A bibliography of English military books up to 1642 and of ...

Contents.
and Latin writers.
Compiled from the Scriptures, Josephus, and the ancient Greek
jy. Sixteen-four. Digges, Thomas and Dudley,
Foure Paradoxes, or politique Discourses.
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2 Concerning
Militarie Discipline, written
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long since by Thomas Digges
Esquire.
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2 Of the worthinesse of warre and warriors, by
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Dudly Digges his sonne. All newly published to keepe
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those that will read them, as they did them that wrote
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them, from idlenesse. [Three lines ofquotation from Horace.]!
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Imprinted at London by H. Lownes, for Cle-
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ment Knight, and
are to be solde at his shop at the
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Signe of the holy Lambe in Saint
Paules
I
Churchyard. 1604.
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Quarto.
Collation.
Tp. (ist f.).—Ded. to Theophilus, Lord Howard of Waldcn
(2nd f.), subs. "Dudly Digges."— Pref. (2nd f., verso).—R.H.: "The . . .
Paradoxe or politique Discourses.*'—Sigs. in 4% A-O, and 2 ff.
Copies. B.M. ; Bod.
unsigned.
Contents. As Digges died in 1595 there was an interval of at least nine
years between the writing of " Paradoxes L and IL" and their printing. These
are filled with complaints of the dishonesty of officers.' Foreign writers,
too, were making similar accusations, notably Marcos de Isaba, who, in the
" Cuerpo enfermo de la Milicia Espanola " (v. 572), waxes very bitter on the
subject.
Both in English and foreign armies, officers, from the commander-inchief
to the captain of a band, were engaged in defrauding one another and
the private soldiers.
If the men clamoured for pay, licence for pillage quieted
them, or, in some cases, a still surer remedy was found;
generals when deep in
debt to any troops would send them on some desperate service, wherein most
of them were sure to perish.^ Four pages of Paradox L are devoted to a comparison
between a good and a bad paymaster j and much of Paradox IL to
another between modern discipline and the discipline of the Greeks and
Romans. Digges maintains the former, " in spite of the late invention of
gunpowder," to be vastly inferior to the latter, and he cites thirty points of
difference between the two systems in support of his views. Indeed, the
English militia had become so inefficient as to make reform imperative.
Captains, being paymasters of their own bands, made use of their position
*
This is an old cry j a " Petition against Disceatz of Warre " was presented to
Henry VI. in 1439 (Antiq. Rep., vol. iii., pp. 396-398).
*
Hexham, "Tongue-Combat," London, 1623.
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