DIGGES, Thomas, DIGGES, Dudley

by Thomas, DIGGES, Dudley Digges

£2,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

Rare first edition of this important work on the state of the English militia, probably a source for Shakespeares Coriolanus. As Digges died in 1595 there was an interval of at least nine years between the writing of Paradoxes 1. and II. 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 , waxes very bitter on the subject. Both in English and foreign armies, officers, from the commander in chief to the captain of the band, where engaged in defrauding one another and the private soldiers. If the men clamoured for pay, license 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 Paradoxes I are devoted to a comparison between a good and a bad paymaster; and much of Paradox II 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 to pocket the mens pay; drill was neglected, and n

• Binding: Hardcover

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