MILITARY HISTORY 



Admiral to command him to raise i oo ' choice men ' for service in 

 the Low Countries/ as 2,000 men had been withdrawn thence to 

 Ireland, after Tyrone's victory on the Blackwater. These were not to 

 be vagrants nor masterless men ; so the experiment of the previous 

 year had apparently not been satisfactory. On 22 March 1599 thirty 

 men who were to have been raised for Ireland were remitted on a 

 payment from the county of >C90>° but on 6 May 1599 there was a 

 general muster ; affairs were believed to be very serious that year since 

 the French had made peace with Spain. 



The whole levy of the county was on 10 August 1599 again called 

 out and ordered to Southwark on apprehension of an immediate 

 invasion"; they were however sent home on 26 August, but com- 

 manded to keep themselves in readiness. Sir WiUiam More, whose 

 estate was as great as that of nearly any gentleman in the county, fur- 

 nished one lance and two light horsemen. At the end of the year 1 00 

 men were sent to the Low Countries.* On 14 January 1600 fifty 

 soldiers had been levied for Ireland, and from a specification of their 

 arms it appears that there was no archery among them, and that more 

 than half carried firearms. In all new levies there was to be a propor- 

 tion of sixty-four firearms to thirty pikes and halberts in 1 00 men, with 

 six officers and sergeants." On 29 September 1601 fifteen additional 

 men were required for Ireland, on 6 October fifteen more, and on 

 7 January 1602 another fifteen.' The number is a regular propor- 

 tion assessed upon Surrey of the large force which it was necessary 

 to send over owing to the support given to the Irish rebels by the 

 Spaniards in Kinsale. On 27 March 1602 'all idle and dissolute 

 persons ' in the county were to be arrested and sent to the army in 

 the Low Countries.^ In July of the same year soldiers destined for 

 Ireland, possibly the levies of the previous autumn, were only on 

 their way to Bristol^ ; these were the last levies mentioned in the 

 war time of Elizabeth's reign. The strain upon the country had 

 been undoubtedly serious, and the final sweeping together of all the 

 vagrants who could be caught, indicates the failure of respectable volun- 

 teers, and a disinclination to press many more of the working people. 



The use of the bow had come to an end in these wars, not without 

 a struggle on the part of the conservative world. Sir John Smythe, 

 took the lead as a writer in favour of archery against musketry, till 

 his book was suppressed by the Council, and he himself declared to 

 have been some years in his dotage. This was in 1590 ; in 1588, 

 as already stated, many of the effective force of trained men in Surrey 

 were armed with bows; in 1600 bows were not used. The govern- 

 ment however could not afford to let the practice of archery decay 

 completely while the supply and practice of musketry was insufficient. 

 There is an order from the Council to the sheriffs and justices of 



1 Loseley MS. vi. Ii8. 2 ibid. vi. 116. ' Ibid. xi. 73. 



• Ibid. vi. 120. ^ Ibid. 14 Jan. 1600. ' Ibid. vi. 123, 124, xii. 110. 



' Ibid, date cited. ^ Ibid. xii. 1 1 2. 



139 



