How many times was the who national " fyrd " called out between 1046 and 1065 ?
The historian David Sturdy has cautioned about regarding the " fyrd " as a precursor to a modern national army composed of all ranks of society , describing it as a " ridiculous fantasy " :The persistent old belief that peasants and small farmers gathered to form a national army or " fyrd " is a strange delusion dreamt up by antiquarians in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries to justify universal military conscription .