Clothing for foot soldiers was contracted for at 40_s._ a head. After the victory at Kinsale, we read of no more levies in Derbyshire, but the drain had been severe. Of foot-soldiers alone, some 450 were raised in that single county, from 1595 to 1601, and we may be sure that most of them never returned. Naturally the service was very unpopular; 'Better be hanged at home than die like dogs in Ireland' had become a Cheshire proverb. Sometimes it was necessary to 'set sufficient watch in all the highways, footpaths, and bye-lanes, for the apprehending of such soldiers as shall offer to escape before God sends a wind.' And it is not difficult to see how Shakespeare made the study for his immortal picture of the ragged regiment with whom Falstaff refused to march through Coventry. 'You appointed twelve shires,' said the Mayor of Bristol, 'to send men here for Cork. We protest unto your lordships, excepting of some two or three shires, there was never man beheld such strange creatures brought to any muster. They are most of them either old, lame, diseased, boys, or common Rodys; few of them have any clothes, small, weak, starved bodies, taken up in fair, market, and highway, to supply the place of better men kept at home. If there be any of them better than the rest we find they have been set forth for malice.... We have done what we could to put able men into silly creatures' places, but in such sort that they cannot start nor run away.'[236] [Sidenote: Officers and adventurers.] [Sidenote: veteran.]