Under the rule of his boy successor we find little change in the old order of things. There was the usual fight with the Scotch on the border, and yet another crushing defeat, at Pinkie, of the old inveterate enemy. But hired Italian musketeers contributed not a little to the victory; and the state of the forces of the shires was most unsatisfactory. Fraudulent enlistment and desertion, doubly expensive since the payment of coat- and conduct-money had been instituted, were as common as ever, and the dishonesty of officers was never more flagrant. A stringent Act was passed to check these irregularities, with apparently the usual infinitesimal measure of success. Foreign troops were never so much employed in England, though even they complained of unjust dealing. The insurrection in the west was suppressed principally by landsknechts and Italian harquebusiers, not however before they had suffered one repulse from the men of Devon, beyond doubt to the secret joy of all true Englishmen. Nevertheless the reign saw the rise of the Gentlemen Pensioners and, more important still, the appointment of a lord-lieutenant in every county, to be responsible for the forces of the shire. The latter was no doubt a stroke in the right direction, but it did not touch the heart of the matter. The worn-out machinery which had been patched and tinkered for five centuries was not so easily to be repaired; and a new fly-wheel, though it might turn magnificently on its own axis, could not keep the other broken-down wheels in motion. [Sidenote: 1553.]