The army was indifferently recruited and badly paid.

England's battles were fought by men of whom many were only mercenaries, with no stake in England's rise or fall.
In the army and navy there were protests, many and powerful, against the smallness of the pay, while the cost of living had vastly increased.

In more than one engagement on land England had had setbacks of a serious kind, and there were those who saw in the blind-eyed naval policy, in the general disregard of the seamen's position, in the means used for recruiting, the omens of disaster.

The police courts furnished the navy with the worst citizens of the country.

Quota men, the output of the Irish prisons--seditious, conspiring, dangerous--were drafted for the king's service.
The admiralty pursued its course of seizing men of the mercantile marine, taking them aboard ships, keeping them away for months from the harbours of the kingdom, and then, when their ships returned, denying them the right of visiting their homes.