RE PA TRIA VER UNT SINE LI C EN CIA 123
more peremptory language. The same year that Edward I
offered a gratuity to the men of Northumberland who would
join him at Berwick, he had also ordered his Commissioners in
several counties to select footmen and " to bring to justice and to
punish as they think fit all those whom they find rebellious in this
business"; while another writ of the same year threatened re-
calcitrant recruits with " seizure of their bodies and imprison-
ment".1 The Commissioners were constantly ordered to select
the "most powerful and fencible" men; and, with such powers
at their back, and faced with the constant demands of their
master for fresh levies, it is easy to imagine what was the
position of the peasant.
But though the Commissioners or the lord might with some
difficulty make him march to the wars, it was quite another
matter to keep him there and to make him fight. Year after year
the issue of the writs of summons is followed a few months later
by another sheaf of writs ordering the sheriff to arrest and
punish deserters. A few days on the march, or a taste of fighting
seems to have satisfied the martial ardour of many of these
peasant recruits, and they took the first opportunity of deserting.
Thus we find a paymaster, in 1300, noting on his roll that certain
commanders of hundreds were in camp, but without any men
quia repatriaverunt sine licencia? Even the device of giving the
men an instalment of their pay in advance failed to hold them,
for Edward I indignantly ordered his sheriffs to take action
against men who had received his pay, and yet "afterwards
returned home fraudulently with the money".
The trouble did not end here, for the careful investigations of
Dr Morris have shown how little a medieval commander could
depend on keeping his force at the wars, even if they had been
got there by one means or another. His analysis of the pay-rolls
of the Scottish campaign of 1300 shows that although 16,000 men
were ordered to be at Carlisle on June 24, only some 3500 had
arrived by July i, and that the most the Commissioners could
muster by the middle of the month was 7600. That was the crest
of the wave, and daily after that the force began to dribble away,
and by August little more than 3000 men remained with the
1 Calendar of Patent Rolls (1292-1301), 491, 512.
2 Morris, op. cit. 302.