Main Discussion Area > English Warbow
data on the Mary Rose bows/arrows
ratty:
--- Quote from: bow-toxo on January 03, 2009, 04:15:57 pm ---Ratty; The quote tells me that the book is addressed to gentlemen and yeomen. Gentlemen were the nobles, not gentle by the modern definition. They owed their position to their immediate readiness to fight for their king with the weapons and armour appropriate to their position. Yeomen, the higher class of peasants who owned their own land, were renowned as the finest warbow archers in existence. But you knew that, cidn't you ? If very few ot the population could have used warbows, maybe you can tell me how the crown found ten archers for every man-at-arms at the end of the Hundred Years War ?
Triton; Since you don't consider the book worth anything because it is ignored, you might as well ignore it. Great reasoning ! Good luck making up history while ignoring it. That is a challenge. Perhaps you will come up with something so much better than your historical heritage.
Cheers,
Erik
--- End quote ---
i found this quote quite interesting
Toxophilus
The First Book of The School of Shooting.
Part 8 of 8
Philologe, the lack of teaching to shoot in England causeth very many men to play with the King's acts; as a man did once, either with the Mayor of London or York, I cannot tell whether, which did command by proclamation, every man in the city to hang a lantern, with a candle, afore his door; which thing the man did, but he did not light it: and so many buy bows, because of the act,[22] but yet they shoot not
what do you think?
Kviljo:
Hehe, that's cool.
Sort of the same thing as we had here in Norway, where the law said you had to have such and such weapons. Most chose to have an axe, because an axe is more useful than a other weapons. Guess warbow-shooting wasn't as popular a hobby back then as it is today :)
Oggie:
When people talk of the Bows and equipment found on the MR, I often hear said,sentences which give this impression... "The Mary Rose was Henrys Flagship so it must have had the best and strongest Archers with no expense spared on equipment"..
However, I believe that the MR was not the Flagship of the fleet but just one of three refitted ships with the Flagship being the much larger Henry Grace á dieu known as the Great Harry. Therefore the MR Archers may be just ordinary levied soldiers armed with "ordinary" 90-190# Bows and "ordinary" arrows and equipment!
Wonder what the Archers and the Bows on the Great Harry were like!!
Mark.
bow-toxo:
--- Quote from: ratty on August 01, 2009, 11:59:29 am ---
i found this quote quite interesting
Toxophilus
The First Book of The School of Shooting.
Part 8 of 8
Philologe, the lack of teaching to shoot in England causeth very many men to play with the King's acts; as a man did once, either with the Mayor of London or York, I cannot tell whether, which did command by proclamation, every man in the city to hang a lantern, with a candle, afore his door; which thing the man did, but he did not light it: and so many buy bows, because of the act,[22] but yet they shoot not
what do you think?
--- End quote ---
I think that English kings constantly tried to get their archers to improve and tried to block distractions such as football, tennis, and gambling games that they never managed to legislate out of existence in England. As we know, the English archers were very effective in the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses. Henry VIII issued more legislation than any previous king, partly because archery was becoming less effective. By Aschan's time it was getting harder to maintain public interest and at Flodden the archery was not considered to have had much to do with the outcome of the battle even though there were archers who still shot strongly.
Rod:
Any competent archer who reads Ascham will recognise that the man knows what he is writing about.
What he says rings true in many details regarding practice and attitudes.
What draw-weights he used is a matter of speculation, but I think it likely that in those days it would be usual to shoot more than what might be considered ordinary these days.
But a discussion of Ascham is perhaps a little off topic here.
Rod.
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