Anyone who has read much about the Hundred Years War and medieval archery more generally has probably come across the claim that English archers were expected to be able to shoot twelve arrows - sometimes hedged as 10-12 arrows - in a minute or they were disqualified from service or considered very poor archers. Modern experience with warbows - where six arrows in a minute is considerable the maximum sustainable rate and some archers have argued that just three arrows in a minute would be acceptable¹ - haven't dispelled this old myth and some authors have even misread evidence because it exists² .

But where does it come from? Robert Hardy attributed it to Emperor Louis Napoleon III, and the sources who bother to name an original source for this myth since the mid-19th century have done the same³ . The question is, where did he get his information from?

That's a question I can answer. Louis Napoleon actually cites an article in the 1832 edition of the United Service Magazine and Naval Journal⁴ , which we can in turn track down⁵ . Where did this author get his information from? He doesn't directly cite any particular author for this, but previously mentioned a tract by Richard Oswald Mason written in the late 18th century⁶ .

The interesting thing is that Mason never says anything about what medieval archers could do or that they weren't considered very good archers if they couldn't shoot twelve arrows a minute. He just says that an "expertly trained" archer could shoot 12 arrows a minute and that a slower could manage 6-8 shots⁷ . This is actually pretty reasonable, given that proper heavy draw weight bows had fallen out of use by this time and that nothing much over 60lbs was shot at the time⁸ , but it's not a medieval requirement.

So where does it come from? Most likely, the author of the piece was working from memory and attributed to the modern achievable rate with a medieval requirement. For instance, the author claims that the young men of Edward VI's court were required to pierce a one inch thick oak board at 240 yards. This is similar to a footnote in Mason's tract on the same page as the comments on shooting speed, only Mason mentions that "some" pierced the first board and hit the second but that no distance was mentioned. Similarly, the author of the journal article believed that James III was the Scottish king at Bannockburn, that the Welsh could kill a man through a four inch thick door⁹ and that Sir William Wood wrote in the time of Henry VIII and not 140 years later¹⁰ .

All of this suggests someone who was working off memory or notes that were incomplete or hastily written, rather than someone who had the texts at hand. Combine that with the jingoistic nostalgia for England's brief period of glory in the Hundred Years' War, and you had the recipe for some hero worshiping distortion to take place.

So there you have it: the origin of one of the most persistent and widespread myths about medieval archers finally tracked back to its original source.

Notes

¹ The Great Warbow, by Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy, p31; The Longbow, by Mike Loades, p69

² Juliet Barker, in Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle, made the claim that "By 6 October, when the exchequer records for the second financial quarter began, two days before the departure from Harfleur, his numbers had been reduced to eighty men-at-arms and 296 archers. Four of the latter had been struck off because they could not shoot the required minimum ten aimed arrows per minute, not because they were dead or sick." Someone did ask her once what her source was, and it turned out to be an unpublished administrative document. Some years ago I got a scan of the relevant document and, thanks to a user who is no longer on Reddit and /u/qed1, learned that all that was said was that "they weren't adequate archers". This isn't a slight on Dr Barker or her work, it's just an example of how the myth can change how people read the evidence.

³ Longbow: A Social and Military History, by Robert Hardy, p68 (4th ed, 2010)

⁴ Études sur le passé et l'avenir de l'artillerie, Volume 1 p17

⁵ United Service Magazine and Naval Military Journal, 1832, Volume 46, Issue 10, p26-33

⁶ "Pro Aris Et Focis": Considerations of the Reasons that Exist for Reviving the Use of the Long Bow with the Pike in Aid of the Measures Brought Forward by His Majesty's Ministers for the Defence of the Country, by Richard Oswald Mason

⁷ ibid, p36

⁸ The English Bowman: Or, Tracts on Archery; to which is Added the Second Part of the Bowman's Glory, by Thomas Roberts, p104-6; Archery - Its Theory and Practice, by Horace A. Ford, p104-106

⁹ Gerald of Wales, The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin Through Wales, A.d. 1188, Volume 1 tr. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, p92. Yes, I did track down a translation that pre-dated the journal article purely to prove the author should have known better.

¹⁰ The bow-mans glory, or, Archery revived giving an account of the many signal favours vouchsafed to archers and archery by those renowned monarchs, King Henry VIII, James, and Charles I, as by their several gracious commissions here recited may appear : with a brief relation of the manner of the archers marching on several days of solemnity, by Sir William Wood