“If I be not ashamed of my soldiers I am a soused gurnet. I have misused “the king’s press most damnably. I have got, in exchange for a hundred “and fifty soldiers, three hundred and I press me none but good “householders, yeomen’s sons: inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as “had been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves as “had as lief hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caviler “worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such “toasts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, “and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge “consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves “as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked “his sores: and such indeed as were never soldiers; but discarded unjust “serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters and “ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; ten “times more dishonourably ragged than an old-faced ancient: and such have I “to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you “would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come “from swine-keeping, from eating chaff and husks. A mad fellow met me “on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the “dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through “Coventry with them, that’s flat:--Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt “the legs, as if they had gyves on; for, indeed, I had the most of them out “of prison. There’s but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half “shirt is two napkins tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a “herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from “my host at St. Alban’s, or the red-nosed innkeeper of Daintry; but that’s “all one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge. The above profound reflections (which every officer of irregular infantry would do well to lay to his heart) were made by Sir John Falstaff, on the occasion of a review of his troops near Coventry--at which the Prince of Wales and the Earl of Westmoreland assisted. I am inclined to fix the date of this important military display on the third day previous to the battle of Shrewsbury. The Royalist forces were proceeding towards that city by forced marches. Sir John Falstaff, as is well known, came upon the field in ample time to give battle to the rebels; and it is improbable that any system of forcing could have got him over sixty miles of ground in less than three days.