Part 1 (2/2)

[3] Cf. the Frankish Edict of A.D. 864: ”Ad defensionem patriae omnes sine ulla excusatione veniant.” (Let all without any excuse come for the defence of the fatherland.)

[4] Grose, F. _Military Antiquities_, vol. i, p. 1.

[5] Freeman, E. _Norman Conquest_, vol. iv, p. 681.

[6] Stubbs, W. _Const. Hist._, vol. i, pp. 208, 212.

[7] Oman, C. W. C. _Art of War in the Middle Ages_, p. 67.

[8] Stubbs, W. _Select Charters_, p. 156. (The King orders that no one except a freeman shall be admitted to the oath of arms.)

II. THE OLD ENGLISH MILITIA

This primitive national militia was not, it must be admitted, a very efficient force. It lacked coherence and training; it was deficient both in arms and in discipline; it could not be kept together for long campaigns. The Kings, therefore, from the first supplemented it by means of a band of personal followers, a bodyguard of professional warriors, well and uniformly armed, and practised in the art of war. Nevertheless, the main defence of the country rested with the ”fyrd.” The Danish invasions put it to the severest test and revealed its military defects.

It was one of the most notable achievements of Alfred to reorganize and reconst.i.tute it. Thus reformed, with the support of an ever-growing body of King's thegns, it wrought great deeds in the days of Alfred, Edward and Athelstan, and recovered for England security and peace. In the days of their weaker successors, however, all the forces that England could muster failed to keep out Sweyn and Canute, and, above all, failed to hold the field at Hastings.

The Norman Conquest might have been expected to involve the extinction of the English militia. For feudalism as developed by William I was strongest on its military side, and William's main force was the levy of his feudal tenants. But quite the contrary happened. The Norman monarchs and their Angevin successors were, as a matter of fact, mortally afraid of their great feudal tenants, the barons and knights through whom the Conquest had been effected. Hence, as English kings, they a.s.siduously maintained and fostered Anglo-Saxon inst.i.tutions, and particularly the ”fyrd,” which they used as a counterpoise to the feudal levy. They even called upon it for Continental service and took it across the Channel to defend their French provinces.[9] Thus in 1073 it fought for William I in Maine; in 1094 William II summoned it to Hastings for an expedition into Normandy; in 1102 it aided Henry I to suppress the formidable revolt of Robert of Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury; in 1138 it drove back the Scots at the Battle of the Standard; and in 1174 it defeated and captured William the Lion at Alnwick. So valuable, indeed, did it prove to be that Henry II resolved to place it upon a permanent footing and clearly to define its position. With that view he issued in 1181 his ”a.s.size of Arms.”

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Stubbs, W. _Select Charters_, p. 83; and _Const. Hist._, vol. i, p.

469.

III. MEDIaeVAL REGULATIONS

Into the details of the ”a.s.size of Arms” it is unnecessary here to enter. Are they not written in every advanced text-book of English history? Three things, however, are to be noted. First, that the duty and privilege of military service are still bound up with freedom; no unfree man is to be admitted to the oath of arms. Secondly, that upon freemen the obligation is still universal: ”all burgesses and the whole community of freemen (_tota communa liberorum hominum_) are to provide themselves with doublets, iron skullcaps, and lances.” Thirdly, that, closely as freedom had during the centuries of feudalism become a.s.sociated with tenancy of land, the national militia had not been involved in feudal meshes: the obligation of service remained still personal, not territorial.

In 1205 John, fearing an invasion of the Kingdom, called to arms all the militia sworn and equipped under the a.s.size, _i.e._, all the freemen of the realm. Short-shrift was to be given to any who disobeyed the summons: ”_Qui vero ad summonitionem non venerit habeatur pro capitali inimico domini regis et regni_” (He who does not come in response to the summons shall be regarded as a capital enemy of the king and kingdom.) The penalty was to be the peculiarly appropriate one of reduction to perpetual servitude. The disobedient and disloyal subject who made the great refusal would _ipso facto_ divest himself of the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of his freedom.[10]

Henry III in 1223 and 1231 made similar levies. In 1252, in a notable writ for enforcing Watch and Ward and the a.s.size of Arms, he extended the obligation of service to villans and lowered the age limit to fifteen. Edward I reaffirmed these new departures in his well-known Statute of Winchester (1285), in which it is enacted that ”every man have in his house harness for to keep the peace after the ancient a.s.size, that is to say, every man between fifteen years of age and sixty years.” Further, he enlarged the armoury of the militiaman by including among his weapons the axe and the bow.[11]

The long, aggressive wars of Edward I in Wales and Scotland, and the still longer struggles of the fourteenth century in France, could not, of course, be waged by means of the national militia. Even the feudal levy was unsuited to their requirements. They were waged mainly by means of hired professional armies. Parliament--a new factor in the Const.i.tution--took pains in these circ.u.mstances to limit by statute the liabilities of the old national forces. An Act of 1328 decreed that no one should be compelled to go beyond the bounds of his own county, except when necessity or a sudden irruption of foreign foes into the realm required it.[12] Another Act, 1352, provided that the militia should not be compelled to go beyond the realm in any circ.u.mstances whatsoever without the consent of Parliament.[13] Both these Acts were confirmed by Henry IV in 1402.[14] But the old obligation of universal service for home defence remained intact. It was, in fact, enforced by Edward IV in 1464, when, on his own authority, he ordered the Sheriffs to proclaim that ”every man from sixteen to sixty be well and defensibly arrayed and ... be ready to attend on his Highness upon a day's warning in resistance of his enemies and rebels and the defence of this his realm.”[15] This notable incident carries us to the end of the Middle Ages, and shows us the Old English principle in vigorous operation.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Gervase of Canterbury. _Gesta Regum_, vol. ii, p. 97.

[11] _Statutes of the Realm_, vol. i, pp. 96-8.

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