Medieval Archery

The type of archers who were used in battle in this country were long-bowmen, not cross-bowmen. Archers with longbows were better suited to all-out battle charges than were crossbowmen. Whilst the crossbow was a formidable weapon and had enormous speed and power, the rate of fire was a distinct disadvantage. The crossbowman had to wind up the tension on his bow before he could release the trigger and fire an arrow.

Many archers would be recruited on a national basis from the poorer elements of towns and villages through a “Commission of Array”. Up to half of the army may have been composed of longbowmen…and, as surnames became the norm, no doubt some of them became known by the name of Archer, Fletcher, Bowyer or Bowman. Most people had surnames by the 1400s. The surname “Archer” would have arisen in many different areas, in men who were not actually related to each other. It’s very surprising, therefore, that the biggest concentrations of families of the name “Archer”, at the time of the 1881 Census, resided around London and Yorkshire and particularly in the woollen towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire. My father always wanted to be descended from Robin Hood but the Archers of Ossett is the best I can do.

Development of the Longbow

Let’s go back in time to the 12th Century. A bow made from wych elm had been invented by the Celts in South Wales and much of what is known about the Welsh archers is from the writing of Anglo-Norman nobleman called Giraldus Cambrensis, Gerald of Wales, in the 1180s. He described these elm bows as not very long, about 4 ft 6 inches, drawn to the chest and made for shooting over short distances, They were not as accurate as the crossbow. Gerald wrote, however, that they could penetrate through an armoured horseman’s hip and into his saddle. Curiously the bow was not used by Celts of North Wales, Ireland or Scotland.

The Normans had used the horizontal cross-bow at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. In 1277, the English King Edward I used 106 mounted Gascon crossbowmen alongside 3600 South Welshmen with elm bows to put down the rebellion of the North Welsh under Madog ap Llewewellyn. The springier and strong self-yew bow began to be introduced at this time which could shoot over longer distances than the elm bow. Edward’s battle strategy now changed and by 1295, he had devised a plan to interleave yew bowmen with cavalry, which incurred devastating damage on the north Welsh, who only carried spears. This was the first time that the yew bow had come to the fore in battle and Edward set about building a professional army with a defined structure, which was to include archers. In Edward’s battle against the Scots at Falkirk in 1298, his knights made little headway until the archers and infantry arrived, when the battle quickly turned and the Scots were defeated.

Now, the bow was adopted by the English military and archers became a vital part of the structure of the army. Archers were used to start the battle with an arrowstorm against the front lines of the enemy…or they could be used on opposite flanks to drive the enemy into a funnel shaped area and shoot at them from the sides.

Between 1310 and 1320, the bow developed into the longbow and reached 6 feet in length, allowing it to shoot heavier arrows over longer distances when drawn to the ear. It was during the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) that the longbow became famous for playing a major role in the great English victories against the French at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415). Legend has it that many of the archers were Welshmen, though that has been challenged in recent years and it is now known that at Crécy, where Edward III’s army numbering about 13,500, included 4,500 English and 2,000 Welsh archers.

When the Tudor warship, the Mary Rose, was raised from the Solent in 1982, 137 longbows were found in perfect condition, allowing them to be studied and exactly replicated by modern craftsmen. A combination of heartwood and sapwood allowed the bow to bend but retain strength. The length of a Tudor bowstave was now between 6 and 7 feet between the points of attachment for the cord. The original draw weight of examples from the Mary Rose, that’s the force needed to draw a bow, is estimated as 150–160 lb. Although the average distance over which an arrow was shot might be about 250 yards, a skilled archer could shoot an arrow up to half a mile from one of these longbows, at a rate of 12 per minute. The arrows were 3 feet long, iron tipped, and could break through chain-mail or take a horse down.

Practice

The Butts were practice areas where villagers could hone their archery skills. From 1252, every able bodied man between 15 and 60 must arm themselves with a bow. As the stronger longbow developed which needed much practice, a law was brought in during 1388, that all servants and labourers must practice archery at the butts on Sundays and Holy Days.

Archery was a necessary pursuit in medieval England. In King Edward IV’s reign (1471-1483), an Act of Parliament was passed, decreeing that every Englishman should have a longbow of his own size, and butts should be made in every township, at which the inhabitants should shoot every feast-day, or face a halfpenny fine.

A “butt” is a mound of earth built especially for archery target practice. These butts had to be kept in very good repair since the practice of archery was looked upon as a necessary part of every man’s training. There is an area in Ossett, off West Wells, called the “Blue Butts”, and this may well be where Ossett’s long-bowmen practised their craft in medieval times. 

From ossett.net

Also, in 1472, a law was passed that merchants who imported goods into the country must bring in four bowstaves for every ton of goods. Later this was amended to also require 10 bowstaves for every butt of wine imported. After 1503, customs duty was removed from imported bows that were longer than 6 feet, which is probably why the average length of the Mary Rose bowstaves was 6 ft 6 inches.

In 1574, a further Act required men over 24 to be able to hit a target over a distance of ten chains (220 yards). With no health and safety law, accidents happened, which were often fatal, but accidentally killing someone during archery practice was not usually punished.

A longbow became a valuable commodity and there are records of bows being left to male heirs in wills.

Every village and town would have a practice “butts”, which had to be maintained in good condition. In researching Ossett’s historic “Blue Butts”, I found that a piece of land of that name was in the possession of my Archer ancestors in the 1800s! Naturally I wonder if that had been the case back when archery was practised there 300 years earlier.

Muster

In times of war, men would be mustered, or called up, to serve in the army.

In “The Medieval Archer”, John Gillingham says that the typical Archer was thought to be a relatively humble person “men without worth and without birth”. However, Archers could and did rise through the ranks. The Universities of Reading and Southampton published a quarter of a million service records of men who saw active duty in the 100 years’ War. Among them is a Robert de Fishlake, who was enlisted in 1378 at the age of 16 and who progressed from archer to man-at-arms. This database is available online, at this link. I put the name Archer into the search box and  found hundreds of soldiers who were listed with the surname Archer, fighting from Aquitaine to Agincourt, from Scotland to Ireland, and guess what their position was in the army? ARCHERS!!! Along with the Archers (of that surname) were an equal number of Fletchers, who were also serving as archers, as might be expected.

Of the men who were mustered into the medieval army, most would serve as archers or foot soldiers.

A skilled archer’s position in society was increasingly a respected one and, although archers did not generally reach the dizzy heights of the gentry, they were nevertheless seen in the rank of Yeoman. During the Wars of the Roses, both the Yorkists and the Lancastrians would muster troops from the general population to support their campaigns. Different estimates exist of how many men were mustered, but an estimate is that one in thirty of the population were mustered by both sides.