EXPERIENCES OF A SOLDIER
(Raymond, p. 73)
FLANDERS, A.D. 1633
I observed how briske and fyne some English gallants were at the beginning of this campagne, but at the latter end ther briskenes and gallantry soe faded and clowdy that I could not but be mynded of the vanity of this world with the uneasiness of this profession. And truly, by what I have seene and felt, I cannott but thinck that the life of a private or comon soldier is the most miserable in the world; and that not soe much because his life is always in danger—that is little or nothing—but for the terrible miseries he endures in hunger and nakedness, in hard marches and bad quarters, 30 stivers being his pay for 8 days, of which they could not possibly subsist, but that they helpe themselves by forraging, stealing, furnishing wood in the feild to the officers, straw, some are cobblers, taylers, etc. Straw is ready money, especially at first comeing to new quarters. I remember at one place I saw a couple of soldiers that had found a little howse filled with strawe. One of them kept the dore whilst the other carried out the strawe by bunches to sell. Other soldiers came and would have part: these withstood them. At last others fell to chopping of the 4 corner posts, soe in a short tyme downe fell the howse and soe the strawe grew comon. It is hardly to be thought the devastation that an army brings into a countrie, and the hangers on of the army doe most of the mischeife. They march in no order, carry hookes by which they search wells and ditches for pewter or brasse that the poore countrie people have sunck to preserve them from the soldiers. Other places they dig up where they suspect anything to be hid, torturing the poore people to make them confesse, etc. Sometymes we came to a goodly feild of corne, which within a few minutes is trod flatt, to the very ground: faire howses unthatched, all the plancher and wood work chopped downe if not fyred, pleasant orchards and walkes of trees in an instant chopped downe by the ground, etc. It pittyed me at one place where we marched by a poore little howse, to which joined a little close of about an acre with bush. The poore woman came out, felled on hir knees, and holding up hir hands, praying the soldiers for Christ Jesus’ sake to spare hir cropp. Twas all, she sayd, that she and hir poore children had to live on all the yere, makeing lamentable outcryes, but all to noe purpose. For, though there was forrage enough just by, with in a few minutes all this poore creatures crop was wholly destroyed.
A TREATISE ... CONCERNING ... THE METHOD FOR KEEPING A COURT LEET
(By John Wilkinson, of Bernard’s inne, gent., London, 1638)
(From Court Rolls of the Honor of Clitheroe. Ed., W. Farrar, pp. xiii-xviii)
[Extracts]
Affrays and Bloodsheds