200,000, without including the
losses of cannon and military stores at Guisnes and Calais, which
would have to be made good. The campaign which Philip proposed could
not cost less than a further L170,000; and so much money could not be
had "without the people should have strange impositions set upon them,
which they could not bear." There was but "a wan hope of recovering
Calais," and "inconveniences might follow" if the attempt was made and
failed.[637]

[Footnote 637: The Council to Philip: Cotton. _MSS.
Titus_, B. 2.]

"The people have only in their heads," the council added, "the defence
of the realm by land and sea." The hated connection with Spain had
produced all the evils which the opponents of the marriage had
foretold, and no good was expected from any enterprise pursued in
common with Philip. Prone as the English were to explain events by
supernatural causes, they saw, like the queen, in the misfortunes
which had haunted her, an evidence that Heaven was not on her side,
and they despaired of success in anything until it could be undertaken
under better auspices. They would take care of themselves at home, and
they would do no more. In reducing the subsidy, the Commons {p.308}
promised to defend the country "with the residue of their goods and
life," to "provide every man armour and weapons according to his
ability," and to insist by a special law that it should be done.[638]

[Footnote 638: _MS. Mary, Domestic_, vol. xii.]

Every peer, knight, or gentleman, with an income above L1000 a-year,
was called on to furnish sixteen horses, with steel harness, forty
corslets, coats of mail, and morions, thirty longbows, with sheaves of
arrows, and as many steelcaps, halberds, blackbills, and haquebuts.
All English subjects, in a descending scale, were required to arm
others or arm themselves according to their property.[639]

[Footnote 639: 4 and 5 Philip and Mary, statute 2.]

In the levies of the past summer, men had shrunk from service, and
muster-masters, after the fashion of Falstaff, had taken bribes to
excuse them. On the present occasion no excuse was to be taken, and
every able-bodied man, of any rank, from sixteen to sixty, was to be
ready to take arms when called upon, and join his officers, under pain
of death.[640] With these essential orders, the business of the
legislature ended, and parliament was prorogued on the 7th of