Freedom In Service / Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government

regular army in Henry VII's Yeomen of the Guard, and the nucleus of a volunteer force in the Honourable Artillery Company, established in London under Henry VIII. But these at the time h

h added powers, from the Sheriffs. An important Mustering Statute (1557) was enacted, graduating afresh the universal liability to service, and making new provision for weapons and organization.[16] William Harrison, writing in 1587, said: "As for able men for service, thanked be God! we are not without good store; for by the musters taken 1574-5 our numbers amounted to 1,172,674, and yet were they not so narrowly taken but t

he force speedily lost both in efficiency and independence. The Civil War hopelessly divided it, as it did the nation, into hostile factions. The Royalist section was ultimately crushed, while the Parliamentary section was gradually absorbed into that first great standing army which this country ever knew, the New

their means tried to overthrow the religion and the liberties of the nation. He was defeated and driven out; but his effort to establish a military despotism made the name of "standing army" stink in the nostrils of the nation. "It is indeed impossible," said one of the leading statesmen of the early ei

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P. and

. Elizabethan En

Jac. I,

, A.D. 1732: See Parl.