Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/418

398 courtiers, and all but universal fraud. The captain of infantry on the Northern Border took pay and rations for the full number of his troop, and hired countrymen on muster-days to fill his empty ranks; his soldiers connived at his dishonesty, while he in turn indulged them in plunder. The 'labourers, gun-makers, powder-makers, bow-makers,' artificers of all kinds employed by the Government, called in vain for their wages. The garrisons in the forts, on the coast, at Calais, and at Boulogne, were in the same case. Provisions were supplied them on credit, and the Government at times paid, or professed to pay, the contractors; but the troops were discontented, mutinous, and disorderly; their officers had lost control over them; sometimes, for the means of subsistence, they were driven to plunder beyond the borders of the Calais pale, on the French or Flemish frontier; and the council had to excuse themselves as they could to the Emperor.

Undeterred by his embarrassments, the Protector was meditating another invasion of Scotland in the coming summer, and had sent to Germany for fresh levies of mercenaries. The Lanzknechts refused to serve, unless in numbers large enough to enable them to compel good treatment. 'If they should go less in number than three or four thousand men, they affirmed they