A Brief History of the Tudor Age

by Ridley, Jasper

  When the Rising in the North broke out in November 1569, Elizabeth raised an army of 28,000 men in the traditional way by calling on the nobles and gentlemen of the whole realm to join the advance-guard under the Earl of Sussex and the reserve army under the Earl of Pembroke; and the army of 22,000 men which was assembled at Tilbury in 1588, when the Armada was sighted off the Lizard, was raised in the same way.

  In London, all the citizens between the ages of eighteen and sixty were required to enrol in the city trainbands and to be ready, when summoned, to defend the King and the city against a foreign invader or English rebels. When there was a rumour in April 1539 that the armies of the Emperor Charles V in the Netherlands were about to launch an invasion of England – it was a false report – 16,300 men turned out in the trainbands and marched in armour from Mile End to St James’s Park, and back by Holborn and Newgate through the city, while Henry VIII stood for five hours at the gatehouse at Whitehall to see them march past. The London trainbands came out in January 1554 to defend Queen Mary against Wyatt’s rebels, and they suppressed Essex’s rebellion against Elizabeth I in 1601.

  The English continued to rely on this type of army long after foreign kings were enlisting mercenaries to fight their wars. By the end of the fifteenth century, mercenaries were being widely employed in Europe. The Emperor Maximilian fought his wars in Italy against Francis I in 1516 with Swiss mercenaries whom he paid with money lent to him by Henry VIII. A king who needed mercenaries made a contract with the captain of the mercenaries and paid him a lump sum, and the captain assembled a band of mercenaries and paid his men the wages for which they were prepared to serve. But it was not a wholly satisfactory arrangement, for mercenaries could not be relied upon to fight as bravely or loyally as native soldiers fighting for their own king. The English were proud of being able to dispense with mercenaries, and were envied for this in other countries.

  Henry VIII fought his wars against France and Scotland in 1513 and 1522–3 using only his English soldiers; but he supplemented them during his last war with France by enlisting German and Spanish mercenaries for the first time in 1544 and 1545. He at once encountered the drawbacks of mercenaries. He became involved in arguments with the captain of the mercenaries as to whether their first month’s pay should be reckoned from the day when they set out from their assembly point at Aachen or only when they reached the battle area at Boulogne, where they were to serve. On another occasion, a German mercenary captain seized the envoys whom Henry had sent to negotiate with him, and refused to release them until a ransom had been paid. Mutinies by mercenaries were common, for when mercenaries mutinied, the king who had hired them had only two choices: either to give in to their demands, or to hire other mercenaries to suppress them.

  Henry had a more satisfactory experience with the 1,300 Spanish mercenaries whom he hired to fight against the Scots in 1545; but in their case, too, there were some minor difficulties, because the mercenaries, who were billeted in private houses in Newcastle, refused to eat English food, and their landladies complained about the smell of the Spanish food which they cooked for themselves in the landladies’ kitchens.

  In the reign of Edward VI, Somerset’s government hired Spanish and German mercenaries to suppress the revolts in Devon and Norfolk. Mercenaries were usually prepared to fight for any king who hired them, and for or against either Protestants or Catholics, irrespective of what their own religion might be. But they were often reluctant to fight against their own sovereign, and though some mercenary captains were prepared to do so, a captain often inserted a clause in his contract by which he agreed to serve against any prince except his own sovereign, or against a sovereign whom he had served in the past and hoped to serve again in the future. The Catholic Spanish mercenaries who were hired to suppress the revolts of 1549 were quite happy to fight against Catholic rebels; but one of the reasons why Northumberland decided to submit to Mary in 1553 was that he feared that the Spanish mercenaries in his army would be reluctant to fight against a princess who was known to be the protégée of their own sovereign, Charles V.

  Mary refused to hire Spanish mercenaries, or to accept the help of the Spanish troops whom Charles V offered to her, to suppress Wyatt’s rebellion, because she thought it would be politically unwise to do so, as Wyatt was accusing her of betraying English interests to Spain; and she insisted on employing only the London trainbands to suppress the revolt. Elizabeth I reluctantly agreed to lend money to the Dutch Protestants and to Henry of Navarre to hire German mercenaries to fight against the Spaniards in the Netherlands and in France; but when she eventually agreed to send her own troops to help them, they were English soldiers enrolled in the traditional way; and she suppressed the long-drawn-out rebellion in Ireland between 1594 and 1603 with English soldiers.

  During the first half of the sixteenth century, great advances were made in military weapons. Gunpowder and cannon had first been used by the English at Crécy in 1346, but it was only after the outbreak of the war between Charles V and Francis I in 1521 that they came into widespread use. During the next thirty years, they revolutionized military strategy. Cannons were made for use in sieges which were far more powerful than any earlier guns, and with a much longer range. By 1544, when Henry VIII’s cannons at Boulogne fired 100,000 rounds into the town during the three months’ siege, the heaviest guns, the culverins, had a range of one and a half miles and could fire sixty rounds a day; while the smallest siege-guns, the falcons, with a range of 1,920 yards, could fire 120 rounds a day. Guns with this range enabled the supporters of Mary Queen of Scots to prolong the civil war in Scotland, and to cause Elizabeth I many worries, merely by holding Dumbarton and Edinburgh Castles; for their guns at Dumbarton could control the estuary through which a French or Spanish army could enter the Clyde; and the cannon in Edinburgh Castle could hit every house in Edinburgh, though the Canongate was out of range. Elizabeth was greatly relieved when her Scottish supporters captured Dumbarton Castle in a daring night attack; but she could not feel safe from the danger of a foreign invasion of England through Scotland till Edinburgh Castle had surrendered, after she had sent an army to reduce it, equipped with siege-guns made in the Sussex iron foundries, and accompanied with a unit of engineers who could mine the defences of the castle.

  Mining was another new weapon which came into general use during the sixteenth century. A castle or fortified town could be captured if the walls were successfully mined, though mines, like cannon, sometimes exploded prematurely and killed the soldiers who were operating them. Elizabeth and her Scottish allies were lucky at Edinburgh, because the bombardment and the mining operations knocked down part of the castle wall, which happened to fall into the well and blocked it up with debris. The garrison were therefore deprived of their water supply, and forced to surrender.

  Sieges sometimes ended when the defenders and the commander of the besieging army agreed that the castle or city should be surrendered and the garrison allowed to march out with honours of war, which meant that they could leave with their weapons and horses. Sometimes they were granted less favourable terms, and allowed to leave in safety on condition that they abandoned their weapons and horses. But the besieging general might insist that they should surrender ‘at mercy’, which meant that he was entitled, at his will, either to kill the defenders or allow them to go free. Whichever course he adopted, he was spared the trouble and expense of guarding prisoners-of-war, except for the higher-ranking officers and the wealthier soldiers, who were held for a good ransom. Sometimes all the garrison which had surrendered at mercy were allowed to go free; sometimes the victors killed as many of them as the number of their own soldiers who had fallen during the siege; sometimes all of them were butchered in cold blood a day or two after the surrender. The French killed their Spanish prisoners after the surrender of Hesdin in 1552; the Spaniards killed the defenders of Haarlem in 1573; and the English killed nearly all the Spanish and Italian soldiers who surrendered at mercy at Smerwick in Ireland in 1580. I
f the defenders refused all demands for their surrender, and decided to ‘abide the cannon’ and face the bombardment and storming of the fortress or town, they were normally all killed.

  The English armies had won their great victories in the past, including their crowning glory of Agincourt in 1415, by the longbow which their archers used to such deadly effect. The English were very reluctant to abandon their traditional weapon which for 300 years had spread such fear among their enemies, and they continued to rely on archers well into the sixteenth century when every other army in Western Europe was using the new small firearm, the arquebus, which the English called the ‘hagbut’. The infantryman, who normally fought with the pike, or halberd, could carry the hagbut without being too heavily weighed down; and it could also be carried by the cavalry, though they had to dismount from their horses to fire it. The hagbut was erected on a stand, the fuse was lit, and the explosive was fired from the gun. The cavalry soon abandoned it for the pistol, which changed the nature of the cavalry charge. Instead of charging into the enemy with lances, as had been done in earlier times, the sixteenth-century cavalry halted their charge when they were at close range to the enemy and discharged their pistols at them. The older type of cavalry charge was reintroduced by Gustavus Adolphus and Prince Rupert in the seventeenth century, who trained their cavalrymen to charge into the enemy with drawn swords.

  The respective merits of the hagbut and the longbow were constantly discussed by English commanders and military experts during the first half of the sixteenth century. The hagbut had a range of about 400 yards, while the longbow could not shoot an arrow much over a furlong of 220 yards; the hagbut was more destructive than the arrow, and the noise of the explosion and the novelty and reputation of the weapon had a demoralizing effect on the enemy. On the other hand, several arrows could be shot from a longbow in the same time which it took to fire one round from a hagbut; and the hagbut could not be used in the rain, as the gunpowder would not ignite if it was damp.

  Henry VIII himself was in two minds about the merits of the hagbut and the longbow. He was himself an excellent archer, and his natural conservatism made him favour the traditional English weapon; but he was always fascinated by new weaponry. He was very interested in the reports which he received of a new kind of shell which was used by Charles V’s army in France in 1543 which, after being fired into a town, bounced along the street and burst into flame every time it hit the ground; but this prototype of an incendiary bomb was not developed.

  The bowmen of England won their last great victory when they defeated the Scots at Flodden in 1513; but by the time of Henry VIII’s last war in 1544, hagbuts were being increasingly used in the English army, though the longbow was not abandoned till the 1590s. In skirmishes in which a small number of men were engaged, like those which took place in the civil wars in Scotland, the appearance of a unit of hagbutters could have a decisive influence; in pitched battles with large armies, they were less effective. Before the end of the sixteenth century, the musket had largely replaced both the hagbut and the longbow.

  The new explosive weapons had made armour of little use; but the soldiers’ fears of the dangerous and painful wounds caused by cannon shells, hagbuts and muskets made them demand that they be protected by armour, which continued to be worn in war, more perhaps for psychological reasons than as a real protection, until the middle of the seventeenth century, though it was lighter than the very heavy armour which had been worn by the cavalry in earlier times and was still worn in tournaments in the sixteenth century.

  An Act passed by Philip and Mary’s last Parliament in 1558, during the war against France, required landowners to provide weapons and equipment for the army according to their wealth. It listed bows and arrows, hagbuts and ‘harness’ (armour) among the things to be provided. Owners of land worth £1,000 a year or more had to supply six horses which could carry demilancers, with armour for at least three of these horses; ten light horses for the light cavalry; four corselets; forty Almayn rivets; thirty longbows, thirty sheaves of arrows, thirty steel caps, twenty halberds, twenty hagbuts and twenty morians (helmets without visors). Less was demanded from less wealthy landowners. At the bottom of the scale, the landowner whose rents were only £3 a year had to supply one coat of plate, one longbow, one sheaf of arrows and one steel cap.

  The cavalry was considered in the Tudor Age to be the most aristocratic and glorious branch of the army, as it was in every period of history until the beginning of the twentieth century; but England suffered from a lack of large horses which were strong enough to bear riders clad in heavy armour. The shortage of suitable horses was a serious drawback in wartime, for the English had to import large horses from the Netherlands for use in the army, and they could only do so with the permission of the Habsburg rulers of the Netherlands. The traditional alliance with ‘Burgundy’, as the English in the Tudor Age still called this territory when speaking about the alliance, meant that in ordinary circumstances the Emperor Maximilian and Charles V would agree to allow the horses to be exported to England; and this was one of the factors, as well as the wool trade, which made all English statesmen reluctant to quarrel with the Emperor. But Henry VIII nevertheless did so on several occasions, particularly after he repudiated his marriage to Charles V’s aunt, Catherine of Aragon, and furthered the Reformation, which Charles strongly opposed. Fortunately for Henry, Charles was always more eager to fight the French than to inconvenience Henry, and Henry was very successful in playing off Charles and Francis against each other; but occasionally, when Charles’s relations with Henry were very bad, he refused for a short while to allow the horses to be exported to England.

  The Tudor Kings tried to deal with the problem by severely restricting the export of horses and by encouraging the breeding of larger horses. An Act of 1495 made it an offence to export any horse from the kingdom, or any mare, unless the mare was more than three years old and not worth more than 6s.8d. By an Act of 1536, everyone who owned a park more than one mile in circumference was to keep two mares who were capable of breeding and were at least fourteen ‘handfulls’, high, a handfull being 4 inches; and everyone who owned a park more than four miles in circumference was to keep four such mares. The owners were not to allow these mares to be covered by any horse which was less than fourteen hands high. The Act was not to apply to parks in Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland or Durham.

  But this statute did not prevent mares from breeding with small horses which they met in forests and on common land; so an Act of 1540 made it an offence to put out to pasture on any forest, chase, moor, heath or common land any horse which was less than fifteen hands high in twenty-five English counties and in Wales, or less than fourteen hands high in the other counties of England. Another Act of 1542 compelled every duke and archbishop to own at least seven horses which were more than three years old and were at least fourteen hands high; every marquess, and every bishop whose bishopric was worth £1,000 a year in revenues, was to have five such horses; every bishop, viscount or baron whose bishopric or lands were worth 1,000 marks a year was to have three; and every other bishop, viscount or baron, and any layman with lands worth 600 marks a year and every ecclesiastic with lands worth 300 marks a year was to have two. With men of lower rank, their duty to breed large horses was linked to their wives’ extravagance; for if any man wore a silk gown after Michaelmas 1544, or if his wife wore a French hood or bonnet of velvet, or any pearl, stone or gold chain around her neck or on any part of her body, he was to keep one horse which was more than fourteen hands high; but this did not apply if he was divorced or separated from his wife.

  The new developments in military weapons, and the employment of mercenaries, made war increasingly expensive. This raised a serious problem for every king, for his nobles and most of his people continued to expect that he would carry on the tradition of his ancestors and engage in war, even if he could not afford to do so, although they did not wish to pay taxes to provide the money for the war. Sixteenth
-century rulers told their subjects exactly what they had to believe about religion, how many times they should cross themselves during the service of the Mass, what they should eat on Fridays and Saturdays, and the maximum value per square yard of the materials which they were permitted to wear in their hose; but the kings always hesitated to make their peoples pay new taxes which were not sanctioned by tradition.

  The King was able to raise revenue from customs duties paid on imported goods; he had certain rights over wards; when a bishop died he could wait for one year before appointing a new bishop and could take the revenues of the see for himself during this year; and he received the rents and other profits which were paid to him by the tenants of his own lands. From time to time, he succeeded in persuading his clergy in Convocation and the MPs in the House of Commons to vote him a ‘tenth’ or a ‘fifteenth’ – one-tenth or one-fifteenth of the revenues of ecclesiastical benefices and the lands of the laymen. Sometimes, especially in wartime, the clergy and people were called upon to make a voluntary loan to the King; and if any subject refused to pay the voluntary contribution, for which he was asked, he ran the risk of being treated like the London alderman who refused to contribute in 1542; he was conscripted into the army which was sent against the Scots, and the Privy Council ordered the army commanders to place him in the most dangerous places and to make him perform the most arduous fatigues.