The next in succession of our kings was a great soldier and a great administrator, yet the work that he did for the army was curiously mixed. Engaged as he was incessantly in war, he felt more than others the imperfection of the feudal as a military system. The number of knights that could be summoned to his standard was very small, and was diminished still further by constant evasion of obligations. He therefore regulated the commutation of personal military service for payment in money, and formed it, under the old name of scutage, into a permanent institution. Advantage was generally taken of the system, and with the money thus obtained he took Brabançon mercenaries, the prototypes of the landsknechts of a later time, permanently into his pay. When he needed the feudal force to supplement these mercenaries, he fell back on the device of ordering every three knights to furnish and equip one of their number for service; and finally, driven to extremity, he re-established the old English fyrd as a National Militia by the Assize of Arms. This, the earliest of enactments for the organisation of our national forces, and the basis of all that followed down to the reign of Philip and Mary, contained the following provisions:-- Every holder of one knight's fee shall have a coat of mail,[6] a helmet, a shield, and a lance; and every knight as many coats of mail, helmets, shields, and lances as there are fees in his domain. Every free layman having in chattels or rent to the value of sixteen marks shall keep the same equipment. Every free layman having in chattels or rent ten marks, shall keep an habergeon,[7] a chaplet[8] of iron, and a lance. All burgesses and the whole community of freemen shall have a wambais,[9] a chaplet of iron, and a lance. It is noteworthy that neither the bow nor the axe appear in this list of the national weapons, an omission for which it is difficult to account, since the bow was evidently in full use at the time. Possibly the temptation to employ it for purposes of poaching may have been so strong as to make the authorities hesitate to enjoin the keeping of a bow in every poor freeman's house. The influence of the poacher will be found equally potent when the time comes for the introduction of firearms.