38 DORSET SOLDIERS. 



towards the end of the 16th century, there were especial 

 apprehensions of invasion ; and one cannot avoid the sus- 

 picion that the local authorities in these years hoped, by 

 minimising the resources of the county, to lessen demands 

 from the Privy Council for troops to be sent away from 

 home. In the Armada year for instance we are asked to 

 believe that there were but 3,330 footmen in the shire fit 

 for service, though eight years earlier they numbered 6,000. 

 The difficulty was less in finding men than in finding arms 

 for them. In 1569 bows and bills still predominated ; but 

 between 200 and 300 arquebuses and calivers (the lighter 

 weapons needing no rest) appear in the return of that year, 

 and from that time forward firearms rapidly increased, so 

 that by 1580 the Dorset trained bands possessed more 

 arquebuses than bows. In 1580 also there were more pikes 

 than bills. All men-at-arms now carried, in addition to their 

 principal weapon, swords and daggers ; but only the pikemen 

 and billmen were supplied with body armour (called corslets 

 or jacks) and only the arquebusers with the helmets called 

 morions. The mounted troops were always small in number, 

 viz : 58 in 1569, and from 100 to 160 in later times, divided 

 into the heavily armed horsemen known as demilances, 

 petronells, or carabins and the light horse. The character 

 of these horsemen is indicated in an order, dated in 1601, 

 from the Council as to their equipment. Each carabin was 

 to have " a good horse or guelding with a morocco saddle 

 of buff or some other good leather and good furniture to 

 y*, a sufficient man to serve on him furnished with a good 

 curasse and a caske, a petronell, a good sword and dagger and 

 a horseman's coate of good cloth." The equipment of a light 

 horseman was the same except that, in the place of the 

 petronell, he carried " a northern staff e and a good long 

 pistoll." 



It will be convenient here, before proceeding with a general 

 account of the trained bands under the first two Stuart 

 Kings, to refer briefly to the organisation and training of 

 the men in the 16th century. For military, as for civil, 



