God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [42]
Naturally enough, this created frictions. From the 1590s onwards the militia was increasingly run by Lords Lieutenant – usually relatively prominent noblemen – responding directly to the promptings of the Privy Council. They passed on their instructions via deputies to village constables. General demands from the Privy Council were translated, in a short series of steps, into the imposition on particular villages and towns of the duty to provide a particular number of men, armed and equipped according to a specified standard. It was not necessarily a smooth process, however. Rates were unpopular, and it proved impossible to establish a basis on which they could be raised without also producing wailing and gnashing of teeth about inequalities. There was also a legal difficulty in that the statute which empowered the Lords Lieutenant was repealed in 1605, leaving them with duties but perhaps no legal authority. The mustering and drilling of the Trained Bands was a palaver, causing considerable inconvenience both to the mustered and to those mustering them. Many of the local officeholders responsible for achieving all this – even Lords Lieutenant, but certainly village constables – clearly thought it a chore that was not worth losing much sleep over. These were men, after all, who held office in order to cement their social standing and the good opinion of their neighbours. Mustering and raising rates, in other words, offered little by way of direct benefit to local people, and the level of co-operation achieved was often unimpressive.82
As a result militia reform was at best patchily and intermittently impressive. Attempts at reform under Charles I were no more popular than previous efforts. After 1625, in the light of the war in Europe, Charles had pursued an ‘exact’ or ‘perfect’ militia. Pressure was applied to hold regular musters, at which meaningful training took place and appropriate weapons were produced. In order to overcome a common evasion, weapons were to be marked, so that the same weapon could not be produced in different places on different days. Overall, said Charles, he was no longer prepared to accept the appearance; he wanted a real performance. After the fractious parliaments of the 1620s Charles had sought peace in order to avoid having to call them, and treaties were signed with France and Spain. In the early 1630s, it seems that there was little pressure to improve the militia, but with a worsening diplomatic situation in 1635, the Privy Council turned once again to militia reform. One feature of this campaign was to ensure that local militias appointed, and paid, muster masters – men of professional experience who could oversee the arms and training of the militia, and ensure that higher standards of preparedness were maintained. This was not the first time that this had been urged and, not for the first time, it produced political problems in the counties.83
Administration by local officeholders did not just bring the burden of military mobilization into the villages and towns, but also the negotiation of that burden – the politics of administration. Questions about the wisdom and legality of crown policies could get a wide airing. For example, in Shropshire at the Easter meeting of the quarter sessions, the Grand Jury presented the muster master’s fee as a grievance, saying that the office was unnecessary.84 In making presentments Grand Juries responded to the information and representations of a wider circle of men of similar status – village constables and their superiors, the high constables. A presentment by the Grand Jury, therefore, was understood to be the voice and opinion of the county, expressed by its respectable inhabitants to leading figures from gentry circles, sitting as JPs. It was also a very public statement since meetings of the sessions were major events in the county year. In addition to the JPs, jurymen and constables, they were attended by