44 DORSET SOLDIERS. 



rose to a position of importance, but the only certain know- 

 ledge I have of his career is that, having followed the wars 

 for six years at his own charge, he was in 1597 appointed to 

 command a company, probably proceeding to Ireland. 

 Later he lived at Bere Regis, dying in 1631. 



There was a marked deterioration in warlike spirit 

 among the country gentlemen during Elizabeth's reign, and 

 it may be expected that they had to a large extent ceased to 

 regard soldiering as their profession. Thomas Arundel, 

 writing to Cecil in 1598, comments on " the ignorant justices 

 in these parts, and especially in Dorsetshire, their harrying 

 up and down of the people, their often chargeable and 

 untimely musters together with their dismayed looks and 

 speeches which strike fear into the honester sort and give 

 hope of novelties to the beggarly and rascally sort." This 

 was very different from the conduct of the Strangways, 

 Trenchards, Horseys, and others of Henry the Eighth's time 

 who, on command of the Bang, led their tenants and 

 dependants to the wars without hesitation. The relations 

 between a lord of the manor and his tenants concerning 

 military service, about the middle of the 16th century, are 

 exemplified in a suit in the Court of Request, which indicates 

 that, though the feudal sj^stem was dead, its spirit survived. 

 Sir John Marvin, lord of the Manor of Bradford Peverell, 

 had refused to admit one John Churchill to tenements in 

 the manor which had been held by the latter's father, on the 

 ground that John Churchill had been guilty of misbehaviour 

 in not joining with other tenants of the manor in following 

 Marvin to the siege of Boulogne. Churchill pleads that being 

 only a tenant in reversion he was not liable for such service, 

 and that he held tenements in the manor of Frampton and 

 had been warned by his own lord to be ready to set out 

 with the Frampton men. The plea thus tacitly admits 

 Marvin's claim to command his tenants, and openly admits 

 a similar claim on the part of the lord of Frampton. If 

 Churchill had gone to Boulogne under any leader or in any 

 capacity he would assuredly have said so, and there can be 



