At the beginning of the Civil War in 1643 The Civic Mercury reported of the king’s troops at Oxford, “ they have set up a new magazine without Norgate, only for bows and arrows, which they intend to make use of against our horse, which they hear does much increase; and that all the bowyers, fletchers and arrowhead makers that they can possibly get they employ … Also that the king hath two regiments of bows and arrows.’ It goes on to say that therefore no arrowheads must reach the Cavaliers from London, and to advocate archery for Parliament men as well, and to warn that ‘the flying arrows are far more terrible to the horse than bullets, and do much more turmoil’.

      In the issue book of the parliamentary Ordnance Department, there is an entry under April 26 1644;
‘Delivered … out of his Majesty’s stores … to Mr William Molins, comptroller of the Ordnance for the Militia of London … to be employed in the service of the State by warrant from the Lord General the Earl of Essex:

12,432 longbow arrows
526 shooting gloves
600 bracers
1,000 gross bowstrings
64 quivers of leather
28 bundles of bowcases

      The bows had apparently already gone. It was a brave end. No one has recorded what damage was done by longbowmen in the Civil War, but it is an ironic thought that, if there had been as many longbowmen as there were musketeers at the great cavalry battles of the Civil War, the outcome would almost inevitably have had to be decided by infantry, and both Prince Rupert’s and the Cromwellian horse would have been in desperate straits.

In 1653 Thomas d’Urfey wrote:

‘Let Princes therefore shoot for exercise.
Soldiers to enlarge their magnanimities,
Let Nobles shoot ‘cause ‘tis a pastime fit,
Let Scholars shoot to clarify their wit,
Let Citizens shoot to purge corrupted blood,
Let Yeomen shoot for th’king’s and nation’s good,
Let all the Nation archers prove, and then
We without lanthorns may find virtuous men.’

      In 1670 Sir James Turner said with bitter regret, ‘The bow is now in Europe useless.’ From now on, the longbow was a weapon for sport, and much money was won and lost in gambling between longbowmen.
 

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