Long Bows
The importance of the yew tree in British history is often overlooked in favour of the oak which for several hundred years provided the wood for the nation’s battle ships. “In 1812 is was stated in a parliamentary report that no less than two thousand well-grown oak trees were used in the building of one 47-gun ship.” [1]
As the English long bow was the weapon of choice for much of the 14th 15th and 16th century yew trees for bowstaves were in great demand. Successive British Kings implemented laws to ensure enough yew was grown or imported for the protection of the realm; in so doing it made the yew tree a precious commodity - and almost extinct in Europe.
Long bows took years to make, the wood being dried for up to two years while the bow itself could take as much as another four years. The real genius is that at some point a bow maker realised that by using a section of the tree where the hard outer wood and soft inner wood met a more flexible and resilient bow could be made.
In the Tudor period it was law that every man and boy should practice archery regularly from an early age - longbow men were a professional elite. They were men of stature in every sense – socially highly respected and physically big enough to pull 200 lbs (90 kgs) of a 6 ft (1.83 m) bow. The average arrow was 30 ins (75 cm) long and the highly trained and skilled archer was thought to be able to fire 12 a minute.
The magazine Current Archeology is again reporting research of longbows and longbow men.[2] Interest was first stirred in this area when skeletons were recovered from King Henry VIII's warship the Mary Rose when the wreck was raised from the Solent in 1982. Many of the archers on board were from Wales and the south west of England so it was fitting that staff from Swansea University examined the skeletons to see if they could identify them and discover what impact the life of an archer had upon the body.
[1] Wilkinson, Gerald. Trees in the Wild Stephen Hope Books 1973 P55
[2] Current Archeology March 2013 Issue 276 p 11 http://www.archaeology.co.uk/
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