ABSTRACT
John Scot of Amwell (1730-83) In 1628 Sir Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon, a veteran of the continental wars, complained that ‘This Kingdom hath been too long at peace.’ Perhaps he was trying to justify the failure of the expedition to Cadiz which he had led with a degree of incompetence noteworthy even for early seventeenth-century English generals, for he continued, ‘our old commanders, both by sea and by land are worn out, and few men are bred in their places, for the knowledge of war, and almost the thought of war is extinguished.’1
