his age, or of where he was buried. All that is known of his early years is that he was acting as a spearman at Calais in 1533. It is probable, therefore, that he had seen something like fifty years' service in the military profession, and over forty in that of an Engineer.

Pelham, who had so distinguished himself at the sieges of Leith, Caen and Havre, had by the year 1567 risen to be Lieutenant of the Ordnance. We find, by a warrant dated in August of that year, from the Earl of Warwick, the Master-General, that Pelham is therein called by that title. In 1574 he was appointed, with Admiral Sir W. Winter, to inspect and report on the fortifications along the shores of the Thames. When doing this they particularly named Queenborough as a place which was highly suited for a naval depôt. In 1579 he was sent to Ireland to aid in the suppression of the Earl of Desmond's rebellion. He was at this time knighted by the Lord Deputy, Sir William Drury. When that officer died, Sir William Pelham was appointed Justiciary of Ireland, with the authority of a Lord Deputy, pending the appointment of a successor to Drury, and held the post until the end of 1580. On February 3rd of that year this provisional appointment was made permanent by patent from the Queen, and his salary of £1,300 a year charged against the Irish establishment. During this period he acted most vigorously against the rebels, and had brought the affair almost to a conclusion before he was superseded by the appointment of the new Lord Deputy. Of his conduct during this period Fuller speaks thus:

"Say not that he did but stop a gap for a twelvemonth at the most, seeing it was such a gap destruction had entered in thereat to the final ruin of that kingdom had not his providence prevented it. For in this juncture of time Desmond began his rebellion, inviting Sir William to side with him, who wisely gave him the Heaving with a smile into the bargain. And although our knight (for want of force) could not cure the wound, yet he may be said to have washed and kept it clean, resigning it in a recovering condition to Lord Grey, who succeeded him."

On his return from Ireland Pelham was reinstated in his post of Lieutenant of the Ordnance, and in the following year was appointed, together with the Earl of Shrewsbury, Sir Ralph Sadleir, and Sir Henry Nevill, to convey Mary, Queen of Scots, to the castle of Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Nevill and he were afterwards left in charge of the royal captive. This, however, could not have been for long, as we find him again at the Ordnance at the end of 1583, when he rendered an account of his stewardship for the preceding ten years. Unquestionably there was something very wrong in his management of the department, and many scandals

were afloat. Walsingham, in a letter to the Earl of Leicester in December, 1585, says :

"There falleth out daily, as I am informed, new discoveries of abuses touching the office of the ordnance, as that there should be a hundred brass pieces missing, which doth so aggravate her Majesty's displeasure against Sir William Pelham, in that he did neglect with that care that appertained to oversee the inferior offices as she can hardly endure any man to deal for him.'

The result of the peculations which he had permitted to be carried on unchecked was that a claim for £10,000 was made on his estate by the Queen, and he was suspended from his functions, although apparently he continued to draw the salary of his office.

Whilst he was in disgrace the Earl of Leicester, who had been appointed to the command of an expeditionary force in the Low Countries, was most desirous to secure his services as Marshal to the troops, in which position he would be second only to himself. The Queen was obstinate in refusing to grant her favourite's request, and he was equally pertinacious in continuing to make the application.

"I pray you, sir," writes he to Walsingham, "let me know whether I shall have Sir William Pelham or no."

And

"I hear nothing of Sir William Pelham."

And again, later on

"If Sir William Pelham be not hastened hither, or some such man of judgment in martial affairs, we shall hardly do that good I wish for here."

The Queen was still obdurate, and Leicester began to despair. It is clear, however, that he had a most excellent opinion of the military genius of Pelham, for he again returns to the attack :

"If her Majesty will look for honour and good service send away Mr. Pelham. We have no such man to govern the army of all the men they have here. I beseech you, as you find her Majesty well disposed, remember Bingham, but first dispatch away Sir William Pelham, whose abode one month now may hinder us greatly."

These are extracts from various letters written by Leicester to Walsingham, and are only samples of the numerous applications he made for the assistance of the old Engineer.

In the end he was successful. The Queen waived her demands upon the defaulting Lieutenant of her Ordnance, and permitted him to join Leicester as his Marshal. Pelham left London for his new post early in July, 1586, and arrived on the 11th of the month.

"A good aid and comfort he will be to me, and I heartily pray your Lordships from me to thank her Majesty humbly for it."

The campaign now began, and whilst acting as Engineer at the siege of Doesburg, he received a severe wound in the stomach from a caliver shot. Leicester, who was with him at the time, was sorely distressed, as the wound seemed likely to prove mortal, but was much relieved when he found the matter was not so bad as he had feared.

"The Marshal," he writes to Walsingham, "slept well, ate whatever was ordered him with good appetite and digestion, was free from fever and cheerful. So the surgeon is of opinion, whether the bullet be within his body or without, he is out of danger, for which I thank my Lord God most humbly, for as my earnest suit brought him over, so his going now with me was the cause of his hurt."

Pelham recovered from his wound, and aided Leicester throughout his campaign, but the shock was, in the long run, too much for his aged frame, and he gradually sank in health and strength. He served through the winter of 1586, and on into the following year, until Leicester left the Netherlands for England. He was, however, too ill to follow his chief, and died at Flushing on November 24th, 1587.

"I have, in my own experience, known some principal great commanders, as Sir William Pelham, a noble and renowned soldier, who was Lord Marshal in my lord of Leicester's time in the Low Countries who both by experience and observation was wonderfully skilful in this kind" (engineering) "and notwithstanding he had most excellent officers under him and men of exceeding rare knowledge in these practices, yet in these great and important affairs of fortifications and assurances of guarding the camp, he still performed all things by his own proper command and directions, neither could any danger how eminent or certain soever either in the views, approaches, or the discovery of places fit to be fortified, deter or keep him back, but notwithstanding he received many great and almost deadly wounds, still performed these services in his own person." (Markham's "Five Decades of Warre.")

The death of Sir William Pelham left a great blank in the Engineer history of Elizabeth's reign. Following, as he did, after Sir Richard Lee, the country had for many years been served by men of exceptionally high attainments in this branch of military science, and as the need for such had throughout the time been very urgent, it was well for the monarch and her government that there had been good men ready to answer to their call.

One more crisis the country was called on to go through, and that a danger apparently far greater and more imminent than any which had preceded it. Even before the death of Pelham, the invasion of England by Spain was being prepared for in the arsenals of that country, and a gigantic Armada was rapidly

approaching completion. The national spirit of the English was in consequence thoroughly aroused, and defensive measures were being carried out in all directions. Then, as now, the fleet was expected to bear the main brunt of the attack, and to her navy England looked to preserve her shores from insult. Still, it was necessary to face the contingency of disaster in that arm, and it was therefore decided to develop, as far as time would permit, the defences which had been constructed for the protection of her ports and arsenals, as well as to raise a powerful army to resist invasion. The latter, which numbered over a hundred thousand men, contained in its ranks nearly 15,000 pioneers, drawn from the English and Welsh counties in proportion to their population, Kent making the largest contribution, viz., 2,154; and Huntingdon the smallest, viz., 9 only. This body remained in pay from November, 1587, to the end of September, 1588.

It is impossible to trace the Engineers or Trenchmasters placed at the head of this vast body of military artisans; but it must unquestionably have been large. We are also without record of the work which was done in the hasty repairs to the fortifications, with the one exception of Tilbury and Gravesend. An army to cover London was encamped at Tilbury, under the command of the Earl of Leicester, and he at once proceeded to inspect the works of defence which existed at these two points. The result was in both cases eminently unsatisfactory. At Gravesend he found the fort dismantled, and its platforms rotten. He also inspected the ground upon which it was proposed to throw up an outwork, the plan of which had been brought to him by Lord Hunsdon. This he highly approved of, both as regards site and design. Tilbury he reported to be in still worse state than Gravesend. There was some good artillery there; but the platforms were rotten and useless. The blockhouses were so badly provided with stores that he declared he had never seen places so indefensible or built to so little purpose. Better that they should be demolished than to be a perpetual cost for keeping them to no purpose. There were only ten or twelve barrels of powder in each blockhouse. He therefore demanded a stock to be sent him, equal to the necessities of the times; also from fifty to sixty wheelbarrows and other implements for the pioneers, as well as beer and beef for the garrisons (Leicester to Walsingham, July 23rd, 1588).

Sir Henry Cobham at once ordered 500 pioneers to proceed to Tilbury, to place matters on a better footing, and a few days even wrought a great change in the aspect of affairs. Leicester was able to report that the forts at Gravesend and Tilbury were in as good strength as time would permit. Meanwhile, however, the

Armada was receiving its death blow, and before the end of the month had disappeared. Leicester's division was therefore disbanded on August 17th, and matters resumed their ordinary position. Two Engineers, Frederick Giambelli, an Italian, and Thomas Bedwell, his assistant, had been sent to Tilbury to supervise the works, and they arrived just as Leicester retired. In a few days Giambelli had submitted an estimate of what was required for the new works. As this is a curious specimen, it may be not out of place to quote it here:

"Borde to make the wharfe two large lodes by
estimation.

66

Faggots for the upper part of the same xx lodes
at iiii le lode

"Tall wood for piles ten lodes att vi le lode
"Timber for one drawbridge two gates and one
postern by estimon xii lodes at xiij iiii" le
lode.

"Fir poles for the palisades fifteen hundreds at
xxx le C1.

"Rafters of Oke or Elme for the rayles and

principall posts of the Palisado CC worth
by estim" viiid le pece

"Spikes of Iron for the Palisado three thousand
at iiiis le C

"Spikes nayles henges and two gudgeons of iron

and a chayne and locks for the drawbridge.
and gates coste

"Two Barges to be hired for xv days at vi3 the
day le pece

"Six Tombrells to be hired for xv days at
iiis iiiid per diem le pece

"Three hundred laborers for xv days at viii per

diem le pece

"Fees of officers for xv days

CV

"Sum totall ccxlvii' viii iiii" d"

This document was endorsed by Burleigh on August 25th"An estimate for money for finishing the forts at Gravesend and Tilbury in Essex."

After the subsidence of the threatened storm of the Spanish invasion, only one further incident of importance as regards Engineers remains to be noticed till the close of the Queen's reign. Three officers of that branch of the service were selected to accompany Lord Mountjoy in his expedition to Ireland in