A great change took place in the mili tary system of England at the Conquest.
It is to that period that the introduction of fiefs is to be referred, a system which provided, among other things, for an army ever ready at the call of the SOW.. reign lord. The king, reserving certain tracts as his own demesne, distributed the greater portion of England among his followers, to hold by military service that is, for every knight's fee, as they were called, the tenant was bound to find the king one soldier ready for the field, to serve him for forty days in each year. The extent of the knight's fee varied with the qualities and value of the soil. In the reign of Edward I. the annual value in money was 20/. The number of knights' fees is said by old writers to have been 60,060. The king had thus provision made for an army of 60,000 men, whom he could call at short notice into the field, subject them when there to all the regulations of military discipline, and keep them for forty days without pay, which was usually as long as their service would be required in the warfare in which the king was likely to be engaged. When their services were required for any longer time, they might continue on re ceiving pay.
Writs of military summons are found in great abundance in what are called the " Close Rolls," which contain copies of such fetters as the king issues under seal. But this system, it is evident, had many inconveniences ; and the kings of England had a better security for the protection of the realm against invasion, and for the maintenance of internal tranquillity, in that which seems to be a relic of Saxon polity. We allude to the liability of all persons to be called upon for military service within the realm ; to the power which the constitution gave to the sheriff to call them out to exercise, in order that they might be in a condition to perform the duty when called upon; and to the obligation which a statute of Edward I. imposed on all persons to provide theft selves with certain pieces of armour, which were changed for others by a statute of James I. We see in this system at once the practice of our remoter ancestors, and the beginning of thst drafting of men to form the county milil ia, which is a part of the military polity if the country at present.
The sheriffs were the persons to whom the care of these affairs was committed ; but it was the practice of the early kings to send down into the several shires, or to select from the gentry residing in them, persons whose duty it was to attend the musters or arrays, which were a species of review of these domestic troops, and who were intended, as it seems, to be a check upon the sheriffs in the discharge of this part of their duty. The persons thus e doyed were usually men ex perien in military affairs ; and when the practice became more general, there was a permanent officer appointed in each county, who had the superintendence of these operations, and was called the lieu tenant : this is the origin of the present lord-lientenant of counties, an officer who cannot be traced to a period earlier than the reign of Henry VIII.
Foreigners were also sometimes en gaged to serve the king in his wars ; but these were purely mercenary troops, and were paid out of the king's own revenues.
We see, then, that the early kings of England of the Norman and Plantagenet races had three distinct means to which they could have recourse when it was necessary to arm for the general defence of the realm : the quota of men which the holders of the knights' fees were bound to furnish ; the posse-comitattls, or whole population, from sixteen to sixty, of each shire, under the guidance of the sheriffs ; and such hired troops as they might think proper to engage. But as the posse-comitaths could not be com pelled to leave the kingdom, and only in particular cases the shire to which they belonged, the king had only his feudal and mercenary troops at command when , he car ied an army to the continent, or when he had to wage war against even the Scotch or Welsh. We are not to suppose that troops so levied, especially when there were only contracted pecuni ary resources for the hiring of disciplined troops of other nations, would have been sufficient to make head against the power of such a potentate as the king of France, and once to gain possession of that throne. And this 'leads us to another important part of the subject.