Archery in the Wars of the Roses

Sir John Paston's letters include reference to sending four men on
garrison duty who could shoot well "bothe gonys and crossebowes",
and a letter from Thomas Talbot to William, Lord Berkeley, referred
to Talbot marvelling that Berkely came "not forth with all your
carts of guns, bows and other ordnance". Both these sources indicate
that archery was alive and well during the Wars of the Roses, which
once was thought not to be the case. What makes this last source
more interesting is the significance Talbot seems to have given
these weapons. Burgundian gunners were common, some being hired by
the earl of Warwick, which might tend to suggest that guns had not
yet replaced bows and crossbows among Englishmen. Records refer to
orders for bows, such as that for 3000 in 1459 for the royal
armoury. John Gillingham argues that under Henry V archers were
about 3 to 1 compared to other soldiers; in the Wars of the Roses he
thinks they made up 7 for every 1. This would be a significant
increase at a time when it had been thought they were on the
decline. Margaret Paston mentions in her letters that her husband
should buy more crossbows. Interestingly she refers specifically
to "longbows" in this letter (1448) making it one of the earliest
recorded uses of the term (even earlier than the earliest in the
dictionary). At the Battle of St Albans Henry VI was slightly
wounded by an arrow, and at Northampton he was captured by an
archer. At the battle of Blore Heath the chronicler Waurin refers to
archers who "fixed their stakes in the custom of the English". They
fired on the Lancastrians with a "right-a-sharpe showre". John
Paston was wounded there by an arrow. At St Albans Waurin says the
arrows blotted out the sun - much as at Thermopylae. An archery
exchange started the batle of Bosworth and that of Stoke.
Fauconbourg's attack on London also included an archery attack. He
was driven off by cannon, so the superiority of guns is here
acknowledged. Even so, archery was clearly alive and well in the
late 15thC. We all know about the archers on the Mary Rose, showing
archery continued well into the Tudor period.