Search results for ""Author Richard Wadge""

Archery in Medieval England is an account of how archery developed amongst ordinary people in England and Wales after the Norman Conquest. In the 300 years after that traumatic event, Englishmen became such skilled archers that they could defeat the most heavily armoured noble knights in battle after battle feats of arms unequalled by the combatants of any other European country. Here Richard Wadge describes how men used bows and arrows in their everyday lives in the centuries between the arrival of the Normans and the start of the 100 Years War in Edward III's reign.Many contemporary records provide accounts of the illegal use of bows and arrows: unlawful hunting is shown to have been particularly important as a school for the development of battle- winning archery skills. In the process of investigating these accounts, light is shed on the background to the stories of Robin Hood and other outlaws. Evidence from archaeology, manuscript illustration

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In August 1424 the armies of England, Scotland and France met in the open fields outside the walls of Verneuil in a battle that would decide the future of the English conquests in France. The hero king, Henry V, had been dead for two years and the French felt that this was their chance to avenge their startling defeat at Agincourt, and recover the lands that Henry had won for England. Despite its importance, the battle is largely overlooked in accounts of the Hundred Years War. The Battle of Verneuil 1424 is the first proper account of the battle, and is also one of the first books to outline the important part the Scots played in the wars in France in the years between the two great battles of Agincourt and Verneuil.

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How was it that ordinary men in medieval England and Wales became such skilled archers that they defeated noble knights in battle after battle? The archer in medieval England became a forerunner of John Bull as a symbol of the spirit of the ordinary Englishman. He had his own popular literature that left us a romantic version of the lives and activities of outlaws and poachers such as Robin Hood.This remarkable development began 150 years after the traumatic events of the Norman Conquest transformed the English way of life, in ways that were almost never to the benefit of the English. This book is the first account of the way ordinary men used bows and arrows in their day-to-day lives, and the way that their skills became recognised by the kings of England as invaluable in warfare.

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