Nevertheless, little or nothing was done to make good defects in the years that followed. The dishonesty of the officers and the indiscipline of the men in Ireland was past all belief; but it was only with extreme difficulty that Elizabeth was induced to remedy the evil, which brought untold misery and oppression upon the forlorn Irish, by the simple process of paying her soldiers their wages. It was not until 1567, when the movements of Philip the Second gave the alarm of invasion, that a corps of arquebusiers, four thousand strong, was formed for the defence of the coast towns from Newcastle to Plymouth, and prizes were given for the encouragement of marksmanship with the new weapon. Even so, practice with the bow was still enjoined upon the villagers, as though no better arm could be discovered for them.[116] [Sidenote: 1569.] Then came the rebellion, which but narrowly missed a most serious character, of the Catholic nobility in the North. Disloyalty was widespread in Yorkshire, and it was proverbial that the Yorkshire levies would not move without pay; but Elizabeth was too economical to send the train-bands from London to nip the insurrection in the bud, and only at the last moment consented to provide money for the payment of the troops on the spot. The difficulties of the commanders were frightful. The numbers that came to muster were far short of the true complement; horsemen were hardly to be obtained by any shift, and the footmen that presented themselves came with bows and bills only, there being but sixty firearms, and not a single pike, among two thousand five hundred infantry. The rebels, on the other hand, were very well equipped, and had a force of cavalry armed after the newest pattern of the Reiters. "If we had but a thousand horse with pistols and lances, five hundred pikes and as many arquebuses," wrote Elizabeth's commanders, "we should soon despatch the matter"; but even so trifling a contingent as this could not be produced except after infinite difficulty and delay.[117] For all this Elizabeth was responsible; but the peril was so great that it stirred even her avaricious soul. From this year bows and bills began slowly to make way for pikes and firearms; and a manuscript treatise in the State Papers shows that the reform was brought under the immediate notice of the Royal Council.[118] [Sidenote: 1570.]