and have a bow and four arrows continually for himself, at his proper costs and charges, or else of the gift and provision of his friends, and shall use the same as afore is rehearsed.' Other provisions are added, designed to suppress the games complained of, and to place the bows more within the reach of the poor, by cheapening the prices of them.
The same statute[1] (and if this be a proof that it had imperfectly succeeded, it is a proof also of Henry's confidence in the general attachment of his subjects) was re-enacted thirty years later, at the crisis of the Reformation, when the Northern counties were fermenting in a half-suppressed rebellion, and the Catholics at home and abroad were intriguing to bring about a revolution. In this subsequent edition of it[2] some particulars are added which demand notice. In the directions to the villages for the maintaining each 'a pair of buttes,' it is ordered that no person above the age of twenty-four shall shoot with the light flight arrow at a distance under two hundred and twenty yards. Up to two hundred and twenty yards, therefore, the heavy war arrow was used, and this is to be taken as the effective range for fighting purposes of the old archery.[3] No
- ↑ It has been stated again and again that the policy of Henry the Eighth was to make the Crown despotic by destroying the remnants of the feudal power of the nobility. How is such a theory to be reconciled with statutes the only object of which was the arming and training of the country population, whose natural leaders were the peers, knights, and gentlemen?
- ↑ 33 Hen. VIII. cap. 9.
- ↑ From my experience of modern archery I found difficulty in believing that these figures were accurately given. Few living men could send
