Even before the days of Henry V, South Wales had a strong archery tradition that the North of the country did not enjoy. Gerald of Wales, writing in 1188 about his journey through Wales, recounted feats of archery prowess from South Welsh archers in his Itinerarium Cambriae.
He goes on to describe the equipment used by the Welsh archers and interestingly is explicit about the bow wood used. Surprisingly, this is not yew, which was the favoured wood of English armies of the Hundred Years War and early Tudor period. All of the137 whole longbows found on board the Mary Rose, the flagship of Henry VIII, were made of yew.
To further demonstrate the brutal power of the Welsh bow, Gerald tells of a Welsh attack on English held Abergavenny Castle. The arrow...
In order to produce this sort of penetrating force a needle bodkin arrowhead, a type only used for war, is needed. It is obvious that the Welsh archer must also have shot this type of arrow from a powerful, high draw weight bow.
Gerald also graphically recounts the terrible affect of an expertly shot arrow upon animate objects, an English knight and his horse, during the Anglo-Welsh wars...
Being of Anglo-Norman and Welsh origin, Gerald would have been familiar with the crossbow with its yew prod. This was the main missile weapon in the English armies and clearly the Welsh longbow compares very favorably. Indeed, such was the fear of the Welsh warbow, in comparison to the inferior Anglo-Norman crossbow, that Welsh men were barred from bringing their weapons across the border.
For any medieval history or longbow enthusiast, Monmouth will always be associated with Henry V, born in its Castle in 1387. Less well known is that it is likely he spent his formative years at the Courtfield Estate in Welsh Bicknor. The estate is reputed to have originally been called Greenfield and was given the ‘Court’ prefix in his honour. Henry cut his military teeth fighting Owain Glyndwr. During the battle of Shrewsbury, between the two claimants to the title ‘Prince of Wales’, he was badly injured by an arrow strike below his eye. However, he refused to leave the field until the day was won. A slightly stunted statue of Henry V was placed below the clock face of the Shire Hall in 1792. The figure seems to resemble Shakespeare’s villain Richard III more than Henry himself.
The Monmouth cap is mentioned in Shakespeare’s stirring Henry V. Fluellen says to the King…
The King replies…
Monmouth has the good fortune of being next to the Wye, which made exporting goods easier. It is also a short distance away from Archenfield in Herefordshire, which was noted for producing outstanding felting wool from Ryeland Sheep.
On a role of soldiers, who fought at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, is Thomas Capper. The surname is derived from the makers of the knitted caps who enjoyed membership of a craft guild. An original 16th century Monmouth cap can be seen in the town’s museum. Leading expert on the cap is Kirstie Buckland, a Monmouth resident. She still faithfully knits the caps of which the author is a proud owner.
Common and wych elm were often used for warbow throughout the Middle Ages but are inferior to the excellent Welsh yew when made into a narrow ‘D’ section longbow. However, when made into a flatter wider bow the woods tension and compression strengths are more balanced as the wider belly has more wood to share the strain. Therefore, is it that the English longbow can be said to be evolved from that of the Welsh bow that Gerald described? Certainly they were effective and the Welsh archers were of a high calibre. Shrewd military hawk Edward I was quick to see the benefit of such men in his army, the Battle of Bryn Glas had taught him some hard lessons. Welsh archers played a significant part in his many victories over the Scots. It was said that a Welsh archer, serving in an English army, carried twenty-four dead Scots under his belt. Twenty-four corresponded to the number of arrows an archer carried ‘under his belt’. This number of arrows is known as a sheaf and the word is derived from the Old English word for a bundle of wheat. Welsh archers could strike frow very long range. A notable period anecdote of the distance that Welsh archers could shoot has been committed to paper for posterity is that of Lleweyn of Nannua during the War of the Roses. From a vantage point in Carnarvon Castle Llewelyn managed to find his mark, in this case the unfortunate Parson of Disserth some 800 yards away across the river Conway on the other side of the town. When one investigates the elevated position of the archer, the exceptional quality of medieval Welsh archery, Welsh yew and the strong winds that blow in from the estuary one can start to understand how such a feat was performed. Given that well after the zenith of military archery in 17th Century England, recreational archers were still recorded shooting at marks some 400 yards yonder the the account is by no means implausible.
However, the yew longbow design is not, of itself, Welsh and has existed for thousands of years. In Somerset the ‘Ashcott Bow’ was excavated and dated to 2665 BC and is found in a number of unrelated cultures across the world. Ötzi the Iceman had a yew longbow on him when he died in the Alps of his wounds 635 years earlier. He and his equipment were frozen and preserved until they were discovered in 1991. Despite the huge time gap, Ötzi would have recognised a Mary Rose bow, as it was so similar to his own.
No country can really lay an exclusive claim to the longbow or archery but Wales and especially Monmouth has an indisputable place in archery history. It is true that the Saxons certainly used light hunting bows in a minor way for warfare but it was the Men of Gwent that first used the heavy bow to such devastating effect in a military application. The reference to 'far drawn'
Perhaps we should leave the last words on the subject to Iolo Goch (1320-1398) or Iolo the Red in English who was a medieval Welsh bard and composed poems addressed to Welsh nobles, including Owain Glyndŵr.
Clearly, Iolo was a man who knew the effectiveness of the Welsh bow with its 'far-drawn' battle shaft against the harness of the English knight, perhaps even personally! For it was the Welsh who showed the English how to shoot 'in-the-bow'.