Freedom In Service Part 1

Freedom In Service.

by Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw.

PREFACE

The first three essays in this little book appeared originally as special articles in the _Morning Post_. I am greatly indebted to the Editor of that paper for his courteous and ready permission to reprint them. The "Freedom" dealt with in these essays is political freedom, and the "Service" advocated is universal military service. These limitations are due to the fact that the original newspaper articles were contributions to the controversy respecting methods of enlistment which took place during the autumn of 1915.

The remaining three essays appear now for the first time. They have a more general scope, although they are vitally connected with the theme of their predecessors. The essay on Pa.s.sive Resistance has special reference to the opposition offered by the No-Conscription Fellowship to the principle of compulsory military service; but its argument applies equally well to the older antagonists of the authority of the State.

The essay on Christianity and War tries to meet those conscientious objections to military service which form the basis of the propaganda of the Fellowship of Reconciliation; but it deals with the problem in the broadest manner possible within the limits of its s.p.a.ce. The concluding essay, on the State and its Rivals, emphasizes the imperative need that the authority of the Democratic National State should be recognized and accepted if internal anarchy is to be avoided, and if the peace and well-being of the World are to be secured.

F. J. C. HEARNSHAW.

King's College, Strand, W.C.

_January 12th, 1916._

FREEDOM IN SERVICE

I

THE ANCIENT DEFENCE OF ENGLAND[1]

[Reprinted, with the addition of References, from the _Morning Post_ of August 20th, 1915.]

I. UNIVERSAL OBLIGATION TO SERVE

"The military system of the Anglo-Saxons is based upon universal service, under which is to be understood the duty of every freeman to respond in person to the summons to arms, to equip himself at his own expense, and to support himself at his own charge during the campaign."[2]

With these words Gneist, the German historian of the English Const.i.tution, begins his account of the early military system of our ancestors. He is, of course, merely stating a matter of common knowledge to all students of Teutonic inst.i.tutions. What he says of the Anglo-Saxon is equally true of the Franks, the Lombards, the Visigoths, and other kindred peoples.[3] But it is a matter of such fundamental importance that I will venture, even at the risk of tedious repet.i.tion, to give three parallel quotations from English authorities. Grose, in his _Military Antiquities_, says: "By the Saxon laws every freeman of an age capable of bearing arms, and not incapacitated by any bodily infirmity, was in case of a foreign invasion, internal insurrection, or other emergency obliged to join the army."[4] Freeman, in his _Norman Conquest_, speaks of "the right and duty of every free Englishman to be ready for the defence of the Commonwealth with arms befitting his own degree in the Commonwealth."[5] Finally, Stubbs, in his _Const.i.tutional History_, clearly states the case in the words: "The host was originally the people in arms, the whole free population, whether landowners or dependents, their sons, servants, and tenants. Military service was a personal obligation ... the obligation of freedom"; and again: "Every man who was in the King's peace was liable to be summoned to the host at the King's call."[6]

There is no ambiguity or uncertainty about these p.r.o.nouncements. The Old English "fyrd," or militia, was the nation in arms. The obligation to serve was a personal one. It had no relation to the possession of land; in fact it dated back to an age in which the folk was still migratory and without a fixed territory at all. It was inc.u.mbent upon all able-bodied males between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Failure to obey the summons was punished by a heavy fine known as "fyrdwite."[7]

There is another point of prime significance. Universal service was, it is true, an obligation. But it was more: it was the _mark of freedom_.

Not to be summoned stamped a man as a slave, a serf, or an alien. The famous "a.s.size of Arms" ends with the words: "_Et praecepit rex quod nullus reciperetur ad sacramentum armorum nisi liber h.o.m.o._"[8] A summons was a right quite as much as a duty. The English were a brave and martial race, proud of their ancestral liberty. Not to be called to defend it when it was endangered, not to be allowed to carry arms to maintain the integrity of the fatherland, was a degradation which branded a man as unfree.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This chapter has been issued as a pamphlet by the National Service League, 72, Victoria Street, S.W.

[2] Gneist, R. _Englische Verfa.s.sungsgeschichte_, p. 4.

[3] Cf. the Frankish Edict of A.D. 864: "Ad defensionem patriae omnes sine ulla excusatione veniant." (Let all without any excuse come for the defence of the fatherland.)

[4] Grose, F. _Military Antiquities_, vol. i, p. 1.

[5] Freeman, E. _Norman Conquest_, vol. iv, p. 681.

[6] Stubbs, W. _Const. Hist._, vol. i, pp. 208, 212.

[7] Oman, C. W. C. _Art of War in the Middle Ages_, p. 67.

[8] Stubbs, W. _Select Charters_, p. 156. (The King orders that no one except a freeman shall be admitted to the oath of arms.)

II. THE OLD ENGLISH MILITIA

This primitive national militia was not, it must be admitted, a very efficient force. It lacked coherence and training; it was deficient both in arms and in discipline; it could not be kept together for long campaigns. The Kings, therefore, from the first supplemented it by means of a band of personal followers, a bodyguard of professional warriors, well and uniformly armed, and practised in the art of war. Nevertheless, the main defence of the country rested with the "fyrd." The Danish invasions put it to the severest test and revealed its military defects.

It was one of the most notable achievements of Alfred to reorganize and reconst.i.tute it. Thus reformed, with the support of an ever-growing body of King's thegns, it wrought great deeds in the days of Alfred, Edward and Athelstan, and recovered for England security and peace. In the days of their weaker successors, however, all the forces that England could muster failed to keep out Sweyn and Canute, and, above all, failed to hold the field at Hastings.

The Norman Conquest might have been expected to involve the extinction of the English militia. For feudalism as developed by William I was strongest on its military side, and William's main force was the levy of his feudal tenants. But quite the contrary happened. The Norman monarchs and their Angevin successors were, as a matter of fact, mortally afraid of their great feudal tenants, the barons and knights through whom the Conquest had been effected. Hence, as English kings, they a.s.siduously maintained and fostered Anglo-Saxon inst.i.tutions, and particularly the "fyrd," which they used as a counterpoise to the feudal levy. They even called upon it for Continental service and took it across the Channel to defend their French provinces.[9] Thus in 1073 it fought for William I in Maine; in 1094 William II summoned it to Hastings for an expedition into Normandy; in 1102 it aided Henry I to suppress the formidable revolt of Robert of Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury; in 1138 it drove back the Scots at the Battle of the Standard; and in 1174 it defeated and captured William the Lion at Alnwick. So valuable, indeed, did it prove to be that Henry II resolved to place it upon a permanent footing and clearly to define its position. With that view he issued in 1181 his "a.s.size of Arms."

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Stubbs, W. _Select Charters_, p. 83; and _Const. Hist._, vol. i, p.

469.

III. MEDIaeVAL REGULATIONS

Into the details of the "a.s.size of Arms" it is unnecessary here to enter. Are they not written in every advanced text-book of English history? Three things, however, are to be noted. First, that the duty and privilege of military service are still bound up with freedom; no unfree man is to be admitted to the oath of arms. Secondly, that upon freemen the obligation is still universal: "all burgesses and the whole community of freemen (_tota communa liberorum hominum_) are to provide themselves with doublets, iron skullcaps, and lances." Thirdly, that, closely as freedom had during the centuries of feudalism become a.s.sociated with tenancy of land, the national militia had not been involved in feudal meshes: the obligation of service remained still personal, not territorial.

In 1205 John, fearing an invasion of the Kingdom, called to arms all the militia sworn and equipped under the a.s.size, _i.e._, all the freemen of the realm. Short-shrift was to be given to any who disobeyed the summons: "_Qui vero ad summonitionem non venerit habeatur pro capitali inimico domini regis et regni_" (He who does not come in response to the summons shall be regarded as a capital enemy of the king and kingdom.) The penalty was to be the peculiarly appropriate one of reduction to perpetual servitude. The disobedient and disloyal subject who made the great refusal would _ipso facto_ divest himself of the distinguishing mark of his freedom.[10]

Henry III in 1223 and 1231 made similar levies. In 1252, in a notable writ for enforcing Watch and Ward and the a.s.size of Arms, he extended the obligation of service to villans and lowered the age limit to fifteen. Edward I reaffirmed these new departures in his well-known Statute of Winchester (1285), in which it is enacted that "every man have in his house harness for to keep the peace after the ancient a.s.size, that is to say, every man between fifteen years of age and sixty years." Further, he enlarged the armoury of the militiaman by including among his weapons the axe and the bow.[11]

The long, aggressive wars of Edward I in Wales and Scotland, and the still longer struggles of the fourteenth century in France, could not, of course, be waged by means of the national militia. Even the feudal levy was unsuited to their requirements. They were waged mainly by means of hired professional armies. Parliament--a new factor in the Const.i.tution--took pains in these circ.u.mstances to limit by statute the liabilities of the old national forces. An Act of 1328 decreed that no one should be compelled to go beyond the bounds of his own county, except when necessity or a sudden irruption of foreign foes into the realm required it.[12] Another Act, 1352, provided that the militia should not be compelled to go beyond the realm in any circ.u.mstances whatsoever without the consent of Parliament.[13] Both these Acts were confirmed by Henry IV in 1402.[14] But the old obligation of universal service for home defence remained intact. It was, in fact, enforced by Edward IV in 1464, when, on his own authority, he ordered the Sheriffs to proclaim that "every man from sixteen to sixty be well and defensibly arrayed and ... be ready to attend on his Highness upon a day's warning in resistance of his enemies and rebels and the defence of this his realm."[15] This notable incident carries us to the end of the Middle Ages, and shows us the Old English principle in vigorous operation.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Gervase of Canterbury. _Gesta Regum_, vol. ii, p. 97.

[11] _Statutes of the Realm_, vol. i, pp. 96-8.