Page "English longbow" Paragraph 33

The origins of the English longbow are disputed.

While it is hard to assess the significance of military archery in pre-Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxon warfare, it is clear that archery played a prominent role under the Normans, as the story of the Battle of Hastings shows.

Their Anglo-Norman descendants also made use of military archery, as exemplified by their victory at the Battle of the Standard in 1138.

During the Anglo-Norman invasions of Wales, Welsh bowmen took a heavy toll of the invaders and Welsh archers would feature in English armies from this point on.

However, historians dispute whether this archery used a different kind of bow to the later English Longbow.

Traditionally it has been argued that prior to the beginning of the 14th century, the weapon was a self bow between four and five feet in length, known since the 19th century as the shortbow.

This weapon, drawn to the chest rather than the ear, was much weaker.

However, in 1985, Jim Bradbury reclassified this weapon as the ordinary wooden bow, reserving the term shortbow for short composite bows and arguing that longbows were a developed form of this ordinary bow.

Strickland and Hardy in 2005 took this argument further, suggesting that the shortbow was a myth and all early English bows were a form of longbow.

In 2011, Clifford Rogers forcefully restated the traditional case based upon a variety of evidence, including a large scale iconographic survey.

Whether or not there was a technological revolution at the end of the 13th century therefore remains moot.

What is agreed, however, is that the English longbow as an effective weapon system evolved in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.