POLITICAL HISTORY applied, and it is no wonder that it was needed. On March n, 1595, the repayment of a loan due six months earlier was postponed for another six months. On February 23, 1597-8, another repayment was put off for six months. 1 The unfortunate men who declined to lend in these circumstances were compelled to enter into ' good bonds ' for their appearance before the Council. This meant that they were liable to be called up to London, to be kept an indefinite time waiting on the pleasure of the Council, and when called before it might expect to be examined and browbeaten by what we should call Cabinet Ministers, who in addition to their dignity wielded the formidable power of summary punishment by fine and imprisonment. Warlike levies con- tinued in the county. There were three chief theatres of action, to all which Surrey contributed men ; the war in the Low countries, opera- tions in northern France on behalf of Henri IV. against the Spaniards and the League, and ultimately the war in Ireland. There were also expeditions to attack the coasts of Spain and Portugal. The unfortunate expedition to Portugal, under Drake and Norris in 1589, was the occasion of a quarrel in which a long-standing difficulty of Surrey politics appears. Southwark was a debatable land, over which the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London were always striving to extend their jurisdiction, while the county authorities were continually aiming at preserving their biggest town and richest source of revenue for their own use. The strangely jumbled up jurisdiction of Southwark and the neighbouring suburbs will be better explained in another place. But for military purposes Southwark was under the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey. In January, 1590, the people of Southwark appealed to the Lord Mayor against the excessive burden of military contributions put upon them by the deputy lieutenants of Surrey. The latter were summoned before the Star Chamber to answer the complaint of the Lord Mayor. 3 The immediate result is not told to us, though Walsing- ham himself wrote to smooth matters down. Probably Southwark got little by its complaint, for on January 14, 1593-4, reference is made to the refusal of the borough of Southwark to contribute towards the relief of the maimed soldiers of the county of Surrey, though the most part of the maimed soldiers to whom pensions were assigned at the last sessions at Croydon belong to and reside in the said borough. 3 It is clear that there were many Southwark men enlisted after all, and that there was a sense of grievance still existing in Southwark. The traces of this friction between town and county seem to appear in a letter of Lord Howard's, of November 5, 1595,* directing that the 'two decayed bands of soldiers' furnished by the borough of Southwark and part of Brixton should be amalgamated into one band, the said places alleging that they cannot supply the vacancies, most of their wealthiest inhabi- 1 Loseley MSS. dates cited, i. 69, 70. * Ibid. February i, 14, 1889-90, vi. 56, xii. 71. 8 Ibid. January 14, 1593-4, vi. 62. 4 Ibid, date cited, vi. 89. They, the county magistrates, altogether denied the rights of the Lord Mayor in Southwark, probably on this occasion ; but their protest in the Loseley MSS. is undated. 393
