Archery in Medieval England E-Book

Richard Wadge

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 551

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Archery in Medieval England is an account of how archery developed amongst ordinary people in England and Wales after the Norman Conquest. In the 300 years after that traumatic event, Englishmen became such skilled archers that they could defeat the most heavily armoured noble knights in battle after battle – feats of arms unequalled by the combatants of any other European country. Here Richard Wadge describes how men used bows and arrows in their everyday lives in the centuries between the arrival of the Normans and the start of the 100 Years War in Edward III's reign. Many contemporary records provide accounts of the illegal use of bows and arrows: unlawful hunting is shown to have been particularly important as a school for the development of battle- winning archery skills. In the process of investigating these accounts, light is shed on the background to the stories of Robin Hood and other outlaws. Evidence from archaeology, manuscript illustrations, church wall paintings and carvings provides an insight into the actual bows and arrows and their use. Richard Wadge shows how the archer came to symbolise the spirit of the ordinary Englishman, how he became a forerunner of John Bull and how he remains part of the national identity even today.

Leseprobe

About the Author

Richard Wadge is a medieval historian and experienced traditional archer. His previous publications include Arrowstorm: The World of the Archer in the Hundred Years War and various articles in periodicals, including ‘Medieval Arrowheads from Oxfordshire’ in Oxoniesia. He is a member of the English Warbow Society and helps to organise a major annual international Traditional Archery event.

First published 2012 by Spellmount

This paperback edition first published 2024

The History Press

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© Richard Wadge, 2012, 2024

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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ISBN 978 0 75248 357 3

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Money in Medieval England

I

Popular Archery after the Norman Conquest

II

Law of Archery before the Black Death

III

Bows and Arrows as Part of Medieval Life

IV

Archery for Sport and Practice

V

Breaking the Law

VI

Hunting Practices in Medieval England

VII

Hunting and Poaching

VIII

Military Archery before Edward III

IX

Contemporary Evidence for Bows and Arrows in Medieval England

X

What Drove the Rise of the English Longbowman?

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Many people help an author towards the completion of the particular pet project in hand. What virtues this book has are made greater by the generous assistance I have received from many people. All the members of the English Warbow Society (EWBS) have helped through their commitment to English traditional archery. Steve Stratton, Mark Stretton and Glennan Carnie have been particularly generous with their time and thoughts.

While researching the book the staff of the Bodleian Library in Oxford have been particularly supportive through their cheerful professionalism. Anne Marshall of www.paintedchurch.org generously supplied photographs of church wall paintings. This website will be of interest to anyone who loves medieval history. Dr Mark Redknap and Sian Iles of the National Museum of Wales willingly gave of their time to allow me to look at arrowheads in the museum’s collection. The volunteer staff of Gloucester Cathedral – particularly Patrick O’Donovan – were very supportive. Sarah Walter at the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, Christine Reynolds, Assistant Keeper of Muniments at Westminster Abbey and Catherine Turner and the library staff at Durham Cathedral have been very helpful.

Finally my thanks go to my son Edmund for asking very pertinent questions about the scope of the book one night in Australia and to Eleanor for her patience and support.

Money in Medieval England

The basic unit of currency in medieval England was the silver penny. There were twelve pennies to a shilling, and twenty shillings to £1 sterling. In addition, the mark was an official unit of currency used in fines and accounts worth 13/-4d or 160 silver pennies. No mark or half-mark coins were issued in England in the medieval period.

The penny could be divided into fractions: half-pennies and quarter-pennies, known as farthings, were made by clipping pennies. Officially issued silver half-pennies exist, the earliest found dates to Henry I’s reign, and silver farthings have also been found, with the earliest dating from Edward I’s reign. The cut coins remained in use besides the officially issued small coins because silver half-pennies and farthings seem to have been too rare to be effective small change.

What was the silver penny worth? It is meaningless to convert it to its modern decimal equivalent, but it is very useful to give some idea of what it meant to men and women of the time. In the middle of Edward I’s reign, archers and labourers could earn 2d per day in the king’s service. This was twice what an agricultural labourer might get paid, although the agricultural labourer would probably get a daily meal as well. A carpenter’s wage at the same time was about 3d per day. Many other craftsmen earned a similar amount. A labourer would struggle to support a family on his wages, whereas a carpenter would not.

Most rural people expected to grow some or all of their food, whereas town dwellers often had less chance to do so. It is, however, difficult to get an idea of food prices at the level of individual loaves or weights of meat. Bread and ale prices were controlled by law from Henry III’s reign onwards, in an attempt to ensure the staples of the medieval diet were affordable. At the end of the thirteenth century a hen seems to have been valued at about 1d at the most – more valuable for its eggs than as a meal.

I

Popular Archery after the Norman Conquest

Between the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the ravages of the Black Death in 1348–50 the practice of archery among the ordinary people of England and Wales produced archers and bows of such power and capability that they became a significant factor in European history, to the amazement of contemporary chroniclers. This has been much discussed by historians, but no clear picture of popular archery in medieval England and Wales has emerged to explain how this came about. Archery is an activity that developed in nearly all cultures and peoples for millennia. The Australian Aborigines are the most significant exception to this. Examples of the traditional use of self bows of different lengths are widespread, and can be found throughout history in four continents until the last quarter of the previous millennium.

Archery had been practised in the British Isles for something like four millennia before 1066. Perhaps the earliest evidence of the significant use of archery in war was found during the excavations at the Neolithic fort at Carn Brea near Redruth in Cornwall. About 700 flint arrowheads were found, many of them Neolithic leaf-shaped heads, and the largest concentration was around the probable site of one of the gateways into the fort. While the excavator observed that it is impossible to guess the nature of the warfare evidenced by the arrowheads, he felt that it was almost certainly fighting among the various Neolithic communities of the area and that the assault on the fort took place at some point in the mid third millennium BC.1

Despite this long history of popular archery in the British Isles, its use in warfare ebbed and flowed as various cultures arrived or developed. In general, although archery was used in hunting throughout the long period starting with the Mesolithic period at the latest, it remained peripheral to the development of military practice. But some combination of circumstances after the irruption of the Normans into British history led to the development of both the skills and the equipment necessary for longbow archery to become a revolutionary change in Western European military practice. The three most commonly quoted reasons for this development are: the importance of archery in the Norman victory at Hastings, albeit using bows less than man height in length; the unpleasant experiences of Welsh archery suffered by both English armies in the decades before the Conquest and the Norman armies after it; and the Norse tradition of longbow archery in those parts of England and Scotland heavily influenced by the Vikings. But these factors alone aren’t enough of an explanation. All three applied in Ireland: Norse settlements; experience of the effectiveness of the Welsh archers; and military leaders who understood the usefulness of military archery. Yet the Irish themselves did not develop a military practice exploiting powerful hand bows despite their experiences on the receiving end of it. The Anglo Norman community in Ireland continued to develop military archery to the extent that there are records of companies of archers from Ireland being included in English royal armies in the fourteenth century. It most certainly was not for want of good bow wood in Ireland since yew bowstaves were imported from Ireland to England between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. One explanation of why very little trace of tradition of archery in medieval Ireland has been found is that the Irish people did not practise archery for sport or hunting in the way that the people of Wales, England and, to a lesser degree, Scotland did in the Middle Ages.

But the evidence of what was going on in Ireland is very important, because Ireland has provided that rarest of archery-related archaeological finds, a medieval yew bow from before the Tudor period. One complete bow has been found that dates to the period of the Anglo Norman invasions of that island in the twelfth century.

An understanding of the development of popular archery in England during the twelfth, thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries can be built up by looking at the eclectic collection of records mentioning archery that have survived. These include court records of criminal activities; wills and inventories that show men owning bows; records of sports and pastimes; accounts of hunting, most of it illegal, and military archery. Archaeological finds are important because they show actual practice unfiltered by legal scribes, chroniclers or any other observer. But these are a bit ‘one sided’ consisting almost entirely of arrowheads; finds of bows, arrowshafts and bone or leather archery accessories are very rare, as are finds of artefacts made of organic material in general. As yet there have been no finds of anything that might be archery butts confirmed for the period 1066–c.1350. Then there are all the statutes and orders that both encourage the ownership of bows and arrows and restrict their use. Artistic representations showing archers with their bows and arrows include manuscript illustrations, church wall paintings and a few carvings, but these come from a time before rigid representational art. Finally there are any records or events that give an insight into the value that was put upon archery skills. The study of the activities described in the records, and of various archery-related artefacts and art, makes it possible to build up a patchwork picture of popular archery before the successes of Edward III’s reign made the practice of archery part of the nation’s self image.

Bows and Arrows in Medieval England

It is not easy to find evidence of widespread popular archery in England before the thirteenth century. More evidence becomes available in that century and in the first half of the fourteenth century leading up to the great victories of Edward III’s reign. But there still isn’t any consistent surviving evidence of the widespread use of heavy bows, that is bows with a draw weight of at least 110lb (50kg), the estimated minimum draw weight of the Mary Rose bows.2 In fact, the evidence from before Edward III’s reign does not even suggest that all archers habitually used ‘longbows’, that is bows about 6ft (1.83m) long. For much of the period when the military reputation of the English and Welsh archer was becoming established in Europe, the term longbow was anachronistic, since it is first recorded in the mid-fifteenth century.3 Before then, written records, whether official accounts, inventories or chronicles record just two sorts of bow, crossbows and bows. The Latin word arcus is used for a bow, which really just describes its shape. It is used for a hand bow of whatever length, and at some points in this book the term hand bow is used to make a clear distinction from crossbows in use at the same time. In line with this, the term archer will only be used to mean men using hand bows, those using crossbows are crossbowmen. Some of the evidence suggests that ordinary men commonly used shorter bows, maybe 4½–5ft (1.37–1.52m) in length in this period, although at the same time there are a very few records that make clear mention of men using bows 6ft or more (1.83m) in length. The widespread use of lighter shorter bows also becomes apparent from the discussion of medieval arrowheads. Many of the surviving arrowheads have a socket size of about 0.35in (9mm) or less, realistically allowing them to be used only on fairly light shafts, which in turn means that they were used with fairly light bows. Arrows of this size would not work well with bows with draw weights similar to those found on the Mary Rose because they would not have been stiff enough to cope with forces generated by these bows. The diameters of the arrow shafts from the Mary Rose range between 0.43in and 0.5in (11mm and 13mm) at the head end.4 Arrowheads found at Camber Castle, Rye, which are more or less contemporary with the sinking of the Mary Rose, also have an average socket diameter of about 0.5in (12.6mm).5 Taken together these figures confirm that the medieval fletchers knew what modern heavy bow archers have worked out, that it easy to make arrows for heavy bows using shafts of between 0.47in and 0.5in (12mm and 13mm) because you know that all the arrowshafts will tolerate the forces involved in being shot from such a bow without time-consuming work weighing and selecting arrowshafts. Given the large quantities of arrows made for military use in medieval England in response to royal orders often at fairly short notice, economy in the use of the fletchers’ time was vital.

There is no evidence to contradict the long-held view that the indigenous bow type in Western Europe is the self bow. Traces of laminated bows in ancient and medieval Western Europe arise in three ways: bows used by men hired from, or invading from, further east; equipment brought back by the Crusaders or by travellers; bows used by the Saracen population in medieval Sicily and Italy. Evidence of different lengths of self bow being used in Europe does not mean that long bows and short bows developed as different types of bow. In large part it arose from the availability of bow wood, the skill of the bowyer and that of the archer. It is quite possible that many of the bows used in the activities described in the following chapters were not made by craftsmen bowyers, but by general woodworkers or even the archer himself. This would have been most likely when the archer belonged to the broad class of peasants.

The most substantial pieces of evidence for the widespread use of short bows are the Bayeux Tapestry and the finds from excavations at Waterford and Limerick. Both of these are widely regarded as reflecting the same tradition, that of Norman or Northern French military archery. An experienced war leader like William of Normandy clearly considered these ‘short bow’ archers an important part of his invasion force. As far as one can tell from accounts of the battle at Hastings their tactical role was to launch showers of arrows to disconcert and disrupt the opposing forces, inflicting as many injuries as the opposing forces’ protection allowed, making the onslaught of infantry or cavalry more effective. It is likely that they were not expected to inflict mass slaughter. The tactical role of the English and Welsh longbow men in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was more ambitious; they inflicted injury or death on many of their opponents until expensive armour was developed to resist their arrows. The major difference in the roles of the archers in the Norman army at Hastings and the English and Welsh longbow archers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was that the Norman archers did not have the power to make an opposing army wilt or provoke them into desperate charges in the way that the longbowmen could. Without wishing to belittle the skill or military value of the archers in the Norman armies in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it is difficult to believe that men needed to practise as much to use these short bows effectively as was necessary to use a heavy warbow. Therefore their presence and usefulness did not depend on there being a substantial tradition of popular archery in the archers’ home countries in the way that the use of the English warbow did.

Life in Medieval England

Any study of a human activity such as popular archery, the practice of archery by the ordinary mass of the population of medieval England who are almost invisible to history as individuals, needs to be put into the context of what life was like for these people. Firstly, how big was the population in the period from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries? The compilation of the Domesday Book in 1086 has allowed historians to estimate that the population at the time was about 2.2 million of which over 90 per cent lived in the countryside. By the start of the fourteenth century the population had grown between two and threefold to at least 5 million, with between 80 and 85 per cent living outside the towns and cities. 6 This meant that the growth in the population was largely due to the growth in the numbers of the rural peasantry.7 The rural population fell into two groups, the free and the unfree, often called serfs. These were unfree in the sense that they owed labour dues to their immediate ‘landlords’, were not meant to travel without the lords’ permission and were to a large degree under the jurisdiction of these lords’ courts, although they were beginning to gain some limited rights of access to the King’s courts. By the thirteenth century there is strong evidence that a customary understanding of rights, services owed and fines due had developed between the peasants and their lords which meant that matters were not as oppressive as they appear from a twenty-first century perspective. Serfs were not a uniform ‘class’ but fell into two groups. Villeins made up about 40 per cent of the rural population and held enough land to feed themselves and their families and even produce a surplus for sale. Bordars and Cottars represented about 30 per cent of the rural population, and held small landholdings which were insufficient to feed their families. They had to add to the produce from their landholding with income from all sorts of wage labour just to survive.8 There tended to be a higher proportion of serfs in the Midlands and Southern counties than was the case in the Northern and Eastern counties. The majority of these peasants lived in villages and hamlets. The rapid growth of the population between c.1100 and c.1300 was mirrored by a large increase in the number of towns in the same period. These increased from c.100 in the eleventh century to c.830 by c.1300 in the whole of Britain, with the vast majority of these being found in England.9

The increase in the population and in the number of towns also stimulated an increase in the number of markets. All the towns would have markets and many villages also had a weekly market. Medieval lawyers declared as a rule of thumb aimed at ensuring the financial viability of town markets that the residents of a town could object if it was proposed to establish another market within a 6.75-mile radius.10 As a result much of the rural population had access to a thriving local market. But another important consequence of the increase in the number of towns was that the rural population had more access to skilled craftsmen since these could find enough work to earn a living in the area of a town, whether they lived in it permanently or travelled from town to town. As regards archery, while it is very unlikely that a specialist bowyer or fletcher lived in most towns in the early fourteenth century, it is probable that town smiths had an effect on the types of arrowhead in use in the surrounding countryside.

The laws which controlled the ownership of weapons in general and bows and arrows in particular are discussed in detail in the following chapter, ‘The Law of Archery before the Black Death’.

But life for a medieval peasant wasn’t just a matter of endless toil, they had a lot of holidays. Since God rested on the seventh day, the Church insisted that man should also have a day of rest, so work was forbidden on Sundays. In addition there were between forty and fifty religious festivals and holidays a year when most or all work was also forbidden.11 So the medieval peasant had more holidays than we do! The religious festivals and holidays included ‘Church Ales’ at a parish level, and major saints’ days on a grander scale. The people enjoyed these and celebrated them with parades and plays. Sundays and religious holidays became very important in the development of popular archery since these days of rest were when ordinary men could indulge in sports. A few accounts of these popular sporting activities can be found below. From 1363 onwards, the King and Parliament issued proclamations and statutes to try to limit popular sports to archery for the benefit of the country, but before that, in the period this book considers, there seemed to be less interference with popular sports.

So, two questions arise: Firstly, how did the tradition of popular archery develop among the English and Welsh to such a degree that Edward III could field an army in the Crécy campaign of 1346 that, by the time of the Battle of Crécy itself, included perhaps 6,500 archers using bows of sufficient draw weight to devastate the Genoese crossbowmen and then shoot down the French knights’ warhorses and possibly considerable numbers of the knights themselves?12 But that was not all, at the same time as Edward was marching through northern France towards Crécy, the Archbishop of York managed to raise enough men, including a considerable proportion of archers, to defeat King David of Scotland at the Battle of Neville’s Cross. The events of 1346 make clear that there were substantial numbers of men available to serve as military archers. This is a big point. Men are not able to use heavy bows effectively without putting in a lot of practise. Most men in medieval England and Wales were in the habit of regular often heavy physical work from a fairly young age, as their skeletons show. As a result they were fit and strong despite the risks of disease and a sometimes very limited diet. But they would still have to practise. In many ways the long bow is a most unlikely weapon to become the main weapon of an army in the Middle Ages because it requires so much consistent practise in comparison with staff weapons. What was it in the English and Welsh character that made ordinary men choose this most difficult of options?

The second question is; is it possible to determine when the stages in the growth of popular archery happened? How much were Englishmen in the years after the Norman Conquest able to practise archery, or did the Normans try to prevent it for fear of trouble from their new subjects? How widespread had the practise of archery become by the early 1340s, or did Edward III’s spectacular successes in that decade alter the popular opinion of archery so that a higher proportion of men took it up? Did the tales of these victories and the riches that archers could gain as booty in France lead those ordinary men who were practising archery with ordinary bows of varying lengths and qualities as their legal duty under the Statute of Winchester to decide that this was not enough, and that they would go on to develop archery skills using heavy warbows?

Whatever the answers to these big questions may be, it is absolutely clear is that by the 1360s the king, the magnates and the Parliament of England perceived that warbow archery was vital to the defence of the kingdom, and to successful military adventures in Europe. Most of the evidence we have for the development and practise of archery and its official encouragement comes from after the glory days of Edward III’s reign. The first royal proclamation requiring the practise of archery that can be found in the official records was made in June 1363, a time when England and France were technically at peace as a result of the Treaty of Bretigny made three years earlier. Thereafter in the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, proclamations and statutes were made at irregular intervals which aimed to encourage the practice of archery specifically for the defence of the realm. In the latter half of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth century these were interspersed with statutes and proclamations which tried to control both the supply of bowstaves from abroad and price of bows within the kingdom. In a statute made in 1511–12, Henry VIII even tried to direct where bowyers should live in an attempt to ensure that Englishmen everywhere in his kingdom had easy access to bows so that they could practise for war.13 All these laws and statutes had the purpose of maintaining the archery tradition that the kings, nobles and Parliament wanted to see exist in England and Wales in these centuries.

In seeking the answer to these questions, it should be possible to get some idea of how far the men of medieval England and Wales developed their tradition of popular archery for themselves and how far they were led and encouraged into it by the kings and nobles.

The skills of the military archer developed in a period in the British Isles which was dominated by three events of undeniable historical significance: the Norman Conquest in 1066; the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 and the Black Death in 1348–50. All three had a significant effect on the ordinary man and woman of medieval England. The Conquest introduced new kings, nobles and local landholders as lords of the manors, the majority of whom could barely speak the language of the mass of the ordinary people, and a number of laws which discriminated against the English. The survivors of the men who had held lands as nobles and leading local landholders under the Anglo-Saxon kings, usually called thegns, found themselves with much reduced holdings and a less influential position in society under the Norman kings. Carpenter has summarised their position writing ‘Most [men of status of king’s thegn pre conquest] held just a few hides of land, but they were also probably local officials – huntsmen, foresters, sheriffs bailiffs – and thus significant.’14 A goodly number of these are listed in Domesday Book. So the mass of the population of England found themselves owing services and dues to men they viewed as alien, while the leaders of society that they recognised and could communicate with worked for the new landholders and helped implement the changes that the Norman Conquest brought to England. The barons, churchmen and nobles who drafted and negotiated Magna Carta were openly concerned with restricting royal prerogative powers, and re-establishing what they claimed to see as a Golden Age in England when the king ruled within the law and with respect for tradition. But Magna Carta also had the probably unintended consequences of giving the mass of the population both free and unfree more secure legal rights and remedies. Finally the Black Death was a catastrophe that we can barely comprehend. In three years, 1348–50, it killed at least 50 per cent of the population. But this death toll gave the survivors a broad range of opportunities. In simple terms, there was a shortage of people. Men were not scarce enough that peace reigned between England and France, the great victory at Poitiers, where the archers made a huge contribution to the Black Prince’s success, happened after the Black Death. But the real consequences were felt in the rest of the fourteenth century when it became difficult for landlords to hang on to their tenants both free and unfree. So there was a noticeable degree of both geographic and economic mobility among the population at large despite legal restraints on both wage levels and movement.

Looking back over a millennium how is it possible to see how popular archery developed in medieval England? In part by taking a very old-fashioned approach to history. As Karen Armstrong put it ‘Since the eighteenth century, we have developed a scientific view of history; we are concerned above all with what actually happened. But in the pre-modern world, when people wrote about the past they were more concerned with what an event meant’.15 The whole point of what follows is not to provide an account of illegal hunting by ordinary people, or to study medieval crime, but to discover what these activities signify in the story of popular archery in medieval England before the great days of the archer in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Notes

1    Mercer R.J., ‘Excavations at Carn Brea, Ilogan Cornwall 1970–73’ (Cornish Archaeology, Vol.20, 1981)

2    See Hildred, A. (ed.), Weapons of Warre: The Armaments of the Mary Rose (Portsmouth, Mary Rose Trust, 2011) pp.616–29. For a discussion of the draw weights of the bows recovered from the Mary Rose. This makes clear that there is still debate about the draw weights with some authorities thinking that the minimum may be as low as 65lb. However, the draw weights of replicas noted in the book and others made by members of the English Warbow Society suggest that draw weights were over 120lb.

3    The first occurrences seem to be in the 1440s in the Paston letters and an order for military equipment necessary for the defence of Caen issued in 1449 which can be found in Stevenson, J. (ed.), Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France in the Reign of King Henry VI (London, 1861–4) Vol.1, p.501

4    Hildred, A. (2011) p.682

5    Biddle, M. et al., Henry VIII’s Coastal Artillery Fort at Camber Castle, Rye, East Sussex (Oxford, 2001) pp.196–8

6    Dyer, C., Making a Living in the Middle Ages (Penguin Books, 2003) pp.95 and 233

7    Ibid., p.155

8    Ibid., pp.97–8

9    Ibid., p.187. This figure includes towns in Wales and Scotland although the large majority were in England

10   Ibid., p.191

11   See Hutton, R., The Rise and Fall of Merry England (Oxford, 1996) for more about these festivals

12   Figures derived from Ayton, A. and Preston, P., The Battle of Crécy 1346 (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2005) pp.190–1

13   More detailed accounts of these legal efforts to encourage archery in England can be found in Wadge, R., Arrowstorm: The World of the Archer in the Hundred Years War (The History Press, 2007) pp.53–6, 210–13, 226–8

14   Carpenter, D., The Struggle for Mastery; Britain 1066–1284 (Penguin Books, 2004) p.80

15   Armstrong, K., A Short History of Myth (Canongate, 2005) p.17

II

Law of Archery before the Black Death

In the time between the Norman Conquest of England and the Black Death the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England made a number of laws which by turn encouraged and restricted the practice of archery by the people. These fell into two broad categories. Firstly there was Forest Law which governed the very extensive royal forests created by the Norman kings, with the prime purpose of preserving deer and other animals for the kings to hunt. Inevitably, the body of Forest Law included severe restrictions on anything to do with archery within the bounds of a royal forest, so that even having an unstrung bow in a man’s house was an offence unless he had express permission from the Forest Justices. Inevitably this permission did not come for free. Secondly, there were those parts of the general law of England which had the broad purpose of maintaining the King’s peace. Men were required to have weapons in their houses to meet their duty of actively assisting in this. At the most basic town and village level this meant that they had to take part in the Hue and Cry, a legally required version of ‘have a go’ that involved the pursuit and arrest of offenders. Very soon after the Norman Conquest the kings were sufficiently confident of their hold on the country that they required freemen to own arms so that law-abiding men were well enough armed to assist the sheriffs in keeping the peace if necessary. Through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Assizes and Statutes were issued which placed a duty on men to own arms and practise in their use so that there were an adequate number of competent armed men to summon for service in times of war. As time passed and circumstances changed serfs came to be included in the groups required to have arms in their homes.

Forest Law

Anglo-Saxon law allowed men to hunt on their own land. The only clear statement of this is found in the ‘Laws of Cnut’ issued about 1020–3, which asserted that ‘it is my will that every man is entitled to his hunting in wood and field on his own land’. This is very significant since the ‘Laws of Cnut’ consists mainly of extracts from earlier English lawcodes, and so the popular right to hunt may have a long history in Anglo-Saxon England. These laws also outlined wide ranging royal hunting rights with the king declaring; ‘everyone is to avoid trespassing on my hunting, wherever I wish to have it preserved, on pain of full fine.’1 An example of a pre Conquest non royal hunting preserve is found in a charter dating to second half of the tenth century concerning an estate at Grimly in Worcestershire which makes mention of a hunting wood (silvis venationibus).2 The Norman kings made enormous changes to the hunting rights of the population of England. They declared much larger areas to be royal forests, these forests being primarily hunting preserves for the king as well as being a source of income from timber, pasturage and rents. It has been estimated that in the thirteenth century about a quarter of the land area of England was forest, and that this may have been reduced from a higher level in the previous century.3 The Norman kings rapidly developed a special body of law, Forest Law, which governed the lands included within the bounds of the royal forests. These can be most simply defined as the land which was governed by Forest Law, and were regarded as separate from the king’s demesne, which was the land the king held as his own and had not let to someone else.

Forest Law bore down most heavily on those landholders and serfs who were resident in the manors and villages that fell within the bounds of a royal forest. Until the thirteenth century, for those who lived within and around the bounds of the royal forests the demands and diktats of Forest Law could override their legal rights as defined in what came to be known as English Common Law. But it was a very confused situation since there is also clear evidence that criminal and civil pleas relating to offences and other legal matters occurring in areas within the bounds of the forests were heard in Common Law courts.4

The Foresters and other officers of the royal forests were often notorious for their heavy-handed implementation of Forest Law. One example of this oppressive and often corrupt implementation occurred when a forester took over the inquest into the lawing of dogs (the removal of three claws or more likely pads from a forefoot of all dogs that lived within the bounds of a forest to stop them chasing game). This was usually carried out by the Regarders, who were leading members of local society rather than royal employees. This forester then extorted money from the dogs’ owners by claiming that the law required the removal of the toes from a particular forefoot, and the one that had been maimed was always the wrong one.5 In the first 150 years after the Norman Conquest Norman of England, Forest Law included ferocious physical penalties for contravening many of its rules. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in its summary of William I’s reign comments that: ‘He set apart a vast deer preserve and imposed laws concerning it. Whoever slew a hart or hind was to be blinded.’6 The Chronicle is undoubtedly making an implied criticism of William and the way he radically changed the hunting rights of the people at large in comparison with the rights they had before the Conquest. The penalties in Henry I’s reign for offences against the ‘venison and the vert’, that is against both the beasts and the trees and pastures of the forest, not only included blinding, but also emasculation and death. William of Newburgh commented that ‘he [Henry I] made too little distinction between a person who killed a deer and one who killed a man.’7 Henry I’s laws as recorded at the end of his reign contain reference to an early version of Forest Law, but not in the clear detail that is recorded in later reigns. Clause 17 headed ‘Concerning the plea of the forests’ has two sections:

1.   The plea of the forest is embarrassed with many inconveniences.

2.   It is concerned with the clearing of land; cutting wood; burning; the carrying of bows and spears in the forest; the wretched practice of hambling dogs [what was later called lawing dogs]; anyone who does not come to aid in a deer hunt; anyone who lets loose the livestock which he has kept confined; buildings in the forest; failure to obey summons; encountering anyone in the forest with dogs; the finding of hide or flesh.8

The author of this account of Henry’s laws perhaps implies that Forest Law is outside the main body of the law of the kingdom by the way in which he gives this vague summary of it. His phrase ‘the wretched practice of hambling dogs’ suggests that he was unhappy about aspects of Forest Law, reflecting what became a clear antipathy felt by many in England in later reigns.

In the Assize of the Forest in 1184, Henry II codified and restated Forest Law as it had developed up to that date. The first article establishes the penalties for infringing the Forest Law at the same level as his grandfather Henry I had enforced. There seems to have been no perceived need to specifically restate them.

The second article states ‘He forbids that anyone shall have bows or arrows or hounds or harriers in his forest unless he shall have as his guarantor the king or some other person who can legally act as his guarantor.’ The ninth article dealt with a particular menace to the deer in the royal forests; ‘the king forbids that any cleric shall transgress either in regard to his venison or to his foresters.’ This article was another part of Henry’s struggle with the Church throughout his reign to limit its independence from royal law and influence. The tenth article dealt with surreptitious hunting, saying ‘The king has commanded that none shall hereafter in any wise hunt wild animals by night with a view to their capture either within the forest or without, wheresoever the animals frequent or have their lairs under pain of imprisonment for one year and payment of a fine or ransom at pleasure.’9 It is noteworthy that this last article extends the king’s protection over those animals considered huntworthy outside the bounds of the forest if they wander at night. Human activity in the daytime might be expected to encourage the animals to keep in the shelter of the forest, but in the quiet of the night they might wander outside the bounds of the forest and become ‘fair game’. This article also ensured a ‘buffer zone’ around the forest at night when it would have been easier to enter the forest unseen to poach. However, this article could also be used by the forest officers to interfere in the lives of those who lived around the forest.

Henry II left the system of forest administration which applied Forest Law and raised income for the king from the forests in such a robust and efficient condition, that it carried on running effectively through Richard’s reign. This was despite Richard’s neglect of the details of administering the English part of his inheritance.

King John enthusiastically maintained the efficiency of the forest administration, with an eye to gaining as much profit as possible from both the resources of the forests themselves and from the administration of Forest Law. There is no clear evidence that he extended the area afforested beyond that his father Henry II had held, indeed it is possible he reduced it slightly through his regular acceptance of gifts to secure various forest privileges.10 But through his efficient administration of the royal forests he retained such effective control of the forests that he was able to use rigorous enforcement of Forest Law to inconvenience his opponents among the nobility and the Church. The Cistercian order being one group that particularly suffered in this way. After twelve years of this oppressive use of prerogative power in relation to the forests he held a particularly harsh, and potentially profitable, Forest Eyre in 1212. All this led to reform of Forest Law being an important part of the demands of the barons in their dispute with King John in the latter part of his reign. When King John and the barons signed Magna Carta in 1215 many hoped that by doing this they were re-establishing the agreement between the king and his magnates that was so necessary for successful medieval government. In fact John saw it only as way to gain a breathing space to allow him the opportunity to regain dominance. As soon as most of the barons left London John repudiated the charter, and was supported in this by Pope Innocent III who annulled it because John had signed it under duress. But John died in 1216 before he could win or perhaps more likely lose the war against the barons. Magna Carta was re-enacted in the name of his successor, the nine-year-old Henry III, this time with the support of the papal legate.

Magna Carta dealt with the general issues where royal government had exploited the king’s power to harm the interests of all free men in England and did not include detailed recommendations to help resolve the tensions arising from Forest Law and the extent of the royal forests. It laid the foundations for major developments in the rights and roles of all men (and to a lesser degree women) in medieval England, whether free or serfs. But it included two articles relating to the forest in broad terms. Clause 48 stated that:

All evil customs of forests and warrens, foresters and warreners, sheriffs and their servants, river banks and their wardens are to be investigated at once in every county by twelve sworn knights of the same county who are to be chosen by worthy men of the county, and within 40 days of the inquiry they are to be abolished by them beyond recall, provided that we, or our Justiciar, if we are not in England, first know of it.11

This was a radical change since it was the first time that anyone outside the royal administration was given the duty and power to investigate and change law and practice within the royal forests. It was a step towards including the royal forests within the ordinary legal and administrative systems of the country. Clause 44 addressed another grievance where the administration of Forest Law had been over zealous, declaring that ‘Henceforth men who live outside the forest shall not come before our Justices of the Forest upon a general summons, unless they are impleaded or are sureties for any person or persons who are attached for forest offences.’12 This clause restricted the jurisdiction of the Forest Justices and Forest Law to the forest itself and matters pertaining directly to it, rather than Forest Law overriding the Common Law in the districts around the forests as had previously been the case.

In November 1217 the Forest Charter was sealed in the name of the young Henry III. This charter codified the complaints and demands of the barons and other landholders which were not included in detail in the Magna Carta, and matters discovered by the inquisitions of the juries of knights established in Magna Carta. Undoubtedly the most important clause in the Forest Charter for the people of England at large was Clause 10 which declared ‘None henceforth shall give life or limb for our venison’. This clause goes on to say that those convicted of taking venison shall be fined, or, if they are unable to pay a fine, imprisoned for a year and a day. On release those imprisoned must find sureties for their subsequent behaviour or be banished from the kingdom.13 This repudiation of the Norman kings’ attitude that to kill a deer was as serious as killing a man, almost certainly led directly to an increase in poaching by the common man since the penalties for poaching were now survivable. Although the penalty of a year and a day in prison should not be underestimated, medieval prisons were foul, pest-ridden places that could kill the healthiest person. Moreover, since prisoners relied on friends and family for food, care and clothing, being in prison could be a serious financial penalty on the prisoner and his family.

As will become clear in the discussion of illegal hunting below, some men came to be recognised as habitual offenders against the king’s venison. More court records survive from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than do from the earlier centuries, which may mean that we know more about poaching in those centuries, rather than that more actually happened. But the removal of the threat of maiming or death must have made men more willing to take the risk of attempting to poach the king’s deer.

There are two other significant themes in the Forest Charter. The first is that the extent of the royal forests should be limited to their extent at the beginning of Henry II’s reign. But this was not straight forward since successive juries enquiring into the extent of royal forests came to differing conclusions in regard to the boundaries of particular forests over the next fifteen years. Secondly the Regarders were given more control over the numbers and powers of the foresters in a serious attempt to restrict the opportunities for the foresters to levy oppressive fines and fees on the people living in the forest.

By the thirteenth century, particularly after the enactment of the Forest Charter, the officers responsible for the administration of royal forests and the implementation of Forest Law fell into two groups: one included the Forest Justices and foresters appointed by the king, and the other representatives of the men of standing who lived in the counties containing the forests.

Ideally the Justices of the Forest Eyre were appointed at regular intervals, and travelled the country visiting each Forest Court to hear cases. In theory they were men of experience within the royal administration who were independent of the Forest administration. But, because the king directed when the Eyre should be held these Justices were often unpopular for their willingness to impose high fines and so raise money from the administration of justice to fill the king’s coffers. The men who administered each forest were appointed by the king directly or indirectly. Each forest usually had a Warden who was in charge of a group of Foresters of different rank. The most important were the Foresters in Fee, who held land for the service of being a forester in person or through a substitute. In addition to these was a more numerous body of paid foresters, the riding foresters who were the more senior and the walking foresters. These men did most of the work of looking after the forest. The activities of these Justices and officers were ‘monitored’ by two groups of men representing the people living within and around the forest.

The Regarders were formally established by the Assize of Woodstock in 1185. They were appointed by the sheriff, usually twelve of them for each county, to look into all the activities that went on in the forest, such as assarts (clearing of forest land for cultivation), purprestures (making buildings or enclosures within the forest), whether trees had been cut down, the presence of mines or forges in the forest and who had bows and arrows within the forest.14 All these activities were the sort of matters which corrupt or grasping foresters could make money out of by effectively licensing them for a fee to the detriment of the forest. The other group were the Verderers who were elected by the County Court. They were established by Richard I’s reign at the latest, and their main duty was to attend the forest courts every forty days to view the attachments (accusations put before the court) made by the foresters.15 This enabled them to check that the foresters were not making too many accusations with little or no foundation. The Forest Charter built upon the roles of these two groups to establish more robust checks on the scope for abuse of their powers by the foresters.

As the account of illegal hunting below demonstrates, the royal administration had every reason to be very concerned about the carrying of bows and arrows within the bounds of the forests. This concern was so deeply felt that even forest officers could be restricted in their right to carry them, again not without good cause since foresters very easily became poachers. One clear example of this comes from the Peak Forest in the early 1290s. John of Wolfhunt and Thomas Foljambe held a bovate of land between them for the service of hunting wolves in the forest. This was not an all round the year job, they were expected to make two expeditions each year to catch wolves, normally in March and September. The way they were to do this was quite explicitly described. They were to go into the forest accompanied by only one servant each to carry traps, equipped with a hatchet, a spear and a hunting knife but expressly neither a bow nor arrows. They were also allowed one unlawed mastiff each.16 John’s name is noteworthy since he is described as holding his portion of the land by hereditary descent whereas Thomas acquired his by purchase.

Laws Governing the Ownership of Arms

Like the basics of Forest Law, the roots of the legal duty of all free men in England to be prepared to provide military service to protect the kingdom can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon times as well. This service was owed in response to a summons from the king through his officials. Before the Norman Conquest this meant service in the Fyrd. There has been a great deal of discussion among academics about the degree of continuity of the Fyrd tradition into Post-Conquest England. The current consensus is that the Norman and Plantagenet kings recognised the value of the tradition and used it to achieve two ends. Firstly, it was a way of repairing a fracture in the English social structure brought about by the Conquest itself. By offering the opportunity of military service to Englishmen, it both included them in the aims of the new regime, and gave them an opportunity to expend their aggressive energies. Secondly, it was a very simple way of providing the Norman kings and the great magnates, particularly the Marcher barons, with a considerable part of the armies necessary for their persistent military activities.

The Norman and Plantagenet kings developed this duty of bearing arms in a series of Assizes of Arms and the Statutes associated with these Assizes. In these, the male population of England aged between 15 and 60 was divided into groups defined initially by both legal and financial status. Members of each group were expected to serve in person, armed to the appropriate standard for the group. Through these Assizes and Statutes the Norman and Plantagenet kings demonstrated that they were sufficiently confident in the stability of the broad population of England that they could require their subjects to have arms in their houses and be competent in their use.

The first Assize of Arms that we are aware of was proclaimed Henry II in 1180–1. He issued two versions, the earlier one proclaimed in Le Mans covering the Angevin and Norman parts of his empire, and the other issued in 1181 covered his English kingdom. It seems surprising with hindsight from an English point of view that while the Assize issued in Le Mans specified that those men in the lowest income group should have ‘a gambeson, iron cap, spear, sword or bow and arrows’, the English one only specified a gambeson, iron cap and spear for the same group.17 A possible explanation for this omission in the English Assize of Arms can be found in an order Henry issued in 1175 when he was holding court at Woodstock. Henry decreed that ‘none shall carry arms in England east of the Severn, namely bows and arrows and knives with points.’18 The penalty for so doing was arrest and imprisonment. What motivated this order is uncertain. It has been suggested, because of the mention of the Severn and the skill of the South Welsh with bows, that this was a measure to restrict wandering Welsh miscreants. It could just as easily reflect Henry’s uncertainty about the reliability of his English subjects, and their willingness to keep the king’s peace after the disorders of the previous reign. Also, given Henry’s enthusiasm for hunting and the extent of the royal forests in England, it could be an attempt to restrict popular archery as part of a concern about poaching. Certainly Henry seems to have been less interested in military archery than either his predecessor, Stephen, or some of his successors.

The Assize of Arms of 1230 included the novel provision of recognising the availability of competent archers and the need to encourage the development of military archers. Archers, willing to use their skills in defence of their homes, had been available in considerable numbers in some parts of the kingdom of England for many years as Richard of Hexham’s account of the Battle of the Standard in 1138 makes clear. This account can be found in chapter VIII. The 1230 Assize stated that ‘he who has goods to the value of 20/- shall have a bow and arrows, unless he lives in our forest, if he lives in our forest and has goods to the value of 20/- he shall have an axe or a spear.’19 These requirements were expanded in the Assizes of 1242 and 1253 and finally in 1285 when the Statute of Winchester, which was for the most part a revision and expansion of these earlier Assizes of Arms, consolidated these developments.20 The Statute laid down what type of soldier each man should serve as, and the weapons that he should have in his house. Later generations looked back to it as the measure of legitimacy with regard to the demands for compulsory military service made by their kings.

Given the scale of his military activities, Edward I might have been expected to have brought about major changes to the recruiting system in England, but this was not the case. His main contribution was a pragmatic one, extending the paying of royal wages for arrayed troops so that they received them from the time they reached the place of muster.21 His concern was to get predictable numbers of troops to where he needed them on time, and payment of wages from arrival at the muster point helped. The real developments in the system had been brought about by his father, Henry III, a much less successful military figure. Firstly, in 1230 he extended the duty of military service to include the unfree, and divided freemen and town burghers into two wealth categories, those holding 40/- of goods and those holding 20/-.22 This was the first Assize that helped to erode the differences in status between free and unfree men in England. Serfs made up about 70% of the rural population, and they ranged from those who held enough land to live well to those who struggled to survive.23 In medieval England in the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, perhaps as much as 90 per cent of the population of England lived outside the towns and cities, so to include the serfs in the groups that were expected to contribute men to the king’s army was very important. Most obviously it ensured that the king’s officials had many more men to choose from when raising armies, but it also developed in these men a sense of having a responsibility towards the wellbeing of the kingdom. In doing this Henry widened the pool of potential fighting men considerably, which was a major contribution to the effective development of the English army over the next two centuries. Secondly, his Assize of Arms of 1242 brought about changes in the types of arms held by the various financial groups, and, most importantly for the purposes of this book, recognised the importance of the bow and allocated it to those holding land worth more than 40/-. This group, whether free men or serfs, would be men who had sufficient land to feed them and their family with some ease and so represent the higher levels of village society. By specifying these men as potential archers in the king’s army, Henry III’s administration is making it clear that they believed that these were the sort of men who might have bows anyway.

Edward earned a formidable military reputation, and inevitably he wanted include as many of his subjects as possible in the pool of men he call upon in his military campaigns. So, in 1285 he issued the Statute of Winchester. The main regulations of the Statute were:

Every man between fifteen years and sixty years shall be assessed and sworn to armour according to the quantity of their lands and goods; that is to wit from £15 land or 40 marks goods a hauberk, sword, knife and a horse: £10 lands or 20 marks goods a hauberk, sword and a knife: and from 40/- land and more unto 100/- of lands sword, bow and arrow and a knife: and he that hath less than 40/- yearly shall be sworn to keep gisarmes, knives and other less weapons: and he that hath less than 20 marks in goods shall have swords, knives and other less weapons: and all others that may shall have bows and arrows out of the Forest and in the forest bows and boults.

Boults or bolts at this time were blunt arrows for shooting birds and small game like rabbits, so this regulation would limit the ownership of sharp arrows which could be used to hunt deer to those who had need of them for legitimate sport or for their work. The Statute formalised a review system to ensure that men did indeed have the right arms available by decreeing ‘that a view of armour [a view of arms in the records discussed below] be made two times every year’.24