Читать книгу London in the Time of the Tudors онлайн

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It will thus be seen that during this reign the City furnished over 6000 fully equipped soldiers for active service; that it raised at an hour’s notice, on two separate occasions, 1000 men ready for immediate service; that it raised a force of Trained Bands 3000 strong; that on occasion it could increase this number to 10,000; that it could fit out for sea a fleet of twenty or thirty ships. I do not think that the expenditure of the City on these military services has ever been published, but it must have been very great. A corresponding expenditure at the present time would be enormous; it would be expressed in many millions. This simple fact both proves and illustrates the tried loyalty of the City. The time, however, had gone by when the Londoners could, and did, send out an army capable of deposing one king and setting up another. That power and that spirit died with the accession of the Tudors. In the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the citizens even prayed to be excused the practice of arms even as a volunteer force, seeing that “the most parte of those our apprentices and handy craftesmen who continually are kept at work; who also, if they should have that libertie to be trayned and drawn from their workes in these matters, wolde thereby fall into such idleness and insolency that many would never be reduced agayne into any good order or service.”