TRADITION AND INVENTION IN THE EARLY STUART

ART OF WAR

 

MARK CHARLES FISSEL

 

            In the late 1620s English military men experienced a crisis of confidence.  The new King, Charles I, had launched in 1625 an expedition against the Spanish harbour of Cadiz which, unlike Drake’s spectacular raid 38 years before, failed miserably.  The English landing party was repulsed in a disorganized and inebriated retreat.  Two years later an army commanded by the Duke of Buckingham sailed to relieve the Huguenots at La Rochelle and suffered defeat at the hands of another nemesis, the French.  In 1628 Buckingham was stabbed to death by a maimed veteran of that expedition.  The Crown’s war policy provoked an outcry in Parliament, not because Members of Parliament were pacifist by nature, but in response to the heavy demands of war and the military humiliation of the nation.  Amidst anger and alarm over England’s inability to wage war successfully, soldiers and military theorists proposed remedies which would restore material excellence.  England had been blessed with two decades of peace before young Charles I embarked upon a policy of continental intervention.  Military practice had changed substantially during the 16th and early 17th centuries to the degree that some historians describe those changes as the “military revolution.”[1]  Pike-trailers such as Sir Roger Williams, author of A Briefe Discourse of Warre (1590), warned Englishmen that they were failing to keep up with the latest technical and tactical innovations.[2]  By the time Charles I plunged into the Thirty Years’ War (by supporting Mansfeld’s debacle of 1624-5) the gulf had widened between contemporary European military science and the English art of war.  The primary reasons for the failure of 1624, 1625, and 1627 were administrative and logistical rather than technical and tactical.  But once administration was improved and the logistical problems surmounted, English troops still would have to come to grips with modern weapons and techniques.  Specially, firearms were being used more widely as gunlocks improved, and commanders were arranging their infantry in new configurations.  But what of tradition?  The English possessed a weapon which had proven itself time and again: the longbow.  Might not English military dominance be restored by adapting a traditional weapon to the techniques of 17th century warfare? Thus at least two writers of the 1620s devised “new inventions” utilizing the long bow.  While parliament investigated military leadership and administration, and condemned conscription and billeting, these theorists searched for innovative ways in which to utilize the traditional weapon of the English.

            A central problem of modern military science is the reconciliation of successful traditions with technological innovations.  The first great modern military scientist, NiccolÓ Machiavelli, synthesized the military models of classical antiquity, particularly the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion, with the realities of Italian Renaissance warfare.  Steeped in knowledge of the classics, Machiavelli combined Roman tactical orgainization with the infantry practices of the age of gunpowder.  So pervasive was the notion that 16th century infantry practice mirrored the ancients that Elizabeth’s influential Secretary, Lord Burghley, remarked “out discipline of embattailing our army is according to the Roman dezeniers.”[3]  Late Elizabethan and early Stuart military theory was complicated by a uniquely English tradition of military practice.  Caroline London was farther removed from the ruins of Rome than was Machiavelli’s Florence.  English military mean knew their Machiavelli: The Art of War had been published in English in 1560, and reprinted in 1573 and 1588.  But England, where Julius Caesar had fought and Constantine the Great was believed born, possessed its own concept of antiquity.  Between ancient Rome and contemporary London stretched the battlefields of medieval Europe where Edward III and Henry V had achieved victories of more recent memory than those of the ancients.  The martial achievements of the middle ages were attributable as much to a weapon, the longbow, as to the English themselves.  In the words of Professor Sir John Hale:

On historical and legendary grounds the bow was par excellence the Englishman’s weapon.  With it he had toppled the pride of France at Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt.  In Robin Hood’s hands it protected the weak against the strong, the poor against the tyrant.  It was the weapon whose use had been directly suggested by God, and no one had made better use of the heavenly blueprint, the rainbow, than the English nation.[4]

            Given the expense of powder, shot and the firearms themselves, the bewildering and tedious firing procedure of the matchlock, the mechanical unreliability of the wheellock, the novelty and the cost of the firelock, it seemed reasonable to revive the longbow through integration with the technology of contemporary warfare.  Could not English military theorists of the 1620s do what Machiavelli had done and synthesize traditional and modern military practice.  Two Englishmen took up the challenge and fashioned new inventions: William Neade’s The Double-Armed Man, By the New Invention (1625) and the anonymous author of A New Invention of Shooting Fire-Shafts in Long-Bowes (1628).[5]  In spite of their bizarre appearance, these works are imaginative attempts to synthesize past and present within the art of war.  They were backward-looking insofar as they applied the traditional weapon of the English with the military technology of the 1600s.  However, Neade and the author of Shooting Fire-Shafts were forward-looking (unconsciously, of course) in combining missile and shock in the hands of the infantryman (in Neade’s case), hence anticipating the bayonet, and in the case of the “fire-shaft,” incendiary projectiles.

            William Neade’s “double-armed man” was actually triple-armed.  Equipped with a longbow, pike, and short-sword, he could launch arrows at a distant enemy, repel a charge with his pike, and engage in hand-to-hand combat with his blade.  He wore corselet and helmet, the standard armour of the pikeman.  The bow was fastened to the pikeshaft when not in use, with a quiver of arrows belted to the hip, on the opposite side of sword and scabbard.  The addition of a bow and quiver to the accoutrements of an infantryman amounted to no great burden.  However, the accurate discharge of an arrow while sloping the pike must have been difficult, especially for the left hand, which simultaneously grasped the pikeshaft and aimed the bow.  In 1624, at the outset of the “war years,” the then Prince Charles ordered a demonstration of Neade’s bow and pike device at St. James’s Park before 300 spectators and the royal presence.  Subsequently, the device was tested at the Artillery Yard on several occasions.  The weapon must not have recommended itself for expeditionary service, for it was only after the “war years” had ended that Neade’s invention was adopted by the Crown, and then as a supplement to the “perfect militia,” the reinvigorated trained bands.  Why was the double-armed man adopted in peacetime and ignored during the military activity of the 1620s?  Neade had demonstrated his weapon repeatedly since its trial in 1624.  A parliamentary committee had debated and approved of the invention in 1625, but to no avail for its adoption.  In July 1633 he petitioned the Privy Council to authorize the acceptance of the device within the ranks of the militia through a proclamation.  Lord Chief Justice Heath had drafted such a proposal when he was Attorney General but the proclamation and commission had been stayed “because the Lord Keeper is unwilling to give his approbation without the concurrence of the rest of their lordships.”[6]  The next month, August, saw the “Proclamation for use of the Bowe and Pike together in Military Discipline.”  Neade’s request was granted, and the “warlike invention” was to be adopted by the trained bands, who were to muster and receive instruction from Neade himself, his son, or their assistants.[7]  Bows and arrows were expected to be available since local authorities throughout the early 1600s had insisted that the keeping bows in readiness was more practical than their replacement with cumbersome, complicated, and expensive muskets.  The deputy lieutenants of Norfolk in 1626 and the aldermen of London in 1627 urged the Council to enforce the statutory legislation requiring citizens to keep bows and arrows.  At the same time, the Company of Bowyers was pestering the Lord Mayor and aldermen with a petition lamenting the demise of the bow.[8]  On 27 March 1629 the King signed a commission intended to put into execution the statute for the maintenance of archery of 33 Henry VIII.[9]  During the next two and a half years, complaints of inequitable assessments and minor extortions in various counties led to the revocation of the commission by proclamation.  The revocation was prompted by “unsufferable abuses committed by colour of the said Commission”, not lack of faith in the military capabilities of the longbow.  On that score, the proclamation stated that “good use might be still made in time of Warre” of English archers.  The proclamation implementing Neade’s “double-armed man” came within two years of the revocation.  Granted the widespread fear of imminent invasion during the late 1620s, when Buckingham’s foreign policy resulted in simultaneous war with France and Spain, why was Neade disregarded at the very time his invention would have been most useful?  First, the mood of England was such that additional military charges would have increased the already substantial resistance in the local community, a theme illustrated in Conrad Russell’s Parliaments and English Politics 1621-1629.  The demands of war made the counties resentful of military expenses, which probably convinced Charles and his advisors that a postponement of the experiment of making pikemen bowmen are desirable.  There were more pressing military expenses.  The Crown had not the time, energy, or revenue to play about with the ‘double-armed man.”  Experimentation is a luxury in time of exigency.  War leaves little time for innovation.[10]  Second, the Council of War realized that the was untried in combat.  Could they afford to jeopardize troops by equipping them with a weapon whose military reliability was unproven?  Third, much of the Thirty Years’ War revolved around sieges, where the “double-armed man” would be of negligible value.  The two major English campaigns of the 1620s were assaults on ports, entailing attacks upon their citadels, not set-piece battles.[11]  The “double-armed man” would not have contributed much at Cadiz or the Ile de Ré.

            Another reason for the delay in utilizing the “double-armed man” was that in 1624, when the device was demonstrated by royal command, English arms had not yet been tried.   By 1633 English confidence had been shaken by the disastrous campaigns against Spain and France, and their inability to intervene decisively in the restoration of the Palatinate.  The spectacle of English military impotence had inflamed resentment towards Charles’s policies, both domestic and foreign.  During the 1620s traditional government failed along with conventional warfare.  Buckingham was dead, Parliament dissolved, and the “Personal Rule” underway.  By 1629, it was a time for innovations, experiments, and “new inventions.”  When the new invention was adopted during the “Personal Rule,” Neade’s pike and bow device generated little enthusiasm in the localities and metropolis.  According to an undated petition, perhaps in 1635, Neade complained that in spite of investing L600 in manufacturing the device for the trained bands, due to the neglect of the local authorities and the “evil example of the City of London,” his equipment lay unpurchased.  He asked Charles to proceed against the “delinquents” who refused to implement the new invention amongst the militia.[12]  The local response to the central government’s sponsorship of Neade’s device remained lukewarm, in spite of the petitions and urgings of the lieutenancy.  A letter of 1637 from the Nottinghamshire deputy lieutenants to the Earl of Newcastle, their Lord Lieutenant, illustrated local sentiment against military charges in general and Neade’s invention in particular.  Pointing out that five years had elapsed since the proclamation’s appearance, and four since the commission enjoining the lieutenancy to perfect the device amongst the trained bands, the double-armed soldiers were not in readiness, “…the proclamacon and leters Pattens having now slept for almost this fowre years…”.  The Nottinhamshire authorities included the excuse that they were already overburdened with military responsibilities, Nottinhamshire being disproportionately “Charged with Armes.”  Besides, they insisted, none of their neighbours had taken this business of the “double-armed man” terribly seriously: “…wee have not hearde any Contry hath put the same into practice.”[13]  In spite of the King’s fascination with martial inventions, he had little success in infecting a similar curiosity in the inhabitants of Robin Hood’s county.

II.

            A New Invention of Shooting Fire-Shafts in Long Bowes was, as the title proclaims, an new invention.  “Fire-Shafts” were explosive arrow, or more accurately, airborne incendiaries.  An ordinary arrow was “fitted with a pipe of latten [extremely thin metal], ten inches long or more.”  A blend of gunpowder, saltpeter, sulphur, and camphor was packed tightly into the pipe.  The arrowhead was made of bearded iron, so that it might imbed itself firmly prior to explosion.  Like a matchlock musket, the pipe had a touch-hole, located at the end nearest the arrowhead, and was ignited by a matchcord.

            The idea of fastening combustible materials to arrow in order to produce airborne incendiaries had been circulating since the middle ages.  In the 1620s several authors seized upon the device in their treatises.  For example, Robert Norton’s The Gunner’s Dialogue (1628) proposed that one “cover or coat” arrows with flammable chemicals or attach canvas pouches filled with explosives to arrows.[14]  In The Gunner, Showing The Whole Practise of Artillerie (1628), Norton included drawings of “Fire Arrows.”  However, the description of the weapon was relegated to the penultimate page of the book, in a section devoted largely to manufacturing fireworks to celebrate triumphs.  Clearly, Robert Norton did not regard “Fire Arrow” as a major weapon in the artilleryman’s arsenal.[15]  Francis Malthus’s A Treatise of Artificial Fire-Works Both For Warres and Recreation, published the year after Norton’s two works on gunnery and Shooting Fire-Shafts appeared also discussed fire arrows.  But Malthus, like his rival Norton, favoured cannon, and was credited with initiating the use of mortars by the Frency army around 1634.[16]  Neither Norton nor Malthus developed possibilities of longbow-launched explosive as did the author of Shooting Fire-Shafts.  Whereas William Neade had combined the bow and pike, the author of Shooting Fire-Shafts went further, and allied the old rivals of the gun and the longbow.  The author accepted musketeers and encouraged exploitation of gunpowder: “…I seek not to perswade the sue of Bowes in steed of Guns, but that by due accouplement of both, more hands might in lesse roome bee brought to fight at once.”[17]  The treatise accepted that the future of the art of war lay with gunpowder, especially the heavy large-bore musket, the carbine of the dragoonier, and the wheellock pistol.  The author criticized reliance upon body armour, such as the corselet.  Here Neade and the anonymous author of Fire-Shafts agreed wholeheartedly.  Both observed the increasing vulnerability of pikemen in 17th century warfare.  Their intent was two-fold: to rehabilitate the bow and the pikeman.  Pikemen had dominated European battlefields in the late 15th and 16th centuries when the bow was in retrograde and firearms had not yet gained ascendancy due to the imperfections of gunlocks.  The proportion of musketeers amongst the foot increased rapidly in the late 1620s, battles rarely saw massive collisions of armoured pikemen in serried formations, as had been the case in the 1500s.  Infantry formations evolved from density to linearity, becoming more flexible for the movements of musketeers.  The caliver was superseded by the musket, with its greater range and striking power.  Being at the mercy of the gun, pikemen more often protected musketeers from enemy cavalry charges, rather than coming to “push of pike.”  Many discarded their corselets for buff-coats, making them more agile, a quality requisite for the mobility of the linear tactics of the mid-Thirty Years’ War.  Corselets were expensive, difficult to maintain (requiring regular oiling for rust prevention, and the repair of belts and buckles), troublesome to transport, retained cold in winter, broiled the soldier in summer, and gave little protection against the musket ball. As the number and velocity of firearms increased, the usefulness of corselets declined correspondingly: “…if Corselets hold no proportion with the weapons of modern war; if Muskets, Carrabine, Pistols, all predomine, then are they now no instruments of self defence, but mere impediments.”[18]  The utility of pikemen atrophied because the new tactics of firearms had rendered them largely a defensive arm.  Interspersed with squadrons of musketeers, pikemen remained in battle so that musketeers might shelter behind them during a cavalry onslaught or the sudden advance of enemy pike.  Yet during battle, especially skirmishing, they were dangerously exposed to enemy sharpshooting and quite unable to retaliate.  As the author put it, “…the Corselets are but so many idle handles, yet stand exposed to great mortality during the skirmish of the Musquettiers: for Corselets are not musquetproofe.”  Even in warding off cavalry the pike had become outmoded.  The practice of the “Carico” or “carricole,” whereby horsemen trotted within pistol range of the enemy and unleashed a volley pointblank, made pikemen little more than stationary targets.  The cavalry galloped off before the musketeers could fire more than a couple of rounds in defense of the pike.

            The author of Shooting Fire-Shafts commended the “double-armed man,”[19] referring to it as that “ingenious device scruing [screwing] both [pike and bow] together.”[20]  Neade gave the pikemen greater offensive capability; the “fire-shaft” though, made better use of infantry, for it was more adaptable tactically.  The combination of bow and pike, and gunpowder with longbow, was not as unrealistic as might seem.  The longbow was still regarded as a legitimate weapon in the 1620s.  When troops were levied for service abroad in autumn 1627, the Privy Council directed the lieutenancy of the counties to include archers among their contingents.[21]  Of fifty soldiers pressed in Nottinghamshipre, a dozen were to be bowmen, destined to reinforce the troops at the Ile de Ré.[22]  Because they were sent does not necessarily prove they were needed: Sir William Becher, who was responsible for reinforcing and supplying the expeditionary force, informed Secretary Nicholas that archers were not needed during the siege.[23]

            Another contrast between the school of military thought characterized by advocates of archery like William Neade and Sir John Smythe, and the more experimental, technologically-innovative men like the author of Shooting Fire-Shafts, is the question of certitude in military science.  As stated above, many writers of the 1620s conceived the art of war as timeless, that certain ancient techniques and weapons retained their value.  Tradition shaped the development of military science.  The similarities between ancient and modern infantry had inspired Machiavelli, for example.  When The Tactiks of Aelian was published in English by John Bingham in 1616, the title page depicted Alexander the Great proffering his sword to a modern captain.[24]  The meaning was clear: the weapons and tactics which had served Alexander so well were there for the taking.  The cyclical view of military science, based upon the conviction that war, like art and literature, could be revived from a classical Golden Age, was mirrored in more than the arrangement of infantry or the deployment of short-sword and buckler men.  The very fashion of military dress and imagery displayed the Renaissance sense of revived antiquity.  For example, Titians’ Allocution of Alfonso d’Avalos (c.1540-1), portrayed the Maruqis of Milan, a veteran of the wars against the Turk, addressing his soldiers in a classical pose, inspired by Roman coins and reliefs.[25]  Titian’s Charles V on Horseback (1548) also harkened back to classical military motifs, being an imperial equestrian portrait commemorating the Emperor’s victory at Mühlberg.[26]  More explicit was the Roman armour al’antica of Charles V, with muscled-cuirass and legionary-style sandals.[27]  This “ancient” armor, used for parading in “triumphs,” another classically inspired preoccupation of 16th and early 17th century commanders, demonstrated the cyclical timelessness of the art of war.  An Emperor triumphed Mühlberg and Nordlingen just as he had triumphed Jerusalem.  The ascendancy of infantry and the revival of classical military techniques suggested that a universality of the art of war existed.  Hence anachronisms like Albrecht Altdorfer’s Battle of Issus, wherein Alexander and his Macedonian phalanxes fight Darius’s Persians with the assistance of ladesknechtes and knights, were more than appropriate.[28]  Universality implied certitude.  There was a right way, and a wrong way, to fight.  If the Swiss had modeled pikes after the weapons of Alexander’s foot-soldiers and had routed the flower of European chivalry, and if Spanish armies achieved success by emulation of Roman legionaries by fighting with short-swords and bucklers, why not bring back the bow?  Thus the military scientist of the early 1620s was eclectic, selecting appropriate weapons from his armoury as the scholar might pluck Plato off a shelf in the College Library.  And he was utilitarian, putting to use the best tactics and most effective weapons.  It was for this reason that the early 17th century military scientist had to be veteran and scholar.  He needed both combat experience and familiarity with the history of war.  Consequently, he could reconcile the ideality of the military treatise with the realities of battle.  Captain John Bingham exemplified such an approach, his study of classical warfare being punctuated by sorties against the Spaniard.  He gives the impression that his translation of Aelian, published in 1616 and dedicated to Prince Charles, was penned in the field.  The preface was written “from the garrison at Woudrichem in Holland the 20 of September 1616.”  Conceiving the occupations of soldier and scholar as compatible, Bingham reconciled classical antiquity with English antiquity.  After a detailed discussion of Greek infantry practices, Bingham commented on the relationship between bow and firearm.  Arrows could be launched during push of pike, whereas muskets could not fire because of their trajectory.[29]  Bingham’s work embraced all elements of military theory in the early Stuart period—classical antiquity, English tradition, and the experience of the wars of religion.  Tradition and invention were fused, and military science was the result.  And yet, the term “military science” contained some disturbing implications for the soldier who would utilize tradition.  The very concept of “science” was undergoing a profound change during the era of “military revolution.”

“By the end of the seventeenth Century, most English thinkers, no matter what their field of inquiry, had ceased to believe that their labours would produce the certitude or “science” that had for centuries been the goal of philosopher.”[30]

            The neo-platonist might crib a few lines from classical authors, or the artist use a classical motif, but he who would make the art of war into a “science” needed to exercise greater care.  The practice of war changed rapidly.  Tradition laid the foundations of military science, but invention was the new edifice which housed the art of war.  “Innovation” may have been regarded as wicked political concept by Members of Parliament in 1620, but it was through “innovation” that war was being waged on the Continent.  In fact, the utilization of tradition under new circumstances was a type of innovation and gave way to invention: Neade’s “double-armed man” and the “fire-shaft” exemplified this.

One must take note of Professor Hale’s remark that the revival of the bow, manifested in “new inventions,” was “increasingly artificial and compromising.[31]  For the new inventions were also impractical and expensive, given the organization and training of the militia.  Trained band soldiers were amateurs, whose civilian responsibilities disinclined them to devote weeks to mastering weapons, old or new.  The King’s resolution to improve the trained bands prompted him to send professional soldiers, often times disabled veterans of continental wars, into the counties to supervise and drill the militiamen at their semi-annual musterings.  These old soldiers bore the brunt of local resentment towards military charges.  Professor Barnes has written, “The opposition of the county at large to all things military fell with greatest force upon the muster master.”[32]  If new inventions were to be placed in the hands of the militia-men, they would have to be distributed by the much-maligned, under-paid sergeants.  They were unpopular enough without introducing expensive and unfamiliar military gadgets to the trained bands.  With their pay in arrears, lacking statutory authority for their actions, and enduring allegations of “extorcion” and violations of the Petition of Right, the sergeants were in no position to undertake a program of innovation in the weaponry of the militia.  In some counties, too, the muster-masters were so lax and inexperienced that the “new inventions” would not receive a fair trial.  In 1629, the central government enacted legislation to ensure the county muster-masters were knowledgeable veterans, which by implication admitted that some sergeants were lacking in sufficient military expertise.  The powerlessness and unreliability of the muster-master obliged the military writers of the 1620s to look elsewhere for patronage, approval, and recommendation.[33]

            Shooting Fire-Shafts began with a dedication to the “Martiall Societies of the Artillarie Yard and Millitarie Garden.”  The “true patriot,” like Neade, recognized that royal sponsorship alone could not guarantee the acceptance of his weapon.  Where the muster-masters were caught between the local community and the patronage of the lieutenancy, the London marital societies were answerable to themselves and the Crown only.  The marital societies served as a military academy wherein the collective wisdom of experienced soldiers and the King’s officers might be brought to bear upon developments in the art of gunnery.  Many veterans of the continental wars attached themselves to marital societies which served as a reservoir of expertise from which the county muster-masters were drawn.  Convincing the intelligentsia of the “military garden” of the utility of the new weapons was an avenue to royal sponsorship.  Hence William Neade arranged several trials of the “double-armed man” at the Artillery Yard, promoting the invention to as many old soldiers as possible.  But the climate which encouraged the proliferation of “new inventions” also discouraged their adoption.  A consensus of opinion was most difficult to achieve.  Demonstrations before military societies, though, the “new inventions” needed acceptance at the county level, and the marital societies could not alleviate the financial and administrative limitations of local government.

 

III.

            Tradition and invention complimented and encouraged each other, innovations being spurred on by antique revivals.  England’s unique perspective on the past gave her a unique approach to the art of war.  Warfare as practiced by the ancients had faded away forever, due to the sue of gunpowder and improvements in firearms.  A Renaissance Pope, Pius II, could insist that “in Homer and Virgil could be found descriptions of every kind of weapon which our age used.”[34]  But by the 1500s, it was clear that modern man had constructed weapons of which the ancients never dreamt.  Regardless of whether or not Archimedes had invented gunpowder (as many, including Petrarch, thought), certainly the Greeks and Romans had not brandished wheellock pistols.  Gunpowder separated ancient from modern and encouraged the “idea of progress.”[35]  Looking backward propelled European man forward.  Thus one cannot dismiss.  The Double-armed Man or Shooting Fire-Shafts.  They were imaginative responses to the dilemma of English military science in the 1620s.  And if guilty of anachronism, they were not the worst offenders.  According to a note published in the first volume of our Journal, a fellow named Benjamin Franklin, who also enjoyed a fascination with invention, wrote in February 1776 to Major General Charles Lee, “But I still wish, with you, that pikes could be introduced, and I would add bows and arrows: these were good weapons, not wisely laid aside…”  Franklin then enumerated the advantages of the bow, sounding much like an 18th century Sir John Smythe.  In 1778 Richard Oswald Mason produced a pamphlet entitled “Considerations of the reasons that exist for reviving the use of the Long Bow with the Pike…”[36]  If Franklin and Mason were determined to make bows available to soldiers, they could have easily arranged a transaction with the American Indians who were eager to replace their traditional weapon with firearms.[37]  The persistence of anachronism indicated that the boundary between “ancient” and “modern” had not been demarcated in very tidy fashion.  We have argued that the interplay between tradition and invention helped transform the “art” of war into military “science”.  Such a notion would have been regarded as heretical forty years ago.  Historians once argued that it was necessary to renounce tradition before invention could be affirmed, “that the classical obstruction had to be removed before science could find a place in the sun.”[38]  The historian Hans Baron pointed out, however, that the spirit of inquiry which characterized the England of Francis Bacon, and ultimately Newton and the scientific revolution, clearly had its roots in the historical relativity of the Renaissance.  Men like Matteo Palmieri saw that the achievements of antiquity should not be rejected, but rather improved upon.[39]  This utilitarian approach to truth, so very evident in Neade and the author of Shooting Fire-Shafts, is reflective of the realization that “modern culture was separated from that of the ancient world not only by a measurable gulf of time but by observable process of development.”[40]  A perfect example of an “observable process of development” was the improvement of gunlocks.  Firearms were a noisy, ubiquitous reminder that through invention men had gone beyond the past and its traditions.  But the utilitarian treatment of tradition preserved the best of the ancients.  So the anachronisms remained.  Refusing to allow ambivalence to hinder their work, they were aware of historical relativism and the distance of tradition, yet at the same time ascribed a quality of timelessness to the art of war, a belief that invention did not negate tradition.  They advocated the universality of military science.  They believed that the art of war was eclectic and utilitarian.  As the author of Shooting Fire-Shafts put it “Armories, like College Libraries, should be repleated with Workes of all times, new and old, that men in such variety might steed themselves with what is of most use…”[41]  The anonymous writer, and Neade to a lesser extent, transcended the futile debate between “ancients” and “moderns” that had characterized the controversies of Elizabethan military theorists.[42]

            Finally, the “new inventions” were characteristic of the restless searching of the 1620s and 1630s, when war played a major role in European affairs and changed continually in theory and practice.  There was a victory to be won in the restoration of the Palatinate.  The debacles at Cadiz and Ré could be avenged.  With a foreign policy that pitted England against both Spain and France, the inhabitants of Albion needed desperately to improve their military preparedness.  For the first time since the days of Bluff King Hal, a would-be warrior sat upon the throne.  With Charles and Buckingham hard-pressed for some kind of victory, an inexpensive, innovative, and deadly weapon was an irresistible prospect.  The Crown’s situation positively encouraged proponents of strange military gadgets.  Given the rapidity with which the art of war was changing and the King’s inclination to find a “secret weapon”, invention seemed the most likely solution.  The English did not have the resources to dominate a major land war.  But they did possess a successful military tradition, the longbow; and from that tradition the “double-armed man” and the incendiary arrow evolved.  With some luck and ingenuity, tradition and invention might do the trick.  Yet the situation which brought forth the “new inventions” also caused them to wither.  The straits in which English arms found themselves proved to be the undoing of the “double-armed man” and the “fire-shaft”.  Mastery of the “new inventions” required training and regular drill.  And the counties of England, through resistance to the lieutenancy and the complaints of Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, judged military charges to be an expensive abomination.  Waging war was a more costly proposition than it had been in 1500.  The expense of Charles I’s military adventures of the 1620s prompted Parliament to put froth the Petition of Right.  That same expense encouraged Charles to consider and then adopt the “double-armed man” in 1633.  If the local community was reluctant to pay the muster-master and keep a sufficient arsenal, then the introduction of “new inventions” would only have further offended the counties, especially after the King had agreed to the provisions of the Petition of Right.[43]  Charles “was rightly concerned about the diminution of his own and his country’s military reputation…,”[44] but he needed the financial support of his subjects if he was to build a “perfect militia” or intervene in the Thirty Years’ War.  The second Stuart had ascended the throne carrying military expenses amounting to Ł700,000.[45]  These commitments, mostly to Protestant participants in the Thirty Years’ War, were followed by further expenditures on the Cadiz and Ré expeditions.  Charles had no money to spend upon improving the trained bands.  Conrad Russell writes that the early Stuarts “suffered severely from the lack of any adequate means of warfare.”[46]  The weakness was largely financial, but also technical; not only was revenue lacking, so too was a consensus on the art of war.  Treatises like those of Neade and the “true patriot” demonstrate that disagreement still persisted over how Englishmen should fight, and what weapons they should shoulder.  But Charles’s subjects seemed to understand the costly and destructive consequences of campaign better than did the King.  Cadiz and Ré proved that vast sums could be wasted upon fruitless military adventures.  Thus, although the “new inventions” had some chance of acceptance at Whitehall, they had very little chance in the localities, where the new weapons had to be paid for and tested.

            How seriously should one take these “new inventions”?  Were they merely fantastical schemes or can the genesis of modern military innovations, such as airborne incendiary projectiles and the bayonet, be ascribed to them?  Neither, really.  They do tell us something about the nature of the culture of war and the character of Charles I.  Early modern culture was characterized by hopeless anachronism alongside incipient modernity.  The term itself, “early modern,” exemplifies this, as has been recognized.  Clearly, however, the culture of war was more closely integrated with “high culture” in this period than during the age of Matthew Arnold, afterwards.  The reader of a Tudor or Stuart military treatise was expected to be familiar with a variety of classical authors and yet also comprehend the brutality of battle.  Rarely does an author ask so much of a reader, assuming an appreciation of Plato along with a willingness to commit homicide.  Culture, at least for professional military men, was not socially compartmentalized.  The all-embracing culture of war, a reflection of the impact of the “military revolution” upon European society, included the “highest” and “lowest” elements in its literature.  The captain who at one moment needed a sure grasp of geometry in planning seigeworks might within minutes be forced to discipline mutinous troops.  The wide-ranging concerns of the military treatise, along with the flights of fancy in invention and innovation, have encouraged some scholars to dismiss the literature of the culture of war as “amateurish” and close to useless.  But in fact they demonstrate the “integrated culture” of the military 1560-1660.  The concern with reconciliation of tradition and invention is likewise a reflection of “cultural integration.”  Finally, in addition to what they disclose about the culture of the early Stuart military, William Neade and the anonymous author also shed some light on the character of Charles I.  We should recall that the double-armed man was actually adopted by the Crown, and that Shooting Fire-Shafts was proposed in dead seriousness.  If the cultural scope of the “new inventions” was rather wide, the myopia of Charles I was terribly restrictive.  As was argued above, the means for perfecting these devices was wholly lacking.  The resources needed to introduce and perfect the “new inventions” would not and could not be supplied by the counties.  The King’s advocacy of the double-armed man resulted from his narrow understanding of the realities of mounting a war and the condition of his kingdom.  Charles desired an invention, an innovation, which would deliver him from his difficulties.[47]


[1] The concept of the ‘military revolution’ was proposed by Michael Roberts in his inaugural lecture at the Queen’s University of Belfast in 1955.  A later version appeared in Essays in Swedish History (London, 1967).  The thesis was reviewed and modified by Geoffrey Parker in ‘The Military Revolution’, 1560-1660—a Myth?, Journal of Modern History vol. 48, no. 2, June 1976 pp. 195-214.  Professor Thomas Garden Barnes kindly shared his knowledge of the subject with the present writer.

[2] See John X. Evan’s edition of The Works of Sir Roger Williams (Oxford, 1972) pp. xcv.xcix.

[3] Quoted by J.R. Hale in ‘Armies, Navies and the Art of War,’ The New Cambridge Modern History vol. 3, chapter 7 (Cambridge, 1968) p.193

[4] Professor Sir John Hale’s introduction to the Folger Shakespeare Library edition of Sir John Smythe’s Certain Discourses Military (Ithaca,N.Y., 1964) p. xliv. Professor Hale graciously took time to answer an inquiry regarding the preparation of this article.  The interpretation set forth here, however, is entirely my own, and am responsible for any errors.

[5] The ‘double-armed man’ was illustrated in the second volume of The Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (1923) pp. 102-104, item 36.  See also, M. J. D. Cockle, A Bibliography of Military Books up to 1642 (London, 1900) pp. 84-85.  The anonymous A New Invention of Shooting Fire-Shafts in Long-Bowes was reprinted in facsimile as no. 674 in The English Experience series (Amsterdam, 1974), and is listed in Cockle pp. 92-93.

[6] Calendar of State Papers Domestic Charles I, 1633, vol. ccxliii no. 70 [p. 163].  Herein after, the Calendar of State Papers Domestic Charles I will be abbreviated CSPD.

[7] J.F. Larkin, ed., Stuart Royal Proclamations, Volume II, Royal Proclamations of King Charles I, 1625-1646 (Oxford, 1983) pp. 385-387, item 172; also printed in CSPD 1633, docquet of August 17,

[p. 185]; and The Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, vol. 1 (1921) p. 222, item 51.

[8] CSPD 1627-8 Vol. LXXV no. 74 [p. 325]

[9] CSPD 1628-9, Coll. Sign Manual Car. I, Vol. VII no. 7 [p. 43]

[10] This theme has been developed in regards to the effects of epidemics and governmental responses.  See Paul Slack’s comments on experimental precautionary measures in The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1985).  See especially chapters 2, 8, 9, and 10.

[11] Stephen J. Stearns, The Caroline Military System: The Expedition to Cadiz and Ré, unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of California at Berkeley, 1967).

[12] CSPD 1635 Vol. CCCX no. 76, undated petition to the King [pp. 75-76].

[13] Public Record Office, State papers Domestic, Charles I, SP 16/381/73.

[14] Robert Norton, The Gunner’s Dialogue.  With the Art of Great Artillery (London, 1628) p. 29.

[15] Robert Norton, The Gunner, Shewing the Whole Practise of Artillerie (London, 1628) pp. 156-157.  Norton may have been unimpressed, but the Earl of Bedford was.  In his commonplace book, the Earl cited frequently ‘a Project for Fiery Arrows.’  He was especially intrigued with utilizing their trajectory in firing over fortifications.  Professor Conrad Russell kindly supplied this information.

[16] On Francis Malthus, See Cockle’s Bibliography pp. 93-94.

[17] Shooting Fire-Shafts p. 3.

[18] Ibid, p. 4.

[19] Ibid, pp. 6-7.

[20] Ibid, p. 5; Cockle, Bibliography p. 93; J. R. Hale, introduction to Smythe’s Certain Discourses Military p. liv.

[21] CSPD 1627-8 Vol LXXIV nos. 90, 91, 92 [p.309].

[22] Ibid, vol. LXXXVI no. 9, 2 September, Viscount Mansfield to the Privy Council, [p.328].

[23] Ibid, Vol. LXXXV no. 58, 29 August 1627 [p. 322].

[24] J.R. Hale, The Art of War and Renaissance England pp. 34-35; J.B. Kist, A Commentary on Jacob De Gheyn, The Exercise of Armes (New York, 1971) pp. 6-8; Cockle, Bibliography pp. 70-71.

[25] Interestingly, the painting once belonged to Charles I, but is now in the Prado, Madrid.

[26] As is well known, equestrian motifs represented imperial authority.  In the Titian portrait, Charles V conflates Holy Roman Emperor with his identity as an ‘Augustus Caesar’ type.  See also Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC-AD 337) (Ithaca, New York, 1977).

[27] Preserved in the Real Armeria, Madrid.  In the cyclical view of human experience, war played a central role.  According to peter Burke, ‘The sixteenth century soldier-writer Luigi de Porto put forward a cyclical interpretation of history in epigrammatic form when he wrote that peace causes riches; riches, pride; pride, anger; anger, war; war, poverty; poverty, humility; humility, peace; peace, riches…and that is the way the world goes round (cosi girano le cose del mondo).’  The Renaissance Sense of the Past (New York, 1969) p. 87.

[28] Executed circa 1528-1530, the painting is in the Pinakothek, Munich.

[29] The Tactiks of Aelian, or the Art of Emabattailing an Army After the Grecian Manner (London, 1616, reprinted Amsterdam, 1968) pp. 25-27.

[30] Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England, A Study of The Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law, and Literature (Princeton, 1983) p. 4.

[31] J.R. Hale, introduction to Smythe’s Certain Discourses Military p. lv.

[32] T.G. Barnes, Somerset 1625-1640: A County’s Government During the ‘Personal Rule’ (Cambridge, Mass., 1961) p. 263.

[33] On the predicament of the muster-master, see Ibid pp. 60, 73, 87, 118-20, 260-266, 273; also C.L. Hamilton, ‘The Shropshire Muster-Master’s Fee,’ Albion Vol.2, no. 1 (1970) pp. 26-34; Hamilton later edited Gervase Markham’s manuscript treatise, ‘The Muster-Master,’ which was printed in The Camden Miscellany Vol. 26 (1975).  Markham advocated training with the longbow for the militia, i.e. in ‘The Muster-Master’ p. 72 and in The Art of Archerie (London, 1634).

[34] J.R. Hale, ‘Gunpowder and the Renaissance: An Essay in the History of Ideas,” From the Renaissance to the Counter Reformation: Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly (New York, 1965) p. 116.

[35] R. S. Wolper, ‘The Rhetoric of Gunpowder and the Idea of Progress,’ Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 31 no. 4 (October-December 1970) pp. 589-598.

[36] A note on the longbow by J. H. Leslie, in The Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research Vol. 1 (1921) item 20, p. 228. 

[37] I owe this point to Professor Richard Aquila, author of The Iroquois Restoration (Detroit, 1983).

[38] R. J. Jones, Ancients and Moderns: a Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth Century England (second edition, St. Louis, 1961) p. 268.

[39] Hans Baron, ‘The Querelle of the Ancients and the Moderns as a Problem for Renaissance Historiography’, Journal of the History of Ideas vol. 20. no. 1 (January 1959) p. 18.

[40] A. B. Ferguson, Clio Unbound: Perception of the social and cultural past in Renaissance England (Durham, N.C., 1979) p. 404.

[41] Shooting Fire-Shafts p. A2.

[42] H. J. Webb, Elizabethan Military Science, the Books and the Practice (Madison, 1965).  Unfortunately, this book promises more that it delivers.  See J. R. Hale’s remark in the April 1967 volume of The English Historical Review pp. 383-384.

[43] For a thorough account of the Petition of Right see Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621-1629 (Oxford, 1979) pp. 321-389.  Also, Frances H. Relf, The Petition of Right (Minneapolis, 1917).

[44] Ibid, p. 323.

[45] Conrad Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments. English History 1509-1660 (Oxford, 1971) p. 300.

[46] Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621-1629, pp. 417-418.

[47] The author wishes to thank the following for facilitating the preparation of this article: Professor John E. Weakland and Anthony O. Edmonds, Mrs. Virginia Bowers, and Mr. James Schroring.