Bowmen of England

by Donald Featherstone

  ‘Who thought it then a manlie sight and trim

  To see a youth of clean, compacted limb,

  Who with a comely grace, in his left hand,

  Holding his bow, did take his steadfast stand,

  Setting his left foot somewhat forth before,

  His arrow with his right hand nocking sure,

  Not stooping, nor yet standing straight upright,

  Then, with his left hand little ‘bove his sight,

  Stretching his arm out, with an easy strength,

  To draw an arrow of a yard in length.’

  The English longbowmen might well have appeared to aim instinctively because it was quicker, but they really took careful aim, using their judgment to determine the height of their aim. Over the course of hundreds of years it has been proven that the best manner of using a bow is to use the same force for every shot regardless of whether the target is close or far away. This is exactly what the English archer did – he used the full power of his bow every time, never instinctively using more or less of it in order to reach his mark. The bow being held perpendicularly to the ground, their stance was sideways on to their target; in this way the best use could be made of the muscles needed for drawing a war-bow into such a position that the arrow in the bow lay under the eye. This stance also meant that they could stand closer together, thus better concentrating their volleys, which were made even more effective by the rear ranks being able to fire over the heads of the men in front of them.

  The best archers looked comfortable and free from awkwardness – a good stance was always graceful and never ugly – competent archery lends itself admirably to the statuesque position. With the bow held out by one arm pointing towards the mark or target, the head was turned in the same direction only as far as was comfortable. The other hand, drawing the string back with the arrow ‘nocked’ on to it, was brought to such a position under or alongside the chin that the tail of the arrow was at a point under the aiming eye. To make sure that the arrow was brought back to the same point under the eye every time, the string would touch one point on the face – on the chin, the lips or the nose. The chin, either right in the middle or at some spot on the side, was the commonest; the lips were the most sensitive and made it possible to detect more easily any slight variation to one side of the proper place. The drawing-hand was, at the same time, brought back firmly to its ‘anchor-point’ (a definite ‘anchor-point’ was of the utmost importance as it very largely influenced the accuracy of the aim for elevation). If the knuckle at the base of the first finger came up against the angle of the jaw, an almost foolproof anchor-point was obtained.

  After reaching the full-draw position there was a brief pause before the arrow was sent on its deadly way; during which the aim was finally taken. Now was the time when practice, instinct, innate ability, and all the other factors that made one archer better than another, came into play. Instinctively, the bowman checked all the other vital points in his stance – his bodily balance, the pressure of the fingers of both hands, the position of the elbows, the anchor-point, the angle of the bow, but especially the length of the draw.

  The more expert the archer, the shorter the period of holding; and it was always the same length of time – every fraction of a second over his normal holding period, with the bow held at full draw, took something away from the cast of the bow and caused the arrow to fall short. During the whole act of shooting, from the beginning of the draw until after the arrow was loosed, the archer held his breath, with lungs just normally filled. The action of shooting was not hurried, the same time was taken with each arrow; the English archer acquired a regular rhythm. He would rather come down and start again if he were not satisfied – better that than to take a chance with what he knew to be a bad arrow.

  When the whole body was under tension at full-draw, concentration reached its peak as the slight final movement of the bow-arm was made to complete the aim. Rather than force their arms to move fractionally in their sockets, some archers would shift their body weight a trifle on to the rear foot. All knew that it was best to bring the bow-hand up to the required elevation just before or at the moment the draw was completed; in this way only a very minute adjustment was needed after the shaft-hand had been finally anchored. Every archer developed some little characteristic action or movement that distinguished him from his fellows; he sought to settle down into a style which suited him best, because it was comfortable and automatic, bringing maximum success.

  When Henry V addressed his archers before Agincourt he endeavoured to fire them by dwelling on the cruelties in store for them should they fall into the hands of the French, who, he said, had sworn to amputate their first three fingers so that they would never more slay man or horse. Many an English archer, captured by French or Scots, could ruefully hold up two hands to show that the thumbs and first two fingers had been torn away from each. His comrades set a vengeful value on them – twenty enemy lives for the thumbs and half a score for the fingers. From this, the importance of the archer’s fingers is emphasised – every archer sought for a ‘sharp loose’; acquired by an apparent, although not actual, feeling of increasing the pull of the fingers on the string until it suddenly and instantaneously slipped off the fingers without any sign of creeping, or any feel that the fingers had relaxed. Most of the feel of drawing should be put into the first finger; the string starting quite close up to the first joint on that finger and sloping away across the middle of the first joint of the second finger, finishing up almost at the tip of the third finger, which will then be prevented from doing too much. A very ‘sharp loose’ could be got in this way, as the first finger, the lazy one, was under better control.

  The first finger was the strongest but the laziest; the second was also strong and not noticeably temperamental, it would generally follow the first finger; the third finger was the weakest, but it was also the most willing and could be hurt if it did more than its proper share of drawing.

  The older archers endeavoured to instil into the beginners the need to lay the body to the bow, to draw from the thigh and hip as much as from the arm. To learn to shoot with a dropping shaft was essential; an arrow will go a certain distance up into the air before it falls towards its mark – when an arrow has its point directly on the target to be hit there is only one distance at which the arrow will fall on to the mark itself. This is ‘point-blank’ range and for an average man drawing a bow of, say, forty-two-pound draw-weight (under half that of the old English archer) that distance will be somewhere between 80 and 100 yards. An adjustment had to be made in the aim for elevation when shooting at a distance longer or shorter than point-blank range, bearing in mind that the bow was always drawn to the same extent so that the same power was used each time. This was done by selecting a point at which to aim either, for shorter distances, on the ground short of the target, or, for longer distances, in a tree or some other tall object above and behind the target. In the latter case, this often meant that the mark was obscured by the bow-hand, but the line of the arrow was constantly under observation.

  An archer was often called upon to shoot straight and fast; but often he had to deal with an enemy hiding behind a wall or an arbalastier with his mantlet (a wooden shield) raised – the only way in which such protected men could be hit was to fire in such a manner that the shaft fell upon them straight from the clouds. Even as early as Richard I’s siege of Messina, the archers drove the Sicilians from the walls in this manner – ‘for no man could look out of doors but he would have an arrow in his eye before he could shut it’.

  It is evident from the fact that they wore no defensive armour that the archers were designed to be light infantry, swift and mobile, skilful and deadly with their weapons. The name of Edward I must ever be memorable in history for the encouragement he gave to the longbow. But we seek in vain for the man who founded the tradition that the English, whatever their weapon, should always be good shots – the English archer was reputed to be able to draw and discharge his bow
twelve times in a single minute, at a range of 250 yards, and if he once missed his man in these twelve shots he was but lightly esteemed.

  Here it is difficult to separate fact from fiction; the old chroniclers ventured away from accuracy when describing the feats of the English archer, that is highly possible – but, to counter it, there are many modern archers who can emulate and best the reputed feats of Robin Hood and his men! For a weary and sick army of less than 6,000 men to defeat over 25,000 French at Agincourt must indicate that the archers could notch with a shaft every crevice and joint of a man-at-arms’ harness, from the clasp of his bascinet to the hinge of his greave. With that in mind, can we calmly discount the story of the Genoan crossbowman who raised his arm over his mantlet and shook his fist at the English, a hundred paces from him? Twenty of the English bowmen immediately loosed shafts at him, and when the man was afterwards slain, it was found that he had taken eighteen shafts through his forearm. Or, the account of two English archers firing at the hempen anchor-cord of the captured English cog Christopher held in Calais harbour – at 200 paces the archers in four shots had cut every strand of the cord so that the boat went on to the rocks!

  Well authenticated fiction about the period, with copious use of the chronicles of such as Froissart, can tell much about the performances of these semi-legendary characters who so moulded mediaeval English history. One can read in The White Company by A. Conan Doyle of a contest between a crossbowman of Brabant and an English archer who says:

  ‘To my mind, the longbow is a better weapon than the arbalest; I will venture a rover with you, or try the long butts or hoyles.’ The veteran selects a Scotch bow, recognisable because the upper nock is without and the lower within – ‘A good piece of yew, well nocked, well strung, well waxed and very joyful to the feel.’ He is very careful about the arrows that he uses ‘… I love an ash arrow pierced with cornel-wood for a roving shaft.. it has been my mind to choose a saddle-backed feather for a dead shaft and a swine-backed for a smooth flier …’

  The crossbowman, impatient at such slow and methodical actions, drew his moulinet from his girdle and, fixing it to the windlass, draws back the powerful double cord until it clicked into the catch. Then from his quiver he drew a short thick quarrel, which he placed with the utmost care upon the groove. Before he could fire at the nominated mark, a large grey stork flapped heavily into view with a peregrine falcon poised over its head, awaiting its opportunity of darting down on its clumsy victim. When the pair were a hundred paces from them the crossbowman raised his weapon to the sky and there came the short, deep twang of his powerful string. His bolt struck the stork just where its wing meets the body, and the bird whirled aloft in a last convulsive flutter before falling wounded and flapping to the earth. At the instant that the bolt struck its mark, the old archer, hitherto standing listless with arrow on string, bent his bow and sped a shaft through the body of the falcon. Whipping another arrow from his girdle, he sent it skimming a few feet from the earth to strike and transfix the stork for a second time before it could touch the ground.

  In this way the archer proved that the longbow could do what the crossbow could not, for even the most expert arbalestier could not speed another shaft skywards before the bird had reached the ground, as did the archer.

  In the nature of trick-shooting probably of little use in actual warfare is the shooting of an arrow so that it covers vast distances – a mile in three flights is recorded, as is a length of 630 paces. To do this the archer would use a bow of exceptional size and strength; sitting down upon the ground he would place his two feet at either end of the stave. With an arrow fitted, he then pulled the string towards him with both hands until the head of the shaft was level with the wood. The great bow would break and groan and the cord vibrate with the tension; the archer raised his two feet, with the bow-stave on their soles, and his cord twanged with a deep rich hum that could be heard for a considerable distance as the arrow sped on its way.

  During the contest between the archer and crossbowman that has already been mentioned, both fire at a shield made of inch-thick elm with a bull’s hide over it. The bolt from the crossbow is driven deeply into the wood; the archer carefully greases his shaft and sends it towards the shield. On inspection, the shield has a round clear hole in the wood at the back of it, showing that the arrow has passed through it.

  English archers tried to avoid fighting with the sun in their front, considering the dazzling splendour of a summer’s day to be very unfavourable to shooting. At Crécy, when the sudden gleam of sunshine after the rain burst forth behind the English, its beams, besides dazzling the eyes of the enemy, flashed upon their polished shields and corselets with a lustre so brilliant that the archers discharged their first flight of arrows with more than usual certainty of aim. Wind and weather will likewise exercise a certain influence upon even the most superbly directed arrow; for shooting in boisterous weather, a comparatively heavy arrow does best.

  In addition to being incomparable with his missile weapon, the English archer would frequently discard his bow and fight on foot with sword, axe or maul. When a knight was seated on a horse it was almost impossible to get any power into a swing with a sword, so that he had to stand up to deliver his blow. Standing in the stirrups, he left exposed the one unprotected part in his whole armoured body – his seat. This was the target of the nimble archers and they seldom missed with their keen swords as they dodged on light feet in and out of the horse and foot mêlée.

  Well might Sir John Fortescue say:

  ‘The might of the realme of England standyth upon archers.’

  Chapter 6

  His Longbow

  ‘What of the bow?

  The bow was made in England,

  Of true wood, of yew wood,

  The wood of English bows;

  For men who are free

  Love the old yew-tree

  And the land where the yew-tree grows.’

  Marching Song of the White Company

  Gonan Doyle

  Apart from some rough unfinished staves in the Tower of London recovered, in 1841, from the wreck of the Mary Rose sunk in 1545, and the remains of an early bow dug up at Berkhamsted Castle, thought to have dated from the siege of 1217, and now in the British Museum – there are probably no surviving specimens of the tens of thousands of longbows made during the Middle Ages.

  There is little reason for any of them to be preserved; it was a weapon of the common man, kept in the corner of lowly cottages and then only if fit for use. The war-bow was not a decoration to be hung on the walls of castles, manors and great houses, along with the swords, shields and lances of ancestral knights. The old bow had nothing sufficiently artistic about it for it to form an attractive ornament for the wall after its useful life was over. If used long enough, every good bow eventually broke or developed faults that made it useless for anything except firewood – no inferior weapon could be retained by the English archer because his very life depended upon its efficiency.

  It cannot be claimed that the longbow contributed towards the foundation of the British Empire; but it may well have gone a long way towards discouraging other countries and powers from attempting to add England to their empires. It was, in fact, simply a primitive form of artillery, playing the same part then as now – softening up the enemy to allow the infantry to get to grips under the most advantageous conditions. There are numerous instances of archers being used in most intelligent fashion to cover the movement of other troops – a ‘combined operation’ at the landing of English men-at-arms at Cadzand, in 1346, enabled them to get comfortably ashore whilst the defenders were pinned down by hails of arrows from massed archers. In the autumn of 1342 Robert of Artois was besieging Vannes, then second city of Brittany; after spending the first few days in making preparations for the assault D’Artois delivered it early one morning. The archers put down what would now be called a ‘standing barrage’ on to the battlements – so fierce and accurate that, according to Froissart,
the battlements were soon cleared and not an enemy dared show his head. Covered by this fire, the men-at-arms advanced to the assault; but the town actually fell at night when a feint attack drew defenders from the walls to the gates, thus permitting small parties of English to scale the walls and attack from within.

  In the summer of 1344 the Earl of Derby was attacking the town of Bergerac in Gascony, using the fleet on the river Dordogne in a combined land-and-water attack on a portion of the wall close to the river. Vessels were filled with archers, who, as soon as a breach had been made in the wall, kept up such a heavy fire that the garrison did not dare venture into the open to repair it. Others engaged in a long duel with Genoese crossbowmen in the town to draw their fire from the breach. The ranges at which these operations took place are not known, but the longbow had an effective range of 200 – 240 yards; Shakespeare says 290 yards (Henry IV, Part 2, Act III, Scene ii). Edward VI’s ‘Journal’ states that the King’s archers could completely pierce a board one inch thick.

  The skill and deadliness of the English archer were not a matter of chance; the law prescribed the bow-weights which were proper for youths of various ages, because the weapon was little use without special training. Bishop Latimer wrote: ‘My father was diligent in teaching me to shoot with the bow; he taught me to draw, to lay my body to the bow, not to draw with the strength of the arm as other nations do, but with the strength of the body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength; as I increased in these my bows were made bigger and bigger.’ With so much practice and legislature to ensure that it was carried out, it is small wonder that the yeomen of England could pull a war-bow of 100 lb. or more with ease and skill. Incidentally, the contract price of a bow in 1341 was – unpainted, is.; painted, 1s. 6d.; a sheaf of twenty-four arrows cost 15. 2d. and the archers received pay amounting to 3d. per day.