The accession of the Tudors to the throne of England marks an important period in our military history. The nation, after thirty years of furious internal war, during which it had lost all sense of national honour, began to settle down once more to a life of peace, and awoke to the fact that England was now no more than an insular¹ power. France was lost to her except Calais, but Calais was something more than a mere² sentimental³ possession. It was the bridge-head that secured to the English their passage of the Channel; and while it remained in the hands of an English garrison⁴ there was always the temptation to engage in Continental⁵ wars and to employ the army for purposes of aggression⁶ as well as of defence. Still the prospects⁸ of regaining⁹ the ancestral possessions of the Plantagenets in France seemed so hopeless that the English sovereigns might well doubt whether it were not now time to give the Navy the first and the Army the second place; and this question, already half decided¹¹ by the keen good sense of King Henry the Eighth, was finally determined¹² by the loss of Calais itself. There was, of course, always a frontier to be guarded on the Tweed, but with the cessation of expeditions to France, which had invariably called the Scotch¹³ armies across the border, there was no longer the same danger of Scottish invasion; and moreover, England and Scotland were now beginning to draw closer together. Thus it would seem that after the death of Queen Mary there should have been little reason for the existence of an English army, and[109] indeed it will be seen that the national force became in many respects

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