THE ARMY OF ELIZABETH I

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31101, 2 July 1966, Page 4

THE ARMY OF ELIZABETH I

Elizabeth's Army. By C. G. Cruickshank. Oxford. 303 pp. Index. The first edition of this book, published in 1946, dealt mainly with the organisation and administration of the many military expeditions which left England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. This second edition, considerably revised and expanded. extends the scope of the inquiry to give a fuller account of the recruitment and administration of the army at home. It includes a chapter on “Drill, training, tactics and strategy” and draws more heavily on the entertaining works of Elizabethan military experts to enliven the text. A new final chapter allows readers to follow the forces on active service in three representative campaigns—to Scotland and the siege of Leith in 1560, to Normandy in 1589, and to Spain and the capture of Cadiz in 1596. Two themes dominated Elizabethan military expeditions—confusion and corruption. They intertwine at every point from the calling of a muster in the shires to the actual progress of an attack. While the Privy Council usually struggled to impose order and efficiency on the Queen’s forces, and often showed a surprising concern for the troops, particularly

those crippled or unemployed after service, the administrative machinery needed to translate intention into reality hardly existed. The Crown often over-stepped its rights in the handling of conscription, but the author comments that “the citizen got his own back with something to spare through his profoundly un-co-operative attitude to military service if he were a private, and his merciless exploitation of the Exchequer if he were an officer. His victory in this contest with the Crown sadly tarnishes the glorious golden image of the Elizabethan Yet this is not a debunking account of Elizabethan England. There is courage and glory enough amidst the