We find further, a heavy fine known as 'fyrdwite.' however, that 'fyrdung' is not only an obligation, it is also a right peculiar to freemen. It is the distinctive and outstanding mark of their liberty. Not to be allowed to carry arms, not to be called to attend the assembly of the nation and the gathering of the host, not to be summoned to the standard of the king, is to be branded as a villan, to be stamped as unfree. The military qualities of the Anglo-Saxon fyrd were tested to the full by the Danish invasions of the ninth century. The shire levies were called upon to face professional soldiers better armed, better protected, better organised, better disciplined, and better led than themselves. In the presence of such a foe rapid and drastic reform and reconstruction were necessary. Fortunately the country found in Alfred the Great a man capable of meeting the emergency. He placed the defence of England on a basis sound not only for his own day, but for all time—a strong navy, a small but highly-trained professional army, a disciplined and well-equipped nation in arms. His principal reform, so far as the fyrd was concerned, was to divide it into two parts, each of which fought in turn while the other tilled.† When, in the tenth century, the Danish peril seemed to have passed away, Alfred's reforms were unfortunately allowed to lapse. Gneist, with unerring perspicacity, has put his finger upon the cause of our military disasters in this, and indeed in many another age. 'An everrecurring feeling of insular security,' he says, 'prevented any lasting reforms in the military organisation; and this is what finally brought the Anglo-Saxon kingdom to ruin.' Lured by the defenceless state of the island, the Danes returned in overwhelming force; and Ethelred the Redeless was not the man to extemporise the means to drive them out. His abler son, Edmund, when his opportunity came, did his best. In 1016 he put forth proclamation summoning every man to join his standard and denouncing the full penalty of the law against all If a gesithcundman owning land neglect the fyrd let him pay 120 shillings and forfeit his land; one not owning land 60 shillings; a ceorlish man 30 shillings as fyrdwite.'-Laws of Ine,' c. A.D. 690. Op. cit. p. 18. † Oman, Art of War,' p. 110. 2. F who held back.'* But it was too late. Edmund perished, and the Dane Canute reigned in his stead. When the Danish line died out and the English House of Wessex was restored in the person of Edward the Confessor, this pious but incapable recluse made no effort to achieve military reconstruction. Hence in 1066 William the Norman was able to repeat the triumph of Canute, and establish a more permanent dominion than his Danish predecessor over the English race. 'The Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth had fallen,' says Gneist, 'through internal dissension, a defective organisation of its military array, and the faulty distribution of its military burdens.'† William the Conqueror, who always denied that he was a Conqueror, and insisted upon his lawful succession to Edward the Confessor, maintained and cherished the English fyrd as a counterpoise to the turbulent and rebellious feudal levy of the Norman barons. On two notable occasions, in 1073 and 1087, he called upon it for active service, and used it effectively. It is remarkable that on the first of these two occasions the service demanded was service abroad, in William's county of Maine. This indicated a very serious extension of the sphere of national military obligation. But it was quite consistent with William's general policy; and the English were in no position at the time to refuse obedience. William wished, by means of the oath of allegiance, to make all service personal to himself. Hence the geographical limits of shires and kingdoms were deliberately ignored, and the fyrd was called upon for general duty. Every freeman,' says Stubbs, 'was sworn under the injunction of the Conqueror to join the defence of the king, his lands and his honour within England and without.' § In accordance with this principle William II in 1094 summoned 20,000 Englishmen to come to his aid in * Freeman, Norman Conquest,' vol. i, p. 415. † Op. cit. p. 97. William of Malmesbury, 'Gesta Regum,' Book iii, p. 258. § The Laws of William the Conqueror,' § 2, run (regardless of grammar):-'Statuimus etiam ut omnis liber homo foedere et sacramento affirmet quod infra et extra Angliam Willelmo regi fideles esse volunt, terras et honorem illius omni fidelitate cum eo servare et eum contra inimicos defendere.' Normandy; and they duly assembled at Hastings, each man bringing with him ten shillings for the cost of his journey.* Henry I used the fyrd to suppress Robert of Belesme; in Stephen's reign it drove back the Scots in the Battle of the Standard; under Henry II it helped to achieve the important capture of William the Lion at Alnwick. It was, of course, rare for the whole manhood of the country to be needed on these expeditions. The general practice seems to have been for the king to call for a certain quota according to his requirements from each shire or borough, and for the local unit to provide it in such manner as it found best, the burden being distributed as equitably as possible among the whole community. Nevertheless the obligation remained universal, subject to the old restrictions of age and station. So valuable was this national levy in cases of crisis that Henry II took pains to organise it and give uniformity to its equipment by means of the 'Assize of Arms' (1181). In this famous document emphasis is laid on the cardinal principle that freedom is the indispensable condition of the right to carry arms: 'præcepit rex quod nullus reciperetur ad sacramentum armorum nisi liber homo.' If, however, none but a freeman has a right to carry arms, equally true is it that every freeman is bound to do so, and to attend the fyrd when summoned. The obligation rests on 'omnes burgenses et tota communa liberorum hominum.' + That this obligation was no mere formality was shown conclusively in 1205, when John, having lost Normandy, was in mortal terror lest a French invasion of England should follow. He issued a writ calling a levy of all classes under the Assize of Arms. If any persons refused to obey-conscience or no conscience-they were to be subjected to the significant and peculiarly appropriate penalty of reduction to perpetual servitude. They would, in fact, by their disobedience have forfeited and discarded the distinctive mark of their freedom.§ Henry * Florence of Worcester, Chronicon,' s. a. A.D. 1094. Thus Domesday Book says of Oxford: 'Quando rex ibat in expeditionem burgenses xx ibant cum eo pro omnibus aliis, vel xx libras dabant regi ut omnes essent liberi.' Stubbs, 'Select Charters,' p. 153. § See Stubbs, 'Constitutional History,' vol. i, p. 634, and the references there given. III made frequent, though less general levies of the nation, e.g. in 1217, 1223 and 1231. In 1252 he issued a writ for a survey of arms which should include the whole community between the ages of fifteen and sixty, and should even be extended to villans. This survey of 1252, carried out by the sheriff and two speciallyappointed knights in each county, may be regarded as the precursor of those Commissions of Array under which, from the reign of Edward I to that of Charles I, the national levies were raised and prepared for war. These Commissions were warrants granted to royal officers for the forcible levy or impressment of a specified number of men.'† Thus one of the earliest examples, dated 1282, authorises a certain William Butler to raise 1000 men in Lancashire. A similar Commission in 1295 provides for a levy of 3000 men in the counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset.‡ Edward I, indeed, used the national forces freely, summoning on occasion as many as 30,000 men.§ He revised the Assize of Arms in respect of armament and other matters, and issued the new regulations as the Statute of Winchester in 1285. The final clause (translated) begins: It is commanded that every man have in his house harness for to keep the peace after the ancient assize; that is to say every man between fifteen years of age and sixty years according to the quantity of his lands and goods.' ... So valuable did this reorganised and rearmed national force prove to be that the two successors of Edward I tended to use it for purposes for which it had not been intended, and to demand from it service to which it was not legally liable. Levies impressed under Commissions of Array were used widely throughout Britain in Welsh and Scottish campaigns, and were even conveyed across * The commissioners were ordered to assemble 'cives, burgenses, libere tenentes, villanos et alios quindecim annorum usque ad ætatem sexaginta annorum, et eosdem faciant omnes jurare ad arma, secundum quantitatem terrarum et catallorum suorum.' See Stubbs, 'Select Charters,' p. 371. Medley, D. J., 'Constitutional History,' p. 469. See Stubbs, 'Const. Hist.,' vol. ii, p. 297, where many examples are given. § Cf. Morris, J. E., Welsh Wars of Edward I,' p. 97 and passim. Statute 13 Edward I, c. 6. the Channel to take part in the French wars. Hence Parliament (just establishing itself as a permanent factor in the constitution) passed a series of Statutes defining and restricting the common-law liability of the subject to police and military duty. Acts of 1327 (1 Edward III, c. 2) and 1352 (25 Edward III, c. 5), confirmed and consolidated by an Act of 1402 (4 Hen. IV, c. 13), limited normal police duty in the posse comitatus to the county, and military service to the kingdom; foreign service could be required only with the special assent of Parliament. Most of the 14th and 15th century levies were partial ones made on the quota system developed under the Commissions of Array. In 1338, however, at the beginning of the Hundred Years' War with France, and again in 1464, in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, general levies were ordered. The latter example is full of instruction as showing the compulsory principle in active operation at the close of the Middle Ages. It is thus recorded by Stubbs : 'In 1464, by letters close, Edward IV ordered the sheriffs to proclaim that every man from sixteen to sixty be well and defensibly arrayed and that he so arrayed 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.' We pass on from the Middle Ages to the Tudor and Stewart periods. The Wars of the Roses destroyed the feudal baronage. One of the first acts of Henry VII was to secure the disbanding of the companies of professional soldiers (relics of the mercenary armies of the Hundred Years' War) who had long infested the country. Hence the Tudors found themselves with no other force than the national levies raised under the Statute of Winchester. They were not sovereigns likely to allow the ancient prerogative of compulsion to fall into desuetude; nor did they do so. Every man,' says Froude, in the course of his description of Tudor England, was a soldier, and every man was ready equipped at all times with * See Stubbs, 'Const. Hist.,' vol. iii, p. 286, and the references there given. † Cf. Fortescue, J. W., 'History of the British Army,' vol. i, pp. 109-110. |