The Long Bow in the 100 Years War

Question: What Made English Archery so Formidable a Force During The Hundred Years War?

Any discussion among the Englishmen of today on the subject of the Hundred Years War, even for those only mildly interested in the subject, will usually call to mind the names of the three main battles, Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. If asked to find a common thread connecting these battles it would most probably be that their archers won the day. Few would recall, if indeed they were ever told in school, the names of Edward III, the Black Prince or Henry V. If the Englishmen of today knows anything of the Hundred Years War it is that it took place in France, against the French and that the English won because they had the best archers and the best bows - longbows.

Before the appearance of this formidable weapon its forerunner, the short bow, had been used in the British Isles for hunting and in battle long before the Norman Conquest and probably came to Britain via Scandinavia.[1] Depictions of shortbows being used by both the Normans and their English adversaries are to be seen on the Bayeux Tapestery.[2]

By the time of the period we know as The Hundred Years War the weapon which later became known as the longbow had been in existence for well over a century. Geraldus Cambrensis who journeyed through Wales in 1188 recorded the power of the Welsh bow at the siege of Abergavenny castle which had taken place six years previous to his visit there.[3]

”… The Welsh shot at them from behind, and with the arrows which sped from their bows they actually penetrated the oak doorway of the tower, which was almost as thick as a man’s palm….”

Geraldus later mentions that an Englishman, William de Braose, told him that in a war against the Welsh one of his men was hit by a Welsh arrow that pierced his thigh, the saddle of his horse and then entered the flank of the horse itself. The rider, upon wheeling his horse around, received exactly the same treatment from the same archer to his other side, effectively skewering him to his horse.[4]

By 1252 the longbow had found its way into the Assize of Arms as a national weapon alongside that of the crossbow.[5] Mention of archers in the Calendars of the Close Rolls prior to this date, we must assume referred only to crossbow-men. In the Liberate Rolls of 1245-1251 we see the entry for April 14th 1246

“…To the bailiffs of Glouceseter. Contrabreve to cause John Malemort, maker of the king’s quarrels, to have his liveries of 7 ½d. for making 100 quarrels a day, and 3d. for his shafting and feathering them,….” [6]

Even as late as 1281 crossbow-men seem to have been paid more than longbow-men and in 1292 the crossbow was still the weapon of choice when Edward I equipped his English and Gascon archers for his Welsh campaigns.[7] It was during his Welsh campaigns that Edward came to realise the potential of the longbow after witnessing first hand not only the power of the Welsh longbows but the tactics the Welshmen of Gwent and Morganwg used in their employ.[8]

Edward was a great tactician and in his reorganisation of the army he adopted the longbow. Drawing on his experiences in the Welsh campaigns he soon developed much of the military strategy that won him victory over the Scots at Falkirk in 1298 and went a long way towards his grandson’s victory, again over the Scots, at Haildon Hill in 1333.[9]

Both of these victories saw dismounted lightly clad archers fighting alongside dismounted cavalry and were, from this point of view, harbingers of the major battles fought during the Hundred Years War. Two other tactics that came from the “Welsh connection” were honed during the wars of the Scottish succession. One was the sideways stance of the archers that presented less of a target to opposing cross-bowmen allowing more firepower per yard across the front line of battle. The other was the practice of ramming sharpened stakes into the ground to protect the archers from the horses of the enemy cavalry. At Conway in 1295 where the Earl of Warwick came up against a Welsh force:

“… The Welsh, on the earl’s approach, set themselves fronting his force with exceeding long spears, which, being suddenly turned toward the earl and his company, with their ends placed in the earth and their points upward, broke the force of the English cavalry…”

Much more could, and has, been written regarding the refinement of English battle tactics incorporating the use of archers well before the Hundred Years War but space does not here permit their inclusion.

Unlike the crossbow, which had developed with a variety of mechanical devices for loading and triggering, the longbow underwent little in the way of technical evolution or innovation from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries.[10] There was little about the longbow that could be developed. The technology was elementary, even primitive, and it remains to this day the simplest way for anyone to cast a missile a greater distance that one’s arm can throw a stone.

The most difficult part in the longbow’s production process was the procurement and selection of the wood from which it was made. The bowyers skill was not particularly hard to learn. The favoured wood was that of the Yew tree (Taxus baccatta) and therein lay the latent potential for the longbow’s great effectiveness. Bow staves were cut from that part of the Yew tree where the heartwood met the sapwood. Bows made from this natural laminate, it was discovered, would, if used the correct way around, propel an arrow much further and with greater velocity than those made from any other wood. The reason for this, whether or not known to the bowyers, is that the outer facing, elastic sapwood resisted tension and the inner facing resilient heartwood resisted compression.[11] The best longbows therefore, had two components working in conjunction to form a natural spring of considerable force.

Although the Yew tree grows in the British Isles it was Mediterranean yew which was most prized.[12] In his book The Book of Archery written in 1840 Hansard tells us that although excellent yew trees grew in Hereford, Monmouth and in the vicinity of Chepstow these trees were looked upon as a national resource and kept for emergencies. Instead Yew wood came from Italy, Castile, Tyre and Crete with the Castillian product surpassing them all.[13] Hansard, quoting Drayton, further states that subsequent to the invasion of Castile by the Black Prince,

“…the Castillians decreed that all yew trees should be destroyed, but their increase be put a stop to forever afterwards..."[14]

The longbow’s great advantage was that it was cheap and expendable. Its disadvantage was that it required a trained operative to render it an effective killing instrument in the field. So inexpensive was the longbow that in battles such as Crecy the longbow-men could discard their bows when their supplies of arrows were exhausted and take to the French with close combat weapons.[15]

An archer proficient in longbow operation did not need his own bow to be effective as a soldier. The weapon was devoid of idiosyncrasy and this allowed for a production base that needed no specialisation in the way that sword or armour production had to be tailored to fit the individual. More importantly single bowyers operating independently anywhere in Britain could produce them. By contrast, crossbow manufacture involved the skills of a number of operatives not least of which was the blacksmith. Crossbow stocks had to be fashioned by woodworkers with greater skill than that required of the longbow bowyer for they had to fit exactly the metal fittings such as the base-plate and the trigger and cocking mechanisms. Also, depending on the model of crossbow, skilled metal workers were involved in gear cutting or the manufacture of winding wheels, the shafts upon which they ran and the crank handles required to operate windlass mechanisms.

Prodigious quantities of bows and arrows were used in major campaigns such as Poitiers, Crecy and Agincourt and the longbow’s simple technology allowed for production to be geared up with very short lead times provided that seasoned bowstaves were in stock. An average archer during the Hundred Years War could easily loose off ten arrows per minute and many historians have put the number at “fifteen reasonably aimed arrows…”[16]

The rains of arrows in the battles described by Froissart go to show just how large an industry English archery tackle must have been. Describing the army that left England before the battle of Crecy, Froissart mentions the number of archers present:
“…They were in number a four thousand men of arms and ten thousand archers, beside Irishmen and Welshmen that followed the host afoot...”[17]

In various accounts Froissart mentions the fact that the English shot great rains of arrows On the road to Crecy he writes:
“…. The Genoways did them great trouble with their cross-bows: on the other side the archers of England shot so wholly together, that the Frenchmen were fain to give place to the Englishmen...”[18]

In the actual battle of Crecy
“…Then the English archers stept forth one pace and let fly their arrows so wholly [together] and so thick, that it seemed snow...”[19]

At Poitiers
“…True to say, the archers did their company that day great advantage; for they shot so thick that the Frenchmen wist not on what side to take heed, and little and little the Englishmen won ground on them...”[20]

And again at Poitiers
“…but in a short space they were put to flight: the archers shot so wholly together that none durst come in their dangers: they slew many a man that could not come to no ransom:…”[21]

If the ten thousand archers Froissart describes were supplied with one hundred arrows each this million arrows was backed by no small production facility. Hardy calculates that every five hundred archers at Crecy would have probably shot off 7,500 arrows in the ninety seconds it took the French cavalry to charge, and reach the English lines.[22] A manufacturing industry that could cope with such huge demands obviously did not grow overnight and respond only to the intermittent requirements of kings military demands. It was able to respond quickly to these demands because it was there ticking over in the background all the time.[23] For an expedition in 1359 the counties produced over 850,000 arrows, 20,000 bows and 50,000 bowstrings. It would have been difficult for an enemy to emulate such a war machine involving, as it did, organizational capacity that spread right down to the farm gate where goose wing feathers had to be saved for the fletchers.[24]

The quality of manufactured archery tackle, at least in London, seems to have been self-regulating by men jealous of their crafts. In 1371 London bowyers delivered a petition the mayor and Aldermen of that city requesting that bowyers be forbidden to work at night as this practice resulted in bad workmanship. The petition also spelled out lines of demarkation and specialisation. It requested that bowyers and fletchers should not be allowed to engage in each other’s trades. In August 1416 a petition from the soon to be formed Ancient Company of Longbowstringmakers was presented to the Mayor and Aldermen of London. The document said that many archers had died as a result of faulty bowstrings and that the blame had fallen upon them. The petition requested warden inspectors with the power to inspect the work of the London longbowstringmakers.[25]

What made English archery so formidable a force in The Hundred Years War was not merely the weapon and the archer but the organisation behind both and the decades, or perhaps centuries of the longbow’s prior use in Britain. Even so, much of the military success attributed to the English archer and the longbow was, in fact, rooted in social customs as much as in military development.

In Britain archery became a source of national pride habituated over a very long period, and socialised within the community. The general disarming that followed 1066 forbade Saxon freeholders to bear knightly arms but this did not apply to the bow, which, among the aristocracy, was not a highly regarded weapon. This policy set the freeholder apart from the weaponless serf. It therefore likely instilled a sense of pride in the bow-holders who, knowing of the part the bow played (or was said to have played) at Hastings, probably regarded it with more than ordinary affection.[26] Certainly the bow came to figure large in English culture as the emergence of Robin Hood as a legendary folk hero attests.

Over many decades, steady government policy in Britain encouraged the use of the longbow in sports and competitions. Thus the crown managed to obtain a large segment of the population trained in use of the longbow, without serious revolts that might have seen the weapon used against the aristocracy. This is a reflection of England’s relatively stable political situation in the period. Compared with France England was a unified State where Englishmen thought of themselves as just that. “Frenchmen”, by contrast, had not yet come to the point in their political thinking where they regarded themselves as French first and, say, Gascon second.

For the French to have imitated the English archery war machine (there is evidence to show that they experimented with it) they would have needed large numbers of peasants training with the longbow for a number of years to bring to the field a force of militarily useful bowmen.[27] The French aristocracy would have been, understandably, very hesitant to have large numbers of peasants in arms. It would have been quite foolhardy to put lethal weapons in the hands of a dissatisfied peasantry and encourage it to practice with them.

The closest modern day analogy of the difference in suitability between arming French and English commoners could perhaps best be demonstrated by the examples of Switzerland and the Balkan States. Switzerland has a universal service militia where every adult man has an assault rifle in his home, with ammunition. He is obliged to practice regularly. This works well in Switzerland. They do not shoot each other down in the streets in large numbers. If the same system were officially enacted in the Balkans people most certainly would shoot one another. The difference lies in the orderliness, discipline and prosperity of the citizenry.
French chivalry was contemptuous of its own archers and they often employed foreign mercenary archers such as the Genoese who had a very good reputation both as good archers and professional soldiers. English armies in the Hundred Years War were essentially wage earning professional soldiers, with an effective chain of command as opposed the French system which, for most of the period, raised its armies by feudal levies.

Individual French knights were no doubt quite as skilled as their English contemporaries, but they were lacking in discipline. The success and reputation of English archery – and we must here remember that the bow is a defensive weapon – was enhanced by the French aristocratic cavalry’s gung-ho insistence on lining itself up for the slaughter. This it did with amazing regularity. The English archer sought not his prey but waited patiently for his enemy to come to him.

Having briefly described some of the social and political reasons for the success of English archery it must be stressed that the commanders, the fighting men and the weapons themselves were what actually won the battles on the day.

In the longbow the English had developed a rapid-fire weapon that could out-range the Continental crossbow. Much scholarly debate has been entered into concerning the relative merits of both weapons and some have claimed that the crossbow, at various times, out-ranged the longbow. This is quite possible because the crossbow was a weapon that, by virtue of its more complex mechanical design, was open to improvement.[28]

Although crossbows had substantially greater draw weights they also had much shorter power strokes, so the actual power developed was likely slightly less than the longbow. Nevertheless, regardless of the technical aspects, one seemingly obvious point must be made. In a war where the opening engagement takes the form of the two sides propelling missiles at each other it would seem that a distinct advantage lies with the side that can hurl its missiles the farthest.[29] On the day at Crecy it is indisputable that English longbows shot farther than Genoese crossbows.[30]

If the range and accuracy of both crossbow and longbow had been identical the rapid-fire rate of the longbow would still have made the weapon preferable for use in battle. The crossbow could be cocked in the shooting position and held there ready for action but it took so long to load that by the time a competent crossbow archer had fired two shots the longbow-man could shoot off at least six. [31]

Good leadership qualities in strategy and discipline are essential when conducting a battle where the main weapon, the one likely to do the most damage at the initial encounter, is a defensive weapon. In a cavalry charge, even if well led, the attacking knights had to concentrate their individual efforts on one particular adversary at a time. With archery the English had two very different ranges at which to conduct the battle. The initial encounter was usually by a shower of arrows falling like rain on the enemy at a distance of up to three hundred yards. This required an observant commander to see where the first volley had fallen and then direct the next volley in relation to where the enemy was standing – or moving to. Strict discipline was required on the part of the archers to hold their fire so that the “rain of arrows” could all be loosed off at the same time.[32]

As soon as the enemy came within charging, and therefore aiming, distance there would be time for the longbow-men to discharge only three or four volleys of arrows on command before they began picking off individuals and their horses. Close to hand the bow became a burden and was discarded by the archer who then entered the fray with maul and dagger.[33]

These tactics, as mentioned previously, underwent a long gestation period that began with Edward I and were so well honed by 1346 that they needed little modification for as long as the English used archery in battles.

Execution of these tactics in the field required that all archers were experienced. Generations of practice, at the town and village butts, in the conservation of energy and the correct use of weight and strength went to produce the skilled archer.[34] Three years after the Peace of Bretigny in a correspondence to the Sheriff of Kent Edward III tells him that, in the past, archery was commonly practised by all his subjects. He tells the Sheriff that the military were greatly assisted by this practice and that it must begin again in earnest before the country becomes short of archers.

“….We, wishing that appropriate measures be taken to prevent this, order that you should publicly cause it to be proclaimed that …all able bodied persons within your county should, on feast days, when there is a holiday, practice with bows and arrows, and with crossbows and bolts, in their games so as to learn the art of archery. Forbidding all and every one, on our behalf, to play at the throwing of stones. Loggats or quoits, at hand ball, foot ball or with bats, at cock fighting or with staves, or other worthless games of this kind, which can do them no good, under threat of imprisonment if they should in any way exercise themselves or take part in these activities.

Witnessed by the King, at Westminster, on 1st day of June [1363].
By the King himself.”[35]

Boys from the age of ten were taught to draw the bow and practice at the butts usually took place in churchyards after mass on Sundays. [36] It was here, on the firing ranges of British churchyards, that the skill of shooting the longbow was perfected by the time that English boys reached adulthood.[37]

The lightest bows had draw weights of around 100 lb. and the heaviest about 175lb. Such bows required years of practice to draw correctly. There was a trick for snapping such a bow "open" which appears to be analogous to weight lifters that have special tricks for pressing the largest weights - you shot "in" your bow. Hardy says that in 1967 in central Africa there were natives who could perform this “shooting in the bow”. In describing their technique Hardy says

“[This] is a perfect description of how the medieval archers of Britain drew their bows. They did their pushing and pulling from a lowered arm position, raising them to the position of the full draw, until they were framed by bow and bowstring. That is why the action was, and is, called “shooting in a longbow….”

Compulsory practice at archery was in all probability not seen as any great hardship. It took place at times that did not interfere with men’s work and had the advantage of turning the unskilled, potential foot soldier, into a semiskilled warrior. As an archer he would be entitled to better rates of pay in service abroad and would be so close to the action that he stood a good chance of gaining booty of which he would get to keep a third share.[38] It made him more employable. Many instances are on record where archers have signed on for a second or third term for service abroad during the period in question.[39]

Archery at the butts in churchyards with maybe twenty or so of one’s village companions no doubt produced an archer capable of hitting his mark at various distances and with the “quick draw” skill required for firing arrows at a rapid rate. Important though the skills of marksmanship and speed were, men still had to be taught to work in unison. Thousands of archers, such as Froissart describes as showering the French with hails of arrows, had to be taught to work in unison under a commander.

The archers who stood in line sideways to the enemy so that - unlike the crossbowmen – their acts of aiming and loading were practically as one, must have spent time practising under a commander. They were certainly no panicky rabble but stood in line waiting for the command to fire.[40] This holding back until commanded to fire bespeaks a trust in the commander and his judgement. Evidence for this massed training under orders though, is scant. It is recorded in many places that during musters at Southampton and other ports of embarkation ships would sometimes be held up for days after the archers arrived for departure. It seems probable that this time would not have been wasted and that the chance to practice with a larger body of men would have been taken up.[41]

In the field massed longbow fire had to be organised to get the maximum impact from a group of bowmen and it required specific, rehearsed formations and practices. It was difficult to get more than two or three rows of archers to shoot at a close target because they would have been in each other’s way. Froissart refers to English archers being arranged in a formation like a harrow. Despite ongoing scholarly debate over whether or not the French word herce equates to the English harrow, this seems to be an adequate description. If English archers were working in triangular formations and had long stakes driven into the ground in front of them like tines, they would indeed have looked like agricultural harrows from a distance.[42]

The reputation English archery enjoys came in large part from its use at Agincourt. However a number of circumstances favoured its cause. It was a battle in which the outcome was decided by the commanders tactical deployment of forces rather than archery skills. The St. Deny’s Chronicle suggests that the French force of 4,000 crossbow-men had been sent away and did not even participate in the battle.[43]

The French virtually forfeited the advantage of their overwhelming numbers by unwisely choosing a battlefield with a narrow frontage, which made large-scale maneuvers almost impossible. They foolishly allowed themselves to be provoked into an assault by Henry who led his troops forward into bowshot range. The main French assault, consisted of heavily armoured, dismounted knights, advancing over muddy farmland with the sun in their eyes. Lines of English archers, faced with rows of glinting armor moving forward at a snails pace, would have been very incompetent not to have caused the devastation they did. Discharging arrows at the rate of twelve or so shots per minute into such a large compressed target was hardly a good demonstration of their skills.

Then, at the decisive point, Henry ordered these lightly equipped, mobile archers to discard their bows and attack with swords and axes. English archers at Agincourt proved just as effective with hand weapons as with their bows and arrows. The incoherent tactics of the French had contributed as much to their defeat as the brilliant leadership of Henry V and the considerable skills of the English archers.

In this essay we have seen that a combination of reasons existed for English Archery’s development into such a formidable fighting force during the period. The evolution of the longbow’s development and the battle tactics that went with it underwent a considerable gestation period in the British Isles well before the wars with France.

The longbow was low tech, cheap, expendable and easy to manufacture on a cottage industry basis by people with relatively low levels of skill. This ease of manufacture gave rise to a large, decentralized industrial base spread far and wide throughout the community.[44] The stability of government in England was such that it was safe to allow the population at large to practice with longbows. This in turn allowed archery in Britain to become deeply ingrained in popular culture.

Regular - and at times compulsory – archery training developed a proficient fighting force that was “ticking over” in the background all the time and could be called to muster at short notice. More importantly the devastation inflicted upon the French by English archers was in no small way contributed to by the tactics of the French themselves whose chivalric ideals led them to consistently (some would say predictably) line themselves up for the slaughter.

Conversely I have come to the conclusion that there was something decidedly obsessive about the popular English attitude to archery of the time. The skeletons of archers from the Mary Rose show men whose bones were deformed through constant archery practice attributable to the pulling of the longbows (with draw weights in excess of 100lbs) that were found with them. For a man to deform himself in such a way takes an excessive amount of dedication over many years.[45] Again, the analogy with modern day weight lifters or bodybuilders seems appropriate.

The major battles of the Hundred Years war were almost all won with the significant contribution of the English longbow-men in defensive posture. It is interesting to speculate upon whether it could not have been used more as an offensive weapon, particularly by the French in mounted guerilla tactics.

Bibliography


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Ayton, A., English Armies in the Fourteenth Century in Rodgers, C., (ed) The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge 1999).

Brereton, G. (ed) Froissart: Chronicles, (London, 1968).

Bradbury, J., The Medieval Archer (Woodbridge, 1985).

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Cambrensis, G., The Itinerary through Wales and the Description of Wales, Thorpe, L., (trans) (Harmondsworth, 1978).

Contamine, P., War in the Middle Ages, Jones, M., (trans) (Oxford, 1984).

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Fowler, K., The Age of Plantagenet and Valois: The Struggle for Supremacy 1328-1498 (London, 1967).

Froissart, J., in Bourchier, J., Lord Berners, (trans) The Chronicles of Froissart, p. 5. At http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/froissart-full.html. Accessed 26/08/02.

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Milliken, E. K., Archery in The Middle Ages (New York, 1967).

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Oman, C. W. C., The Art of War in The Middle Ages: A. D. 378-1515, Beeler, J. H. (ed) (Ithica, 1973).

Oxley, J. E., The Fletchers and Longbowstringmakers of London (London, 1968).

Perroy, E., The Hundred Years War (London, 1962).

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[1] D. Edge, and J. M. Paddock, Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight, (Enderby, 1996) p. 33.

[2] G. A. Hansard., The Book of Archery: Being the Complete History and Practice of the Art, (London, 1840) p. 2.

[3] There is some scholarly debate over the question of whether or not the bows Cambrensis describes were technically longbows or lengthened shortbows. There seems to have been a transitional, evolutionary stage in which shortbows grew in length to the point where they were later classified as longbows. For more on this see J. Bradbury., The Medieval Archer, (Woodbridge,1985) pp. 11-14.

[4] L. Thorpe., (trans) Gerald of Wales: The journey through Wales and The Description of Wales, (Harmondsworth, 1978) p.113.

[5] “… wherein all holders of 40s. in land or nine marks in chattels are desired to provide themselves with sword, dagger, bow and arrow…” For more on this subject see Stubbs, W., Select Charters (9th ed.; Oxford, 1913) p. 364.

[6] Calendar of the Liberate Rolls: Henry III Vol. III. A. D. 1245-1251, (London 1937) p. 41.

[7] “In the Pay Roll of the garrison of Rhuddlan castle, 1281, we find “paid to Geoffrey le Chamberlin for the wages of twelve cross-bowmen, and thirteen archers for twenty-four days, …cross-bowman receiving by the day 4d., and each archer 2d….” C. W. C. Oman The Art of War in the Middle Ages AD. 378-1515 (Ithica, 1973) p. 119.

[8] Cambrensis tells us that south Wales was the cradle of the Welsh long-bowmen whereas
those in the north used pikes and daggers. For more on this subject see Thorpe, The journey through Wales pp.112-113.

[9] E. K., Milliken., Archery in The Middle Ages, (New York, 1967) p. 14
[10] E. G. Heath,, The Grey Goose Wing, (Reading, 1971) p. 298-305.

[11] J. Bradbury., The Medieval Archer, (Woodbridge, 1985) p. 71-72.

[12] Mediterranean yew was so sought after in Edward IVs time that he enacted a law requiring the Lombard merchants to deliver a certain quantity of yew bowstaves with every cask of Italian wine imported to Britain. It is therefore probable that they were used on the ships as dunnage. For more on this subject see Milliken, Archery in The Middle Ages, p.15.

[13] Hansard., The Book of Archery, pp. 332-333.

[14] Ibid.

14a. It is interesting to note that one of the aims of the Spanish Armada over two hundred years later was to destroy the Forest of Dean even if all else failed.

[15] The archer then, was a dual purpose operative who, upon dropping his bow, laid into the enemy with mauls, daggers, cudgels and anything he could lay a hand to. For more on this subject see R. Hardy, The Longbow in A. Curry and Hughes, H. (eds) in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War p.170.

[16] R, Hardy., Longbow: A Social and Military History, (Sparkford, nr Yeovil, 1976) p. 68.

[17] J. Froissart in J. Bourchier, Lord Berners (trans) The Chronicles of Froissart. p. 5. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/froissart-full.html

[18] Ibid, p. 21.

[19] Ibid, p. 27.

[20] Ibid, p. 45.

[21] Ibid, p. 48.

[22] Hardy, Longbow, p. 68.

[23] In 1356 and again in 1359 Fletchers and bowstringmakers were actually conscripted on pain of imprisonment to make armaments for the king. For more on this subject see: J. E. Oxley, The Fletchers and Longbowstringmakers of London (London, 1968) p.24.

[24] Heath, The Grey Goose Wing, pp. 31-33.

[25] Oxley, The Fletchers p.119

[26] Hansard, The Book of Archery, p. 2-3.

[27] C. W. C. Oman, The Art of War in The Middle Ages: A. D. 378-1515, J. H. Beeler, (ed) ( Ithica, 1973) p. 144.

[28] Hardy, Longbow, p. 75.

[29] Although at Crecy it is possible that the Genoese crossbows could have out distanced the longbows but for their wet strings. According to Jean de Venette the Genoese crossbows actually shrank from the rain. More on this is to be found in Bradbury, The Medieval Archer p. 107.

[30] Crecy is here taken as a somewhat generic example as this holds true for numerous battles between the French and English throughout the Hundred Years War.

[31] Hardy, Longbow, p.103.

[32] Ibid, p. 46.

[33] Edge, and Paddock, Arms and Armour, p. 89.

[34] K. Fowler., The Age of Plantagenet and Valois: The Struggle for Supremacy 1328-1498 (London, 1967) p. 108.

[35] A.R. Myers (ed). English Historical Documents. IV: 1327-1485, p.1182 in Allmand, Society at War, pp. 98-99.

[36] Hansard p. 4.

[37] Milliken., Archery, pp. 19-20.

[38] Calendar of the Close Rolls, Edward III. Vol VIII. A. D. 1346-1349. P. 250.

[39] A. Curry and H. Hughes., (eds) Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War. R. Hardy., The Longbow pp. 163-164.

[40] Froissart in J. Bourchier. p. 27. “…'The English remained still and let off some cannons that they had, to frighten the Genoese.'] and cry to abash the Englishmen, but they stood still and stirred not for all that: then the Genoways again the second time made another leap and a fell cry, and stept forward a little, and the Englishmen removed not one foot: thirdly, again they leapt and cried, and went forth till they came within shot; then they shot fiercely with their cross-bows. Then the English archers stept forth one pace and let fly their arrows…”

[41] H. J. Hewitt, The Organisation of War in C. J. Rodgers (ed) The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations, (Woodbridge 1999) pp. 293-295.

[42] Froissart in J. Bourchier p. 38 “….At the end of this hedge among vines and thorn-bushes, where no man can go nor ride, are their men of arms all afoot, and they have set in front of them their archers in manner of a harrow, whom it would not be easy to discomfit. 'Well,' said the king, 'what will ye then counsel us to do?' Sir Eustace said: 'Sir, let us all be afoot…”

[43] Bradbury., The Medieval Archer p. 128.

[44] An order for over 8,000 bows and some 5,450 arrows in 1382 was fulfilled by no less that 28 counties. For more on this subject see: Oxley, The Fletchers p. 25.

[45] Hardy, Longbow p. 179.