Italy was famous for its high quality city militia, so perhaps the superiority over castle troops was intended? I have not played Venice, but castles are still useful for swords and knights, right?

AFAIK, England did not use "spearmen" in the HYW (except some Welsh spearmen on occasion) - it did use billmen and dismounted knights, so not giving them good spears is historically defensible. What I don't like is depriving their polearm units of the anti-cav properties they had in MTW. And there really should be dismounted knights with spears (lances).