The nobles who were knights, or who trained for war without bothering to get knighted, could spend a great deal of their time maintaining their combat skills. What made the English troops so effective were their yeomen infantry, who were expert with bow and other weapons. While these English soliders were part timers, they were thoroughly professional. Laws were passed stipulating how much training was to be done (at the soldiers' own expense) and the king checked up on his troops to make sure they were ready. It was a rather efficient system. Full time infantry would have cost more than a Medieval monarch could afford and would have provided a potentially dangerous body of troops for traitorous subordinates to make use of. It was not forgotten in England that several of the Roman army commanders in ancient Britain had rebelled against their emperor. In a modern sense the French had the first regular army, organizing the compagnies d'ordonnance in 1445. These were essentially companies of knights and their supporting squires, archers, and pages kept on the payroll full time, in peace as well as war, to provide the king with a permanent military force, for domestic as well as foreign entanglements.