DORSET SOLDIERS. 45 



no doubt that he remained at home. Some additional 

 interest in John Churchill arises from the fact that he must 

 have been related, perhaps nearly related, to Jasper Churchill, 

 of Bradford Peverell, who was great-grandfather of the 

 first Duke of Marlborough. 



Defects in leaders inevitably produced defects in their 

 followers. Justices of the Peace, who were trained soldiers, 

 would repress sternly any w^ant of discipline, and would take 

 strong measures with any who attempted to absent them- 

 selves from musters and so on. We hear little therefore of 

 defaulters till the middle part of Elizabeth's reign, and then 

 defaulting was not severely punished. At Weymouth in 

 1572, as appears from some proceedings in the Court of 

 Star Chamber, men who missed a day's training had to pay 

 a small fine, or, if the fine was not paid at once, were taken 

 down to the sea in an ignominous fashion and douched with 

 water. Later in the same century shirking became quite a 

 common pastime. A captain of a trained band, it was 

 declared, would often find that twenty of his hundred men 

 failed to attend a muster, and claimed exemption on the 

 ground that they had become retainers of noblemen or 

 " gentlemen of account." A letter from the Privy Council 

 to the Lord Lieutenant of Dorset dated in 1597 draws 

 attention to one case of this kind. Christopher Derby, of 

 Stirthill, the son of a man of good property, having been 

 pressed in the course of a levy for foreign service, appeared 

 at the muster in the livery of Lord Howard of Bindon, 

 received his imprest money disdainfully, and the next day 

 went to the house of Colonel Brown, who commanded in 

 the Bridport division, and there " in most contemptuous 

 sort threw the same to the ground, using very unreverent 

 and unfitt speaches and utterly refused to serve in regard 

 he was retayned to the Lord Viscount. ' ; The Council 

 directs the punishment of the culprit as an example to 

 others. 



Queen Elizabeth's method of obtaining soldiers for 

 expeditions overseas was different from her father's. All 



