A monstrous fault there hath been somewhere." Leicester took a manful and sagacious course at starting.

Those who had no stomach for the fight were ordered to depart.

The chaplain gave them sermons; the Lieutenant-General, on St.Stephen's day, made them a "pithy and honourable" oration, and those who had the wish or the means to buy themselves out of the adventure, were allowed to do so: for the Earl was much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture serviceable troops.

Swaggering ruffians from the disreputable haunts of London, cockney apprentices, brokendown tapsters, discarded serving men; the Bardolphs and Pistols, Mouldys, Warts, and the like--more at home in tavern-brawls or in dark lanes than on the battle-field--were not the men to be entrusted with the honour of England at a momentous crisis.

He spoke with grief and shame of the worthless character and condition of the English youths sent over to the Netherlands.