Each of these groups of bows only provided a limited amount of information when considered in isolation. It is through the comparison of these bows that an overall image of the history of the longbow can be created. The following analysis will first consider the broad general design elements of these bows, before moving on to more detailed and specific elements of their size and shape. Due to very limited information on the draw weights of most of the longbows discussed here, it is not possible to do a
comparison between the estimated draw weights of the Mary Rose bows and earlier bows to try to establish what power disparity, if any, existed between them.
The bow material is the simplest element to compare, since in almost all cases the wood used for surviving longbows was yew. There are a few noteworthy exceptions, such as a bow that was either made of pine or hazel and a handful of elm bows, but by far the majority of bows were made of yew. Given that the majority of the bows were yew, the presence of sapwood on the yew bows is the next important element to consider. The prehistoric bows were all made exclusively of heartwood. In some cases, the
sapwood layer could simply now be indistinguishable from the heartwood, due to the ageing of the bows. By the time of the Iron-Age Danish bows, the sapwood layer was already present far more often than not, and in nearly all of the Irish examples there was a layer of sapwood. There was one example of an Irish bow that appeared to have a sapwood layer on the belly instead of the back but it was only a fragment, and the back and belly of the bow were not definitively identifiable. From this, then, it is possible to draw the conclusion that, not only was the yew the primary wood for making longbows, but also a layer of sapwood was a part of longbow design for hundreds of years before
82 the Mary Rose bows.221
Comparing the shapes of the Mary Rose bows to other surviving bows is more complicated. Unfortunately, for
many of the surviving bows, there has been little published information on their shapes. Sometimes shape can be inferred from published details about their cross-sections, but this requires at least some
speculation. For example, the limbs of some of the prehistoric bows, such as those of the elm bows and the Meare Heathe bow, were all clearly diamond shape. This can be determined based on the fact that these bows had narrow, thick grips and very wide, thin limbs. This shape was ideal for durability but limited on power, and about as different from the Mary Rose bows as a bow reasonably could have been. Very little information is
available on the exact shape of
the Danish bows. Andy Halpin has made a very close study of the surviving Irish bow fragments and concluded that they are very alike in form to the Mary Rose bows.222 Both
221 Andrew Halpin, “Archery and Warfare in Medieval Ireland: A Historical and Archaeological Study”, pp.
2:5-9.
Xenia Pauli Jensen, “Alliances and Power Structures in Southern Scandinavia during the Roman Iron Age”, pp. 35-40.
J.G.D. Clarke, “Neolithic Bows from Somerset, England, and the Prehistory of Archery in North-western Europe”, pp. 64-70, 89-95.
Xenia Pauli Jensen and Lars Christian Nørbach, Illerup Adal, p. 49
222 J.G.D. Clarke, “Neolithic Bows from Somerset, England, and the Prehistory of Archery in North-
western Europe”, pp. 64-70
Clive Bartlett, Chris Boyton, Steve Jackson, Adam Jackson, Douglas McElvogue, Alexzandra Hildred and Keith Watson, “The Longbow Assemblage”, pp. 596-9.
Andrew Halpin, “Archery Material”, pp. 546-52.
900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 2100 2200
Mary Rose Prehistoric Danish Irish
Milli
m
etres
9: Box Plot Bow Length
Comparison
Comparison of bow lengths by bow time/place of origin. Includes 126 Mary Rose bows, 25 prehistoric bows, 20 Danish bows, and 4 Irish bows. Data from Clive Bartlett et. al. 2011, J.G.D. Clarke 1963, Xenia Pauli Jensen 2009, Halpin 1998.
83 the Irish bows and the Mary Rose bows were made with shallow D-shapes, the ideal shape for making powerful yew longbows.
The comparative lengths of the groups of bows can be seen in Graph 9. This is a box-plot graph representing the general spread of the data from each group. Each section of the graph represents a quarter of that data. The sections are divided up like this: the first section is from the bottom of the graph to the bottom of the box, the second section is from the bottom of the box to the line in the box, the third section is from the line in the box to the top of the box, and the final section is from the top of the box to the top of the graph. The data were sorted numerically and then evenly distributed across these sections. For example, the first box plot is the Mary Rose data. Each section of the graph contains roughly 30 bows, and the 30 shortest Mary Rose bows are in the first section. The line dividing the box in two is the median of the overall data while the box itself contains exactly half of data points in the group. The graph clearly shows that the Mary Rose bows were, on average, significantly longer than those from any of the previous eras. No other graph’s box is even with the Mary Rose box. Only the upper extremes of the Danish bows even reaches level with the Mary Rose's box. On average, the Irish bows are the smallest. This data set warrants special mention, however, since it only consists of four bows, so each section represents one bow. The Waterford bows, since their lengths were only estimated to a range, were entered as one data point each for: the minimum length, the maximum length, and the length of the most complete bow. The prehistoric data contains 25 bows, the Danish includes thirteen bows, and the Mary Rose
consists of 126 bows. The lower bulk of the Irish data, then, is the Waterford bows while the upper extreme is the Balinderry bow. What this data shows is that, while it was very possible for earlier bows from all eras and locations to reach lengths comparable to that of a Mary Rose bow, in general the Mary Rose bows were significantly longer than previous bows. It is also worth considering the absolute numbers, however, not just the comparison. None of these bows would be considered particularly short. The lowest median point is from the Irish bows and it is still well over a metre long. The vast majority of the data was over 1500 mm long, in fact, in every case but the Irish bows, 75% of the bows were longer than that. It seems fairly safe to say that, while the Mary Rose bows are significantly longer than any surviving bows from previous eras, it would be unfair to label those earlier bows as short-bows.223
223 Andrew Halpin, “Archery and Warfare in Medieval Ireland: A Historical and Archaeological Study”, pp.
5-9.
84 Longbows were clearly in existance well before the thirteenth century. However, no direct causal relationship can be drawn between the earlier bows discussed above and the famous English longbow of the Hundred Years War. Clifford Rogers has argued that, while these early and high medieval bows existed, they were not the same as the English longbow and instead should be described as a different type of bow: the medium-long bow, or in some cases the near-longbow. He proposed a technological development of the bow originating with an early medieval short bow, which developed into the medium-length longbow, and finally became the famous English longbow in the thirteenth century.224 A core part of his argument was based on the Waterford bows
which, as the above length data shows, were the shortest of the groups of bows
considered in this study. Rogers was not without good reason for picking out these bows, though. The Waterford bows were the closest surviving bows chronologically to the period of the English longbow’s adoption as the primary weapon of English armies. They were also geographically closer to the English longbow than any non-prehistoric bows considered here. However, the fact that these represented the smallest medieval bows, combined with the fact that Rogers completely ignored the Balinderry Bow, limits the strength of his argument. Particularly problematic was the argument for a short bow developing into the Waterford bows given how all of the bows from before the Waterford bows were significantly longer than the Waterford bows. On the other side of the debate, Strickland and Hardy made no mention of the Waterford Bows in The Great Warbow
which was a significant oversight. They emphasised the Balinderry bow, which was a great stand in for the Mary Rose bows, and argued that it was strong evidence for Mary Rose type bows from at least as early as the eleventh century.225 Both sides of the
argument have prioritised a misleading detail of these longbows. By emphasising the length of these bows as the most important element of their design, they fail to give proper consideration to the other, arguably more important, elements of bow design. As Chapter One has explained, a medium-length longbow could easily out perform a large
Age”, pp. 35-40.
J.G.D. Clarke, “Neolithic Bows from Somerset, England, and the Prehistory of Archery in North-western Europe”, pp. 64-70, 89-95.
Clive Bartlett, Chris Boyton, Steve Jackson, Adam Jackson, Douglas McElvogue, Alexzandra Hildred and Keith Watson, “The Longbow Assemblage”, pp. 596-9.
Xenia Pauli Jensen and Lars Christian Nørbach, Illerup Adal, p. 49 Andrew Halpin, “Archery Material”, pp. 546-52.
224 Clifford Rogers, “The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological
determinism’”, pp. 322-6, 332-5.
85 longbow if it was better made and more efficient.226 Length generally added to power but
at the cost of efficiency. Thickness of the longbow was a much more accurate indicator of a longbow's power, and the design of the bow's limbs were a better indicator of bow quality. Interestingly, Rogers actually mentioned the thickness of the Mary Rose bows as an important contribution to what made them so powerful, but after his initial mention of this feature and its importance to the weapons design he did not bring it up again, not even when discussing other surviving longbows.227 The following paragraphs will
examine these other elements of bow design, and explore what they can tell historians about the development of the longbow.
When examining the cross section of a bow it is important to consider the ratio of width to thickness. Thickness granted power to the longbow, but it must be in an
appropriate ratio to the width for it to be truly effective. If the bow was too narrow it would have splintered or broken, while if it was too wide the limbs would have been heavy and efficiency would have been lost. The width to thickness ratio of the Mary Rose bows at their grips was generally 1.1:1.228 Strickland mentioned this ratio briefly in
The Great Warbow but he drew his data entirely from Clark's article on neolithic longbows. Clark’s article was excellent but it is also forty years old, and as such from many years before the Mary Rose’s rediscovery. It was also primarily concerned with prehistoric archery and the comparison to late medieval bows was made only in passing. While Clark did make some mention of the two Mary Rose bows that were extant when he was writing, they were not as robust a basis for the ratio argument as the plethora of
Mary Rose data available now.229 The reliance on ratios exclusively can also mislead
historians.
What ratios are best for is indicating the skill of the artisan who made the bow. The crafting of a longbow with the optimal width and thickness ratio suggested that the culture making the bow had a good understanding of the properties of the wood they were using. Some of the prehistoric bow designs suggest a culture that was still
experimenting with their technology. There was no need to make wide-limbed yew bows but some prehistoric societies did, presumably because they did not fully understand the
226See Chapter 1.
227 Clifford Rogers, “The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological
determinism’”, pp.324-5, 332-5.
228 Clive Bartlett, Chris Boyton, Steve Jackson, Adam Jackson, Douglas McElvogue, Alexzandra Hildred
and Keith Watson, “The Longbow Assemblage”, pp. 596-9.
229 Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy, The Great Warbow, p. 39.
J.G.D. Clarke, “Neolithic Bows from Somerset, England, and the Prehistory of Archery in North-western Europe”, pp. 86-7.
86 strengths and capabilities of yew, so they
went for a safer and more reliable bow shape. A culture that understood bow making well, probably through years of experimentation and failure, could make bows with an optimal width to thickness ratio.230 Where focusing on this ratio
exclusively, like Strickland does, causes problems is that it can hide the existence of an actual size difference between the bows from two different cultures. For example, while the Balinderry bow was of a similar length to the Mary Rose bows and had a similar ratio of width to thickness, its actual width and thickness were both significantly smaller than an average Mary Rose bow. This means that while the Balinderry bow shared many important design elements with the Mary
Rose bow, it was a significantly weaker bow. It is important at this stage to actually
230 Paul Comstock, “Ancient European Bows,” The Traditional Bowyer's Bible, ed. Jim Hamm, 4 vols.
(Fort Worth, 1992). pp. 2:86-96.
Tim Baker, “Bow Design and Performance”, pp. 50-1, 65-74.
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Prehistoric Danish Irish Mary Rose
Milli
m
etres
11: Bow Width at Grip
0 10 20 30 40 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 Milli m etres