While skimming through the Calendar of State Papers, Volume 3, 1591-1594, I found this.

1592?
103. [The Council to the Justice of Peace]. Transmit schedules of recusants in their respective counties; their principle houses they are themselves secretly and suddenly to visit, and take possession of their arms and armour, to be restored to them at such time as they shall dutifully conform themselves to the laws, in resorting to the church. They are to appoint honest persons in like manner secretly to disarm recusants of the meaner sort, leaving fitting proportions of bows and arrows and black bills for defence of their houses. They are to bestow the armour in their own houses till further directions. Any recusant suspected of conveying away armour should be examined on oath. Any recusant not in the schedule is to be proceeded against; the yearly revenues and the value of goods of recusants are also to be impartially certified.

A recusant was someone who refused to attend Anglican services. The imposition of the Anglican religion on England had caused rebellion in the past, and that was why the council confiscated the weapons and armor of the recusants. It is interesting that they were allowed to keep their bows and bills for self-defense. It seems that by 1592 the government had no fear of an uprising of bowmen and billmen against its army of pikemen and musketeers. The rebels of Kett’s Rebellion and the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 had been made up of mostly bowmen and billmen and they were crushed by a combination of cavalry, pikemen and harquebusiers.