Clothing for foot soldiers was contracted for at 40s. a head. After the victory at Kinsale, we read of no more levies in Derbyshire, but the drain had been severe. Of foot-soldiers alone, some 450 were raised in that single county, from 1595 to 1601, and we may be sure that most of them never returned. Naturally the service was very unpopular; ‘Better be hanged at home than die like dogs in Ireland’ had become a Cheshire proverb. Sometimes it was necessary to ‘set sufficient watch in all the highways, footpaths, and bye-lanes, for the apprehending of such soldiers as shall offer to escape before God sends a wind.’ And it is not difficult to see how Shakespeare made the study for his immortal picture of the ragged regiment with whom Falstaff refused to march through Coventry. ‘You appointed twelve shires,’ said the Mayor of Bristol, ‘to send men here for Cork. We protest unto your lordships, excepting of some two or three shires, there was never man beheld such strange creatures brought to any muster. They are most of them either old, lame, diseased, boys, or common Rodys; few of them have any clothes, small, weak, starved bodies, taken up in fair, market, and highway, to supply the place of better men kept at home. If there be any of them better than the rest we find they have been set forth for malice.... We have done what we could to put able men into silly creatures’ places, but in such sort that they cannot start nor run away.’[236]
Officers and adventurers.
veteran.
But if the Irish service was odious and terrible to the poor conscript, adventurous young gentlemen sought therein the means of retrieving their fortunes and of getting out of scrapes. ‘There is,’ says one such, ‘nothing under the elements permanent. Yesternight I lived with such delight in my bosom, concealing it, that I was for this voyage, that the overmuch heat is now cooled by a storm, and my prayer must be to send better times and fortunes than always to live a poor base justice, recreating myself in sending rogues to the gallows.’ The veterans who had fought and bled in many lands were not anxious to have their places filled by lads, who were brave enough doubtless, but who had everything to learn. Complaints upon this subject are frequent, but no one has told his story better than Captain Bostock, who, having served for eighteen years by sea and land, thought he was entitled to some reward. Bostock was at the siege of Antwerp in 1582, and remained long in the Netherlands, wherever hard knocks were going. Then he commanded a ship commissioned by Henry of Navarre. Afterwards he was in the Netherlands again, under Russell and Vere, and with Lord Willoughby at the siege of Bergen. Then he commanded her Majesty’s pinnace ‘Merlin’ in Portugal, returned to Holland, and served under Essex all the time that he was in France. His next venture was in command of a man-of-war to the West Indies. Then there was more fighting in the Netherlands, and under Fitzwilliam and Russell in Ireland. In the voyage to the Azores Bostock was captain of a man-of-war, and ‘fought with a carrack every day for twenty days.’ Then he served under Essex at sea and in Ireland, and at the end of it all found that he had spent 1,000l. of his patrimony, and was still without recognised rank. ‘A soldier that is no captain,’ he says, ‘is more to be esteemed than a captain that is no soldier; the one is made in an hour, and the other not in many years, of both which kinds I know many.’[237]
Sir John Norris.
Norris and Russell.
Essex interferes.
Russell had asked for a good officer to help him, but, to his great disgust, the Government sent him a general with absolute authority. A commission, indeed, was to be issued by the Lord Deputy and Council, and for this Russell expressed his thanks; but the terms of it were dictated by the Queen, who fixed upon Sir John Norris as the fittest man for the place. Norris was still Lord President of Munster, but the administration of that province was left to his brother, and he was put over all the forces in Ireland, with almost unlimited authority, for the purpose of pacifying Ulster. His promises of pardon or protection were to be performed as a matter of course by the Lord Deputy and Council. The fame of Norris was deservedly great, and it seems to have been thought, as it has sometimes been thought in our own time, that the mere terror of his name would save the cost of an army. But he was under no such illusion himself, and complained before he left England that Russell was hostile to him. He was in bad health too, and declared that but for that he would post back from Bristol and refute the detractors who began to buzz as soon as his back was turned. The servile herd of courtiers well knew that abuse of Sir John Norris sounded sweet in the Earl of Essex’s ears. The favourite had interfered in the appointment of officers, and was told that the general had accused him of passing over the best men. This Norris denied, declaring that he had always tried to be the Earl’s friend, and wondering why the latter would always treat him as an enemy.[238]
Arrival of Norris.