warned 
to have them in readiness. Particular attention was paid to large 
