Bowmen of England

by Donald Featherstone

  The war-bow was about six feet in length and usually pulled 100 lb.; the strength of the bow was calculated by the power whereby it restores itself to its natural position, according to the distance from which it is removed; here the physical strength of the archer is the deciding factor in the effective range. It was usually self-nocking; that is, the nocks for the string at top and bottom were integral parts of the bow itself. Fancier bows had horn or ivory nocks fastened to the ends of the bow limbs. In cross-section the longbow looked like a letter ‘D’ lying on its back; the belly of the bow faced the shooter, formed the round of the ‘D’, whilst the back, facing the target, was flat. Although from a standpoint of design the longbow was wasteful of both wood and energy, the English used it without that fact being known, nor does it appear to have detracted from its efficacy.

  Into the making of a good English longbow went a great deal of fine craftsmanship – it had to be tapered correctly, with much patience and experience, from the middle towards each end so that it was brought to an even curve at full draw. All knots and irregularities in the grain had to be carefully watched and ‘raised’ or skilfully followed to eliminate weak spots. Except in the very rare case of a perfect stave, the finished article was a knobbly length of wood lacking in beauty. There were no cunningly carved horn nocks on the ends, merely simple grooves cut into the wood itself to take the loops of the bowstring; there was no velvet or leather padded grip at the centre; no mother-of-pearl arrow-plate let into the side of the stave where the shaft rested against it, so that the arrow was prevented from wearing a groove as it passed. The crossbow was an intricate and complicated mechanism with much metal work about it – but the longbow was a plain, rather ugly stick. It was almost as crude in appearance as a wooden club that could be cut from any tree or hedgerow, in spite of the careful workmanship that went into it. Infinitely greater artistry went into the fashioning of arrow-heads; there are plenty of specimens to be seen in museums but few complete shafts remain.

  The English archer was accustomed to no other sort of bow than that styled ‘self’ or formed of a single piece. When summoned on domestic military service, the archers, except those living on Crown lands, came armed into the field; if they were engaged on foreign expeditions, the necessary equipment was provided at public cost. The bows themselves were of many woods. The chronicles seem wrong in invariably listing bows as being made of English yew; although the best wood was undoubtedly yew, it came from trees sought in all the mountainous parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany. At one time Spain had supplied England with many of the rough bowstaves of yew – but Spain herself had suffered raids by English bowmen under the Black Prince, which so affronted Spanish pride that the legends say that all yew trees were cut down after the invasion and allowed to grow no more for fear the English would come again, plying bows of Spanish yew! A comparatively small number of bows were made of English yew because little of it grew in England, and that mostly in churchyards or other enclosed places where cattle could not reach its poisonous leaves. English yew was too quick-grown and coarse-grained to make a really good bow; it was so knotty and defective that no part could be relied upon, except that portion of the heart protected by the exterior stratum of sapwood. Other woods were also used, probably for compulsory practice purposes, among them wych-elm, ash and hazel, but the slow-grown mountain yew is, to this day, the supreme wood for the longbow of traditional English pattern.

  In making a yew self-bow the entire butt of a clean tree, inside as well as outside, can be used, provided that the staves are not sawn but cleft from the plank. One old authority claims that the best is that nearest the outside of the log, consisting of practically all the light-coloured sapwood immediately under the bark and only as much of the darker heartwood as may be needed. This combination of sapwood and heart-wood in yew provides the two essential properties – the sap-wood is resistant to stretch and is therefore suitable for the back (the convex side when the bow is bent); and the heartwood resists compression and is, for that reason, perfect for the belly of the bow. In fact, the heartwood will not stretch at all if bent the ‘wrong’ way, but bursts immediately. Because of this, a broken string usually meant a broken bow in the case of a yew bow, because the bow flew back unchecked by the string to a point beyond its natural position of rest.

  Ascham, the patron of the longbow, wrote: ‘The best colour of a bow is when the back and belly in working are much alike; for oft-times in wearing, it proves like virgin wax or gold.’ In other words, it became silky, smooth and took a fine polish.

  Since the old war-bows were made in one piece from end to end, there might well be considerable changes in the properties of the wood in such a six-foot length – the thickness of the sapwood and direction of the grain might vary, together with the incidence of knots and pins. This meant that very great skill had to be exercised in shaping the limbs to obtain equal bending in both. It seems likely that there was tremendous difficulty in finding long staves fit for first-class bows in the numbers required; the obvious inequalities in these old bows giving them a very short life of useful work and little chance of survival to the present day. As England alone was quite unable to meet the supply of bow-staves demanded, it was necessary to import them; this often meant that they came in at prices which put them out of reach of the ordinary common man. To combat this, the government of the day hit upon a clever scheme or expedient to render them as inexpensive as possible.

  Since all timber possesses a harder texture and a finer grain when grown in a warm climate than when reared in one less gentle, the traders and merchants of Lombardy were compelled to deliver a certain quantity of foreign yew with every cask of Greek and Italian wine admitted into the London custom-house. Edward IV, with whom this law originated, fixed the number of bow-staves at four, but Richard III, his successor, increased them to ten for each butt. The merchants would have yew trees, already lopped and trimmed, conveyed to the ports, where they selected enough, at a rough guess, to equal the wine on board and made them useful as dunnage among the casks. Bow-staves were also imported for cash; under Richard III a law was passed which complained of the mendacity of the Lombard traders, who had caused inflation in the price. Formerly 100 staves had brought £2, but due to the traders’ machinations the price had risen to £8. It was to counter price increases originally that the wood and wine law was passed.

  The old authority, Ascham, speaking of the quality of bows, said: ‘A good bow is known by the proof. If you come to a shop and see one that is small, long, heavy and strong, lying straight and not winding or marred with knots, buy that bow on my warrant. The short-grained bow is for the most part brittle. Every bow is made of the bough or plant of a tree. The former is commonly very knotty, small, weak and will soon follow the string. The latter proveth many times well, if it be of a good clean growth; and, if the pith is good, it will ply and bend before it breaks. Let the staves be good and even chosen, and afterwards wrought as the grain of the wood leadeth a man, or else the bow must break, and that soon, in shivers. This must be considered in the rough wood. You must not stick for a groat or two more than another man would give for a good bow; for such a one twice paid for is better than an ill one once broken. Thus a shooter must begin, not at the making of his bow like a bowyer, but at the buying of his bow like an archer. Before he trust his bow, let him take it into the fields and shoot with dead, heavy shafts. Look where it cometh most, and provide for that place, lest it pinch and so frete. Thus when you have shot him, and perceive good wood in him, you must take him to a good workman, which shall cut him shorter and dress him fitter, make him come round compass everywhere.’

  Bowstrings of the era were made of a good grade of flax or linen and, when strung, were impregnated with beeswax so as to repel rain and dew. The bowman would watch his string carefully and if it showed signs of fraying, especially at the loops, he scrapped it before it broke. With a good yew bow, a broken string often meant a broken bow. Spare strings were always careful
ly broken in at practice – a new string never shot at first in the same way as the old one; archers were required to carry two spare bowstrings.

  Most archers carried twenty-four arrows at their side, in their belt or girdle – in battle they were taken from the girdle and placed head-first in the ground immediately in front of the archer’s position, within easy reach of his hand. The arrows were of varying lengths but generally they were described as ‘clothyard shafts’; they were fitted with a barb and point of iron, fledged with feathers of goose or peacock. An arrow-head found, many years after the battle, on the field of Agincourt showed that it was made specially to pierce armour; the ferrule by which the head was originally attached to the wood was still perfect, but its diameter proved that the shaft could not have measured more than twenty-eight, or, at the most, thirty, inches.

  In an ancient Act of Parliament it is stated: ‘Tres pedes faciunt ulnam’ – (Three feet make an ell) – this establishes an identity with the clothier’s yard at the most glorious period in the history of ancient archery. On no other supposition can the indiscriminate use of ‘yard’ and ‘ell’ by historians when talking of arrows be justified. As a Flemish ell measured twenty-seven inches, and a modern English ell forty-five inches, it would seem that an arrow might well have been less than an actual yard in length.

  The arrow-heads used in this great period were tipped with little iron ‘piles’ no broader than the shafts upon which they were set. They were small heads with a bodkin-point, like a small cold-chisel, square or diamond in section, about two inches long and about half an inch square at the widest point, tapering to a sharp point; it was a solid chunk of iron with four barbs fitted to the shaft by a short socket. Against this tiny head and the enormous ‘muzzle-velocity’ behind it, chain-mail was no protection and it could even burst through plate-armour when a square hit was obtained. But plate-armour was more likely than not to deflect the shaft, hence the reason for its rapid development after Crécy had impressed upon an astounded Europe that the English bowman was a new power with which to reckon.

  The effectiveness of these arrows is accentuated when one considers the much lighter modern hunting arrow, broad-headed and shot from a bow of perhaps 65 lb. weight; such an arrow is quite capable of cutting its way right through a deer and will easily penetrate a thousand sheets of paper as used in telephone directories. When fitted with a blunt, flat-ended cylindrical steel head, having the diameter of the shaft of the arrow, it readily penetrates an inch of pine board.

  Part II

  The Tactics are Forged

  Chapter 7

  Falkirk sets the Pattern – 1298

  Edward I, being the man he was, wholeheartedly encouraged the use of the longbow, having seen for himself how effective it could be when properly handled; its potentialities had been brought to his notice by some of the extremely able soldiers who had fought for both sides during the civil wars in the 1260’s. He used the traditional enmity of the Scots for the English to provide arrow fodder for the longbow in the experimenting hands of the English archers. These early Anglo-Scots battles seem to have made no impression upon these responsible form ilitary affairs in France. When the now well-tried techniques were used in the early battles of the Hundred Years War they seem to have taken the French completely by surprise.

  Following their victory over the English at Stirling Bridge on 13th September 1297 the triumphant Scots so ravaged the English border counties that the enraged Edward was forced to conclude a hasty treaty with the King of France and rush home. He reached England in mid-March 1298; instantly he summoned the barons and their captains to meet him at York on the Feast of Pentecost. The army assembled. In June Edward led his forces into Scotland by the eastern borders with the idea of marching into the western counties and crushing the rebellion of the Scots, as he termed the affair.

  The army he reviewed at Roxburgh consisted of English, Welsh and Irish infantry, with a powerful body of mailed, mounted and well-disciplined cavalry, the veterans of his French wars; in addition he had with him a mounted corps of Gascons. They probably numbered 10,000 foot and about 2,500 horses. To oppose them William Wallace, the Scots leader, collected a force largely composed of armed peasantry organised as spearmen and armed with pikes some eleven feet in length. He also had a group of archers from the Ettrick Forest and a force of about 500 cavalry under John Comyn, son of the Lord of Badenoch. They were considerably less in number than the English army, but they had great confidence in their leader, who had positioned them in a very strong site to await battle.

  That the Scots were formidable opponents is borne out by the very discerning opinion of the archer in Conan Doyle’s book, The White Company:

  ‘“I have heard that the Scots are good men of war,” said Hordle John.

  ‘“For axemen and for spearmen I have not seen their match,” the archer answered. “They can travel, too, with bag of meal and grid-iron slung to their sword-belt, so that it is ill to follow them. There are scant crops and few beeves in the borderland, where a man must reap his grain with sickle in one fist and brown bill in the other. On the other hand, they are the sorriest archers that I have ever seen, and cannot so much as aim with the arbalest, to say nought of the longbow. Again, they are mostly poor folk, even the nobles among them, so that there are few who can buy as good a brigandine of chain mail as that which I am wearing, and it is ill for them to stand up against our own knights, who carry the price of five Scotch farms upon their chests and shoulders. Man for man, with equal weapons, they are as worthy and valiant men as could be found in the whole of Christendom.”’

  Their position was fronted by Darnrig Moss, a marsh through which no cavalry could pass; the flanks had been skilfully protected by field-works of wood palisades driven deep into the earth and roped together. Here the Scots spearmen were formed into four great masses, known as schiltrons, of circular form and ready to face outwards in any direction. The spearmen, when ready for action, would level their long pikes from the hip to repel cavalry; the immediate front ranks would kneel on the right knee, against which the butt of the spear was placed; thus a bristling wall of sharp spear-points presented itself in whatever direction the cavalry might choose to attack. Between each of the schiltrons was placed a band of the Ettrick archers, whilst the cavalry remained close at hand in reserve.

  On the morning of the battle Edward had to be painfully assisted in mounting his horse; during the previous night, whilst sleeping with his men on the bare heath alongside their chargers, he had been trodden on by the horse, so that three ribs were broken. Patched up by the surgeons, he laboriously but resolutely mounted and showed himself to his troops. He ordered the banners to be unfurled, the trumpets to sound, and the army rolled forward towards the forest of Falkirk. On reaching the summit of the heights of Callendar, the whole English army halted; at their feet lay the fertile carse of Falkirk, and the vast oak forest known as the Torwood stretched away to where the towers and town of Stirling rose in the sunshine. The river Forth flowed like a thread of blue and silver between forests in all the glorious foliage of summer. In the immediate foreground, midway between Falkirk and the river of Carron, the weapons of the Scots army gleamed and twinkled in the sun’s rays.

  The English army celebrated Mass, conducted by the Bishop of Durham clad in full armour with a sword by his side and a shield slung at his back. The array that surrounded the militant churchman was impressive – the banners bore the arms of Edward … gules, three lions passant regardant; and those of St. Edward the Confessor – a cross fleury between five martlets or. The tunics worn over the mail shirts were elaborately painted and blazoned; those curious ornaments called ailettes were worn on the knights’ shoulders. The barrel-shaped helmets were surmounted by their crests; skull-caps, spherical and conical, were worn by the infantry; the lances had little emblazoned banners hanging from their heads. The Scots’ banners showed the Scottish lion rampant, and the silver cross of St. Andrew; Wallace himself wore a helmet surmounte
d with a dragon crest.

  Then, as had been ordered, the English army advanced in three columns of horsemen, with the archers disposed between them. The first column was led by the Earl Marshal; the second by the fighting Bishop of Durham and the third by Edward in person. The mediaeval knight seldom took the trouble to examine the ground over which he was to fight, consequently the first column, riding furiously forward, dashed pell-mell into the marsh. The heavily armoured men and horses floundered wetly in the morass, English and Gascon alike, whilst the Scots archers poured arrows into them and caused considerable casualties. The rearmost ranks of the column, seeing the danger, swerved to their left to find firmer ground, then, closing their files, crashed into the Scots formations. Wallace looked around him and cried loudly:

  ‘Now! I haif brocht ye to the ring – hop gif ye can!’

  The unwavering barrier of outstretched spears in the hands of sturdy and resolute Scots brought the knights of the first column to a shuddering halt, so that they milled, cavorted and plunged across the front of the position as they tried to force their way through, reaching out to strike at the dismounted Scots before them. Seeing the error of the first column, the Bishop of Durham’s second group avoided the marsh and wheeled to the right so that they threatened the Scots’ left flank. The small body of Scots cavalry eyed with some misgivings the approach of this vastly superior mounted force and wavered, then a few turned and fled, panic set in and the whole force fled from the field without striking a blow; a disaster later reputed to have been due to the treachery of their leader, Comyn.

  Notwithstanding this, the Scots infantry remained steady and unbroken, presenting a threatening and ominously unwavering front. The experienced Bishop saw that this was the Welsh hedgehog all over again and realised that it would be prudent to wait until the archers came up with the King’s division. He halted his force and they sat looking at the grim Scots formation; after a few minutes Radult Basset de Drayton, for a time the English governor of Edinburgh Castle, scornfully bellowed: