Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => English Warbow => Topic started by: Dane on May 25, 2007, 06:49:50 pm
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Anyone have any theories, or is there historical documentation or theories about this? I've been moving in the direction of the Asiatic compsite bows, and it doesn't take a genious to figure out why nomadic peoples and peoples living in places like China, Mongolia, Egypt, Mespotamia, etc. would develop that kind of bow.
But how did the English become a bow culture, at least in war? I was just glancing through some materials about the Germanic (Germanii to the Romans) tribes that overran and settled in what we call England now (Anglii, Saxons, etc.). Did they bring the bow to the island? Did the Celts and other indigenous peoples of England not use the bow in hunting and war? Anglo Saxons certainly did not focus on the bow as a war weapon (I belive), and the Norse too had a different take on warfare, using the sword, shield, spear, and sometimes the axe. Probably far more Seaxs in use in England for long after the Germans arrived than any other kind of weapon.
So, all that said, how did the English evolve the war bow?
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Hey Dane! Well from what I read it was during the conquest of the Welsh that they were on the receiving end of massed volleys of arrows. Seeing this they soon discovered that it was an effective way of taking down their enemies since it was done to them so often by the Welsh. Then over a number of years they developed their own archers and further developed the English Warbow and tactics to meet their needs on the field.
About all I know on the subject!
David T
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Britons have a history of Archery dating back 6,000yrs,the Rottom bottom Bow and Ashcott/ Meare Heath Bows are hunting Bows from the late stone early metal Age.The Brythonic tribes are/were NOT 'Celts'! the Celtic migration theory was bollicks when it was written over a hundred years ago,DNA proves the so called 'Celts' on the west fringes of the Isles are descended from the Neolithic people who first settled here from Iberia (the ones who built the henges) when the ice retreated.
well anyway,when the Danes came to the North East they allready hasd a culture of using Bows for Wars,as you say it wasnt a wide spread use of the Saxon Army's (Like Roman's they prefered to fight as Infantry) but some Bowmen would of been present with the Saxon fyrd,village hunters and such,nothing special.
Saying that,the Hadrada was killed by a arrow at Stamford Bridge so the Hunters present cant have been all that bad!
After that lucky dog the Conqueror (cant believe he won that one!) defeated Godwinson at Hasting's and the Norman conquerors pushed into what is now Wales (Waelsh is a Saxon word meaning Foreignor,the bloody cheek!) they came up against the Wych elm Bows of the Brythonic Welsh,by all accounts these weapons were of a high draw weight,capable of killing armoured men,saddles horses etc,i'm sure you know the quote.
King Edward liked these Welsh lads and there Bows,he incorporated them into his Army's and changed the English laws to gain a supply of excellent Archers ;D.The English archer's and Bowyer's developed the Bow into a WarBow of Yew,importing the best wood from all over Europe to make the best weapons possible for killing Scotsmen and the French.
Something like that :D
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It's my understanding that most if not all of the groups in northern Europe used bows in war around that time. But the Welsh must have had particularly good bows and were skillful archers. An English king (?Edward 1st) adopted the bow as a major weapon of war after seeing what the Welsh could do with it against his own armies. In fact he recruited Welsh bowmen into the english army to fight against the Scots with great success at Falkirk.
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Britons have a history of Archery dating back 6,000yrs,the Rottom bottom Bow, Ashcott and Meare Heath Bows are hunting Bows from the Iron Age.The Brythonic tribes are/were NOT 'Celts'! the Celtic migration theory was bollicks when it was written over a hundred years ago,DNA proves the so called 'Celts' on the west fringes of the Isles are descended from the Neolithic people who first settled here from Iberia (the ones who built the henges).
well anyway,when the Danes came to the North East they allready hasd a culture of using Bows for Wars,as you say it wasnt a wide spread use of the Saxon Army's (Like Roman's they prefered to fight as Infantry) but some Bowmen would of been present with the Saxon fyrd,village hunters and such,nothing special.
Saying that,the Hadrada was killed by a arrow at Stamford Bridge so the Hunters present cant have been all that bad!
After that lucky dog the Conqueror (cant believe he won that one!) defeated Godwinson at Hasting's and the Norman conquerors pushed into what is now Wales (Waelsh is a Saxon word meaning Foreignor,the bloody cheek!) they came up against the Wych elm Bows of the Brythonic Welsh,by all accounts these weapons were of a high draw weight,capable of killing armoured men,saddles horses etc,i'm sure you know the quote.
King Edward liked these Welsh lads and there Bows,he incorporated them into his Army's and changed the English laws to gain a supply of excellent Archers ;D.The English archer's and Bowyer's developed the Bow into a WarBow of Yew,importing the best wood from all over Europe to make the best weapons possible for killing Scotsmen and the French.
Something like that :D
Egads, sorry about bringing in those Celts...they were fond of plaids, after all :)
Seriously, thanks, you guys...you have to look at the Welsh, eh?
You can thank those Norse for tiring out Harlod, and after all, if it wasn't for William, England would still maybe be a Germanic country.
So, can you take a stab at how the Welsh developed their bows? Or is that totally impossible thus far in archeology and history?
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I read somewhere that the Welsh bows were knobly, showing that they knew how to follow the grain and leave extra wood on where required. The pre-Roman tribes of Britain were known for their craftsmanship so I wouldn't be surprised if their decendants, the Welsh, could develop good bows.
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Egads, sorry about bringing in those Celts.
LOL,its one of those common misconceptions what tourism takes advantage of,gets my goat a bit ;D.
You can thank those Norse for tiring out Harlod, and after all, if it wasn't for William, England would still maybe be a Germanic country
We still are a Germanic people for the most part,the Norman Conquerors made very little impact on the gene pool of England,there a study going on at the moment by Oxford univerity which is recording all the DNA types native to Briton which is disproving a lot of theories ;D.
Its very hard to determine which people exactly you are descended from because the Angle-Saxons,Danish Viking's and the Normans all come from the same place (whats now Denmark),therefore the DNA is the same.
The South West of England and the West tips of Wales are mostly native Briton,the South East and Midlands are Saxon,the North East is Danish viking and the North west of Scotland are Norwegian Viking according to the study ;D.
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/e-h/face.html
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The pre-Roman tribes of Britain were known for their craftsmanship so I wouldn't be surprised if their decendants, the Welsh, could develop good bows.
Indeed,the Iron age tribes of Britain were famous metal workers i dont see why they wouldnt have similar skill's in woodworking,they literaly worshiped wood!the Saxon invaders were a rough bunch but after a couple of hundred years of living with the Native British,they produce pieces like what we see from thr Sutton Hoo buriel.
Battersea shield (Brythonic) 100BC and a recreation of the Sutton Hoo helm from the 7thCE (Saxon).
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Nice pictures Loki. That sheild is a very good example of 'celtic' art - swirls, spirals and vague trumpet shapes, very beautiful indeed. Many people think celtic art is the classic irish interwoven pattern ('knotwork') seen in the Book of Kells, but I think that is actually norse/germanic in origin - the irish must have adopted it during contact with the vikings or angosaxons around that time.
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That sheild is a very good example of 'celtic' art - swirls, spirals and vague trumpet shapes, very beautiful indeed
Yes its very beautiful but it isnt 'Celtic',the Brythonic people had a similar style to the Celtic finds found at La Tene (Switzerland) but there not the same.
Many people think celtic art is the classic irish interwoven pattern ('knotwork') seen in the Book of Kells, but I think that is actually norse/germanic in origin - the irish must have adopted it during contact with the vikings or angosaxons around that time.
The Knotwork of Ireland and Scotland is Pictish,the Picts were very different to the 'Celts' (Celtii are from Switzerland),they originated in Ireland but they migrated to Scotland,wiping out the native Scotti tribe of the Caledone's and building there Brock's,only the Picts lived in Brock's there's no other examples of them any where else in Europe.
Thats not to say that there's no Norse influence's in the book of Kell's,the Book of Kells wasnt written in Ireland it was wrote by a single a munk on Iona (west coast of Scotland) ,its a striking example of Insular art and so is the Lindisfarne Gospel,they date from around the same time but Lindisfarne is on the North East coast of England.However the Norse influence came from the Saxon's (Saxons in northern England were the last ones to give up the old God's),it cant have been influenced by the Vikings because they were fiercly Pagan and they were burning every Monastry they could find at the time both these Gospels were written.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Yeah your right i got that mixed up,the Picts were the Alliance of Northern Tribes who were destroyed bye the Scotti invasion,oops! ???
he ancient britains were described as (celtic type) people by the romans.
Oh well,they must have been then ;D,The Romans described everyone north of the Alps as Celtii :D or Barbars as they called them,thats where we get the word Barbarian from.Its a derogatory name supposed to describe there language's,BarBarbarBarBar ;D.
The 100 year old theory that the Celtii migrated from Switzerland (La tene) has been discredited,the only reason the victorian Archeologist's wrote it is because they found the Battersea shield in the Thames a few years after the artifacts at La tene were found.They put that with the tribal names which have there counterparts on the Gaulish mainland,Parisi (both Parisi tribes bury there dead in chariots) and Belgae and came up with a migration theory ???,forgetting that the tribal names we know are the names the Romans gave them!we dont know what they called themselves! because Romans saw similarity's between the tribes doesnt mean much,a Roman think's everyone who's not Roman is a dirty smelly milk drinking BarBar ;D.
DNA testing now proves that the so called 'Celts' of Britain have lived here since the ice retreated after the last Ice age,if the Celtii did migrate here then there DNA is exactly the same as the DNA of the people who built Stonehenge 5,000 years ago,no need for them to migrate in 300Bc when they were allready here ???.
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Take a look at this from the Oseberg Ship, built around 820:
http://www.angelo.edu/faculty/rprestia/1301/images/IN247%20Drag%20BST.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Osebergskipet-Detail.jpg
If you didn't know where it was from, you'd think it was Irish, but it's norse.
The Sutton Hoo finds also contain this kind of knot work (roughly 200 years before the Book of Kells)
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The Saxon buried in his Longboat at sutton Hoo was very much a Pagan,his Saxon Heritage is just as much nordic as the Danish Viking's,why wouldnt his grave have a Nordic feel to it ;D.I dont doubt that the Lindisfarne and Kells gospels were influenced by a Nordic culture,but it was a Aenglish culture though.
Edit; sorry for hijacking your thread Dane :'(
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The Saxon buried in his Longboat at sutton Hoo was very much a Pagan,his Saxon Heritage is just as much nordic as the Danish Viking's,why wouldnt his grave have a Nordic feel to it ;D.I dont doubt that the Lindisfarne and Kells gospels were influenced by a Nordic culture,but it was a Aenglish culture though.
Edit; sorry for hijacking your thread Dane :'(
Loki, no worries...I expected this to go in the direction it is heading. I have heard about that DNA study, and would love to take part, but I am only some Engish on my maternal side....English, Welsh, Scottish, but also French, German, and Dutch, and Italian and Sicilian from dad's side of the family. All confused is my ancestry. :) I like to think that in some of these horrific medieval and "dark ages" and ancient battles, all of my ancestors were beating each other up.
BTW, the art is wonderful and inspiring. Thanks all for posting it.
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You'll like this then ;D
Its a recreation of the pictish stone found at Hilton Cadboll,impressive isnt it? ;D
(http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/1007/hiltonofcadboll01tn8.th.jpg) (http://img172.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hiltonofcadboll01tn8.jpg)
http://www.pictishstone.freeuk.com/Framesbase.htm
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Yes Loki, another beautiful example of insular art - a fusion of ....can I call it 'indigenous' instead of celtic? and germanic art. The Pictish kingdom bordered the ango-saxon kindom of Northumbria, so I'm not surprised there are elements of both in there.
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And thus all cultures that collide or collaborate with each other infuse one another in all sorts of ways - bloodlines, art, technologies, philosopies, religions, etc. And I personally, on a gut level, feel that all that came before on your green island contributed to the emegence of a bow culture.
Thanks guys for contributing to this thread.
Dane
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all people have been using the bow. th e english culture is a dominating culture now, most focus is on that today. people of english origin writing the bowyersbible and so on. ....silly, but therefore most people think that they are more bow culture than for example the scandinavian or other. england is a tiny little country with 60 milion people. a lot of archeology has been made there and a lot of finds have been made thanks to over population. and so on and so on. dont think its about bow culture.
axel
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Axel, by bow culture, I meant a culture that adopted the bow as a war tool, not hunting and such, to keep within the context of the English Warbow section. And just because you write and read English doesn't mean you are of English heritage.
Dane
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all people have been using the bow. th e english culture is a dominating culture now, most focus is on that today. people of english origin writing the bowyersbible and so on. ....silly, but therefore most people think that they are more bow culture than for example the scandinavian or other. england is a tiny little country with 60 milion people.. and so on and so on. dont think its about bow culture.
axel
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What dont you think is about Bow culture?
The difference between the English and the Scandanavians (the same people) is the English used the Bow en masse for War,making laws to encourage Archery etc etc blah blah...
A lot of finds have been made in England because we have excellent archeologists and the bogs and peat marsh's are excellent for preserving artifacts.Its not because were tripping over each other in our tiny overcrowded bit of the Isle ;D,were not Hobbits you know we dont live in the ground :D.
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all people have been using the bow.
axel
Just to pick you up on this statement, I think you'll find that NOT ALL people have had the bow. The Aboriginal peoples of Australia never used the bow. They got by with other weapons, ie the boomerang. The reason for this I believe is that the land mass that is Aus' separated from the main landmass before the invention of the bow and therefore the knowledge of the bow was not taken with them.
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Out of interest, are there many sayings in other countries related to archery? For example in England we have sayings such as 'highly strung', 'two strings to his bow', 'bolt upright' etc. We have many of these which shows that archery used to be an important part of every day life.
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all people have been using the bow. th e english culture is a dominating culture now, most focus is on that today. people of english origin writing the bowyersbible and so on. ....silly, but therefore most people think that they are more bow culture than for example the scandinavian or other. england is a tiny little country with 60 milion people.. and so on and so on. dont think its about bow culture.
axel
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What dont you think is about Bow culture?
The difference between the English and the Scandanavians (the same people) is the English used the Bow en masse for War,making laws to encourage Archery etc etc blah blah...
A lot of finds have been made in England because we have excellent archeologists and the bogs and peat marsh's are excellent for preserving artifacts.Its not because were tripping over each other in our tiny overcrowded bit of the Isle ;D,were not Hobbits you know we dont live in the ground :D.
What, you are not all hobbits over there? :) I myself would love a hobbit hole, if it is nice as Baggins' place.
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Nah mate,we have even given up the Fatch Roofs! ;D
Did Axel register here just to make that post ???
:D ;D :) :P ;D
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No i didn't register here to write this post even though it may be my first. Maybe it was too harsh put by me but, we have those sayings in scandinavia too about bows in everyday life. But I do not think britain is more of a bow culture than scandinavia, hungary, mongolia, turky, buthan etc etc. It might be a bowculture. one contry among many other. :)
by the way. have alots of mideaval longbows been found exept the mary rose?
Axel
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I think only a handful of other bows have been found axel. I understand that the Scandinavian bows were very similar to the English longbow. So you're probably right - the whole of northern europe had this culture. Maybe it's the fact that it was used so famously in France and Scotland that gave the english longbow it's reputation. What kind of archery sayings do you have in Scandinavia?
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several different are about taking the chance of drawing the bow. Aim higher and draw the string further , one is from a really nice poem saying something like "better listen to the string that broke than never even draw a bow". we have highly strung here too. will try to think of more.
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better listen to the string that broke than never even draw a bow
I like that one. It's like 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all'
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Recent books like The Great Warbow seem to have moved away from the idea that the "English" longbow derives in any way from the Welsh bow and say that it was brought in by the Normans. The Normans were basically of Norse descent. the Norse used longbows identical to the English Warbow. Many of the Britians fighting William the Conqueror were of Norse descent, some actually related to him. The fight was after all about William's claim to the English throne!
From what I have read it seems that the English were able to develop the use of the warbow because of the tightly controlled fuedal system. In England they were able to ensure that the fuedal lords provided set amounts and types of men for war. As the use of archery was realised to be effective and as the king could command that archers be provided it was possible. In countries like France where there was less control over the Lords and peasantry it was impossible to command the same. Hence we won and the French lost until eventually the French did finally put archers on the field to combat us, mainly Scots and other mercenaries.
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..."the rule of thumb" (fistmele) and "A parting shot" are a few archery related sayings I know of. Pat
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is rule of thumb archery related? in that case we have it to.
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In one of the old PA magazines(I believe) there is a list of old archery related sayings. Pat
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Loki:
"What dont you think is about Bow culture?
The difference between the English and the Scandanavians (the same people) is the English used the Bow en masse for War,making laws to encourage Archery etc etc blah blah..."
- In 1325 a law in sweden, at least some major provinces, said that all men must have a bow and a number of arrows(i hav'nt really figured out how many yet...)
That tells me that we had big numbers of archers too=bow culture. But ofcourse the population here cannot be compared to brittain...
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I wasnt saying the Scandanavians dont have a Bow culture Axel,i thought you were saying the English havent,which is wrong.
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I don't mean to be offensive. Trying to say that britain isn't really more of a bowculture than many other. It kind of irritates me a little all this talk about Britain, ELB, and warbows(english ofcourse ;)) . think the discussion could be a little bit more precise and not so amateure-scientist like. Too often a half-truth turn into a truth and is all of sudden a widespread fact everyone seem to accept!? That is generaly speaking.
Ok i rest my case. :) Peace.
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Maybe the english bow culture is simply more famous. Those big battles have been well documented in history and turned into shakespeare plays and films etc.
By the way, I think the population of england in the middle ages was quite small ....3 milliion or something?
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yes your bow culture is more famous, you have so many good actors and writers... lol
3 milion cant be true...? or...
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Here's a quote from the following website about the black death in the middle ages http://www.britainexpress.com/History/medieval/black-death.htm
'Over the next 2 years the disease killed between 30-40% of the entire population. Given that the pre-plague population of England was in the range of 5-6 million people, fatalities may have reached as high as 2 million dead.'
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Hi guys, I think its worth noting that in England nearly the whole society was involved in some way with archery. The amount of archery related production is staggering, for example, in 1359 ( a year of peace) 850,000 arrows, 20,000 bows and50,000 bowstrings were collected and sent to the Tower of London. And still today there are people with the surname Fletcher for example to remind us of how many people must have been needed to keep the archer armies in the field.
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Trying to say that britain isn't really more of a bowculture than many other.
Not really Britain, Scotland and Ireland cannot be included in this as they did not really take to the bow during this period.
Jeremy
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I think Lens point is a very fair one and gets close to the heart of the matter. Its true that lots of cultures used the bow at the time for hunting or warfare but I don't think any of them fielded armies with ratios of 5 or six archers to one man at arms. From the time of Edward the First, the longbow in England became a defining component of the society, in a way that I don't think it was in other bow using cultures. The longbow became central to its warfare and the capacity to be more successful than other societies of the time where it came to conflict. Thats the reason that Hardy's first book 'Longbow' is subtitled 'A social and military history'. Part of the the success at Agincourt, for example, was attributed to the pragmatism of putting a really powerful weapon in the hands of ordinary folk and letting them get on with it, whereas French society at the time abhorred that concept, and lacked the conviction to give their poorer folk a central role for fear of upsetting the social order. Much good it did them - the revolution came anyway, although much later.
ChrisD
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I think Lens point is a very fair one and gets close to the heart of the matter. Its true that lots of cultures used the bow at the time for hunting or warfare but I don't think any of them fielded armies with ratios of 5 or six archers to one man at arms. From the time of Edward the First, the longbow in England became a defining component of the society, in a way that I don't think it was in other bow using cultures. The longbow became central to its warfare and the capacity to be more successful than other societies of the time where it came to conflict. Thats the reason that Hardy's first book 'Longbow' is subtitled 'A social and military history'. Part of the the success at Agincourt, for example, was attributed to the pragmatism of putting a really powerful weapon in the hands of ordinary folk and letting them get on with it, whereas French society at the time abhorred that concept, and lacked the conviction to give their poorer folk a central role for fear of upsetting the social order. Much good it did them - the revolution came anyway, although much later.
ChrisD
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion, guys.
A thought came to me (thinking is dangerous eh? :) ) about the various Asian and nomadic peoples who fielded archers and bows so different and, it can I think be safely argued, superior to the self bow in many ways. Yeah, I know, climate, culture, etc. all factor in as well, but what about those bow cultures? I heard, true or false, that in some cultures (Turkish?) a bowyer would be beheaded if a bow he crafted failed in battle. Perhaps those armies of conquest used the bow in a much more central way than the English did during the war bow heyday?
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Hi guys, I think its worth noting that in England nearly the whole society was involved in some way with archery. The amount of archery related production is staggering, for example, in 1359 ( a year of peace) 850,000 arrows, 20,000 bows and50,000 bowstrings were collected and sent to the Tower of London. And still today there are people with the surname Fletcher for example to remind us of how many people must have been needed to keep the archer armies in the field.
I won't argue on this since i don't have much information on this. Im sure this is correct.
One thought, I know Swedish forces used the crossbow in this way, a lots of crossbows rain arrows on the enemies(the danish) and not shot in the more traditional way-horisontal. The swedish masses consisting of "real people" and the danish forces foreign mercenarys. Im sure the bow was used in this way too. Wasn't the famous english army made with concripts among people rather than proffesional soldiers like the french? A conection perhaps. or maybe the swedish learned from the english. Im guessing here !
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Bowyer too is not a uncommon surname.
Wasn't the famous english army made with concripts among people rather than proffesional soldiers like the french? A conection perhaps. or maybe the swedish learned from the english. Im guessing here !
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Are you saying the' famous English army' was made up of French conscripted Bowmen ;D,or are you saying the French army was professional and the 'Famous English Army' was made of conscripted Bowmen? ;D.
Either way your wrong i'm afraid Axel,Edward I used conscripted Welsh men for a time but the 'Famous English Army' was made up of very professional English archers,sorry to dissapoint you but allthough most men in England could use a Bow only the best were taken to war.Some of them may of been the scum of the earth but they were still good archers ;D.
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Im not saying amateur or poor archers, but were they professional all of them?
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It's my understanding that the english archers were very happy to join the army because it gave them a good salary and the prospect of loot in war.
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Plus, they got great college benefits after discharge :) That is why I joined my Army. They never told me about the loot part, darn it.
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Im not saying amateur or poor archers, but were they professional all of them?.
It depends on what you consider a professional,they werent drilled like Roman Legionarie's but they trained from Childhood to become Bowmen and then lived of the spoils of that profession,they didnt go back to the villages and farms after a Battle.
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This is one of the things I love about the history of the warbow. These free-spirited men with little to loose, volunteering to take part in dangerous battles. Some of them were killed, but others came back and were wealthy free men for the rest of their lives.
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Don't forget the social pressure from your peers to join in the service of your country.
I do not think that it would have been so much different back then during the HYW. i.e. propaganda as to why they should serve their country and king, the French are evil etc.
Couple this with peer pressure from your mates around you who are going across the chanel.
And finally; you have been training to use a warbow since you were a child, and being told all of the time that the warbow is the ultimate weapon, that against the French you are invincible, etc.
I would expect that in the young man's mind, the risks do not seem at all that much, and the benefits were great.
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The English army was in many ways ahead of its time compared to the French of that time who still relied on the feudral system(not very proffessional at all ) whereas the English employed contracted soldiers to make up the bulk of their armies. The french actually start to have some success against the English when they started using more proffessionaly raised and trained troops rather then local militias grouped together under the command of the local knight.
As to the steppes people who used the bow it seems to me to have been more of a harrasing or skirmishing tactic rather then the massed artillary style of the English which would probably require more arrows per archer then what the horse archers would have used in a battle.
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The longbow has been the common type across North Western Europe since the neolithic.
What distinguishes the English use of the longbow is the way in which it was employed to counter numerically superior forces.
Forget all this nonsense about Welsh bows being the precursor of the English warbow, that's just mindless recycling of uninformed opinion from an earler "authority".
War bow draw weights have developed in all warbow cultures to keep pace with defensive developments. The result is that cavalry bows came to be typically in the 90lb to 120lb range and infantry bows to a median of around 120lb to 150lb.
Before dedicated war bow development, a heavy hunting bow would have sufficed in war, but the race to achieve greater range and penetration with heavier arrows leads to escalation in draw weight.
Part of the fame of the English bow derives from the fact that the myth of the longbow has since Tudor times been accepted as an integral part in the development of the myth of Englishness.
Given that this process carried through the growth and fall of Empire, starting life as a political tool when a predominantly Norman ruling minority had the good fortune to have left in place a considerable amount of Anglo Saxon social infrastructure, which gave later Kings an armed social class in serjeanty that functioned coherently on the battlefield.
More coherently, for some time, than those who had the misfortune to attack them, since the key development was the use of massed archery in a defensive position against greater numbers that were often mismanaged with a less coherent chain of command.
Other warbow cultures (China, Korea, Japan, Mamluks, Scythians, Mongols etc) have their own variations on this theme.
Rod.
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I'm new to the site and just discovered this very interesting thread.
A question that I've wondered about for some time is did the availability of reliable bow string material have any impact on the use of the English long bows in war?
After all, those two sticks are a lot more effective with a string than without. :D
thanks,
Allen
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Rod the term myth implies no basis on fact , don't you mean something more like aura or reputation ?
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Allen
A well known bowyer in the UK , Pip Bickerstaffe has a theory that the upper limit on draw weight was dependent on the strength of the string. He thinks that the upper limit had to be about 100 lbs because a thicker and stronger string wouldn't fit inside the nock of the arrow. A lot of people dispute this and say that the draw weight had to be higher than that, given the dimensions of the bows found on the Mary Rose ship.
I think his theory is still important. These days we have strings made from modern materials and we forget how important the quality of string must have been in the middle ages.
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Rod the term myth implies no basis on fact , don't you mean something more like aura or reputation ?
No Len, I said myth because in this context, the sense of national/racial identity is based upoon a construction, not upon hard facts.
Regarding the reported Bickerstaffe theory about there being a 100lb limit due to the deficiencies of the string, we have to ask ourselves why the Mary Rose bows (from a period past the peak of the English powers with the long bow) include bows capable of higher draw weights.
Taking all the evidence from war bow cultures in general, it is patently absurd to suggest a 100lb limit on warbow draw weight based upon an assumption drawn from the nock size of the Mary Rose shafts.
Rod.
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Rod
I have to say I'm a little confused here. I can understand people arguing over Pips 'srtring theory' based on what they think a hemp or linen string of a given size could do but I really can't see any problem with the basic assumption that the MR arrows were meant for use with the MR bows and that therefore the strings had to fit the nocks. There was nothing special about those arrows - the nocking points were the same size as the Westminster arrow (although thats never been dated I know).
As an aside, Pips views on the poundage are not based only on the strings - he's had enough access to the bows and made enough yew bows out of various qualities of yew to have come to his own conclusions without being completely dependent on his views of the capabilities of the strings alone.
Chris
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..."the rule of thumb" (fistmele) and "A parting shot" are a few archery related sayings I know of. Pat
i was told by a law professor who taught criminal law (much of which, in the U.S., is derived from the English Common Law), that the rule of thumb traditionally referred, at Common Law, to the diameter of the stick with which a husband could beat his wife and not be found criminally liable. I never have attempted to verify this, but the professor tested on it. sorry this is not directly related to ELB's, but I am curious now as to the true origin of this saying
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It's a myth i'm afraid,there never was any such law ;D.It derives from a cartoon by James Gillray in 1783 which was attacking Judge Sir Francis Buller who had made a ruling in one of his cases,he had told a man to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb,but it wasnt the law ;D.
The phrase has been around since before Buller and Gillray anyway,the thumb has allways been used to estimate distances,have you never lined your thumb up with your eyeline ;D.
Sir W. Hope, Fencing-Master, 1692 - "What he doth, he doth by rule of Thumb, and not by Art."
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that's interesting! that professor told our class of 70 or so that that was the law (and he believed it). HA! ;D ;D
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Chris,
I am not particularly concerned about Pip's opinion on this matter. There is history enough about warbow cultures, and there are bowyers enough ( and one in particular) who are skilled in making the warbow. The evidence extant, supported by shooting practice seems to indicate an infantry bow median range of draw weight between 120 lb and 150 lb in the days of strong shooting.
Bear in mind that by the time of Henry VIII the strength of the English archers had probably begun to fall away somewhat from the height of their powers.
The work of Mark Stretton and Simon Stanley also seems to bear out the efficacy of bows shooting the heavy shaft in draw weights in excess of 150 lb which produce sppeds in excess of 200fps with a flighting shaft.
The benefits in range and penetration are significant when compared to a 100 lb bow shooting a shaft of similar weight.
I daresay that one could sell more war bows today in the lower draw weights, but the heavy bow archers of today mostly do not appear to yet be capable of the performance of the best of their ancestors.
A few are making progress and I applaud their efforts, but it should be borne in mind that the task is to master the bow, not to draw it a few times and shoot with little effect before commencing to either under draw or lose command of the bow.
Many would do well to focus more upon their form and slow down in the rush towards greater draw weights.
The two processes should in truth go hand in hand.
First master the bow you have, then step up in weight and master that, before stepping up once again.
In the old days you would have started as a child and your bows would have grown with you as you mastered the shooting of the bow you have.
Today the focus these days is I think too much upon the rush to draw more weight. The mastery of form, which aids accuracy and reduces the chances of injury tends to fall by the wayside.
Too often a warbow afficionado will complain the target shooting practice, for example, is irrelevant.
This is patent nonsense. Just down the road from here is the site of some butts where they would regularly shoot at marks at some 240 paces and stand the chance of winning both the respect of their peers and a purse equal to several years income for a working man, but rest assured that only the man who had command of his bow would stand a chance of taking the prize and threreafter be sought after by those selecting the best men for their retinue.
Rod.
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Actually the Vikings were among the first peoples to employ the longbow in warfare. It has been said that the vikings were the ones who brought the longbow design to England. Although even after the unsuccessful Viking conquest of England the longbow was not that widely used as it was after the successful conquest by the Normans (who were the descendants of the Vikings who settled in France).
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Actually the Vikings were among the first peoples to employ the longbow in warfare. It has been said that the vikings were the ones who brought the longbow design to England. Although even after the unsuccessful Viking conquest of England the longbow was not that widely used as it was after the successful conquest by the Normans (who were the descendants of the Vikings who settled in France).
Many things have been said which are demonstrably untrue. This has been one of them...
That the English borrowed the warbow from the Welsh is another.
Rod.
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What do you mean untrue? Show me evidence to the contrary. Have you read something recent that says other wise I really want to know? In the Great War Bow by Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy they say that some of the earliest long bows were employed by the Vikings, and in the second Bowyers Bible in the chapter on ancient European bows Paul Comstack says that there was archaeological evidence that the Vikings had left behind long bows in England in a time period before they were widely used in that area. I am not trying to turn this into a big argument I honestly wish to further my own knowledge about the history of archery, and I wish to discuss this with you more.
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Whilst it is true that "vikings" did use longbows and that bows have been found, notably in Ireland, this does not make a case for first use in warfare unless you class the viking incursions as the first warfare in NW Europe.
The longbow has been the typical type in the region for thousands of years and I daresay that it was used in anger on more than one occasion before a few folks in Jutland and Scandinavia decided to go "a-viking".
Rod.
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Rod
Thank you for your reply to my query. I notice, however, that you've studiously avoided answering my question which was really to do with the specific statement concerning 'not drawing conclusions about draw eight based on the MR nock sizes'.
I understand that you may not have much truck with Pips opinions - its a free world after all and this is a contentious issue. While I agree that more work needs to be done on the capabilities of hemp and linen strings of appropriate type (ie suitable for many bow lengths therefore single loop at most), I really can't see any problem with the idea that the nock sizes would provide an upper limit on the potential draw weights of the bows - whatever you think that upper limit might be. One of my doubts is based on a knowledge of the history of mountaineering and the tendency of hemp ropes to snap under shock loading. I'd be very interested to hear of other experiences with natural strings as a result before I'd be converted to the 120-150lb camp.
With regards to what you say about the benefits of technique over strength - I agree completely. In fact, I'd point out that I believe that 150lb is well within the compass of healthy people. A 'physiological man' weighs 154lb and most can train to do a one arm pull up. In fact one of the 1920's mountaineers was famous for doing one arm pull ups with a man on his back!! Its all a matter of training and technique.
I do think that talk of 240yd marks ought to be taken in context. Many of the ancient butts are a lot smaller than that and I've recently taken the trouble to visit the one in Widdecombe on the Moor in Devon and you'd have trouble fitting two tennis courts on it!
Chris
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Chris,
I think that such an opinion based upon nock size has no great validity in the context of historical use and some of the penetration tests by Mark which clearly show the penetrative benfit against plate of bows in the 150lb plus range.
Further, since the literary record of Chinese war bows gives us median figures for infantry bows of 120lb to 150lb Ithink it likely that all serious war bow cultures shooting heavy shafts against developed protective gear are likely to arrive in the same ballpark as regards draw weight.
Given that whenever possible the strongest men were recruited into affinites I do not see that in the heyday of the long bow that our archers would have been any weaker than the Chinese of the Bronze Age.
As regards linen strings, I donot think that we can necessarily make a direct coomparison with the linen thread available to us today, and bearing in mind the affect of a dryer climate on the strength of linen thread, we are not in a position to compare our strings directly with those in use in the mediaebval.
As to butts, I think it more than likely that you are mistaking the lateral spacing between two adjacent mounds for the shooting distance between butts shooting up and down.
This is a mistake that I have observed being made at Silk Willoughby by a modern archer.
Rod.
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Rod
I appreciate the work Mark Stretton has done but its a kind of circular argument to say that this is what you need to punch a hole in so and so armour therefore this is what they had. The fact that 150lb bows would be needed against certain kinds of armour(using modern strings BTW) coupled with decline in use of the bow could just as easily be taken as an argument that they weren't in use - particularly given the recorded instances of armour successfully resisting arrow attack as mentioned in Richard Wadges book, particularly in later times in the 'bow period'.
I'm not at all convinced of comparisons with Chinese and Turkish infantry bows. They were composite weapons, the strings as far as I'm aware were horse sinew- it was a different kind of animal. The English warbow was selected for simplicity, mass producibility and lack of need of glues. It seems, again from Richard Wadges exhaustive searches that a ratio of 2 or 3 strings per bow was common and that therefore, the strings were working close enough to their limit to need frequent replacing. I can't imagine that a medieval archer would want an arrow loosely nocked any more than I would and therefore I happen to agree with Pip that whatever the weight was, the maximum tolerance of the string material at the nock size, together with whatever you might be able to do to make it more durable, produced a natural ceiling. I'd really prefer all the effort currently going into ever increasing bow weights to go into a study of strings, and then we'd have the answer or at least a better idea of the ballpark.
A quick thing on the butts. The one I mentioned is single ended, was in use in 1466(and probably before that too) and according to local info was ringed with the stones which are still in-situ.It is roughly teardrop shaped and measures 90 paces long and 40 wide at its widest with a mound in the 'centre' of the bulge in the teardrop, 80 paces from the narrow end. Whichever way you look at it, its small - and I guess its at the smaller end of the spectrum. The reason I mention it is that from a cursory read about butts on a website on the english warbow forum, theres a pretty big range in size of butts with marks at 240yds being as uncommon as the smaller ones such as the one I visited. I do plan to look out for more as I travel around Britain.
Chris
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Chris,
The fact that other ar bow cultures used different types of bow has very little bearing on the nub of the matter which is that if the task is to project a hevy projectile with penetrating force so as to defeat defensive armour, then if it has beenshown that the higher end draw weights are more effective at this task, then I'm quite happy to accept that these weights would have been in use where the level of defensive arms required it.
That the defensive arms were in some cases quite capable of resisting penetration with varying degrees of success should come as no surprise, why would defensive arms be developed if they could not ameliorate the situation.
To often in such arguments we have the opposing camps holding unsupportably entrenched views.
Such as, in extremis " all longbow shafts can penetrate any armour" and the obverse "all armour of any quality can resist warbow shaft".
Both of these positions are of course patent nonsense. Any sensible reading of the history can only lead to the conclusion that in this particular arms race there was ongoing development in both areas.
Too often tests are made which are flawed by not looking either at the defensive systems as just that, complete systems, or on the other hand at correct application of point profiles and hardness.
We have seen unhardened type 7's dropped onto plate supported by a hard surface, for example.
Virtually no work has been done on the role of padded garments as an integral part of the defensive system, and now to raise the hare of suggesting that no-one might have used draw weights in excess of 120lb is patently absurd.
I daresay that in the early days a heavy hunting bow or a war bow of 100lb might have been perfectly adequate against a byrnie.
In the 13th C a thick aketon over a hauberk could be very effective as a defense against a point that was insufficiently sharp, whereas in the 15th C a heavy bodkin with a limited point which might fail against an aketon would be capable of punching a hole in plate, given an apprpriate angle of strike and a ductility and thickness that could be defeated by such a point.
What most folks seem to ignore is that the primary task of plate was not to completely prevent penetration, but rather to increase the probability of deflection.
There has been far too much sloppy thinking and poorly carried through "research" on this topic.
To suggest that whole armies might be defensively armed so as to render archery ineffective flies in the face of recorded history just as does the assertion that archery could render everyone ineffective.
Your report of the butts in Devon is interesting, sounds more like a location more for social activity than for serious military practice. There are illustrations showing such small ranges, but more often of a later period and for civilian use of crossbows.
It certainly does not appear to be a range that might be used when laws were in place prescribing minimum distances for the practice of shooting in the bowe.
Rod.