Here I am with Dickon and he's an archer from the 100 Years War and we've been
talking about Agincourt haven't we? Tell us about your your role as an archer in
Agincourt? Well I'm the most numerous troop-type in the English army
at this point, we're a professional army unlike the French who are a feudal levy we're
professional soldiers and the most numerous was the Archer because we are
the easiest, it takes time to train us but once we're there, we're there and we're
less expensive than men-at-arms and knights so hence were more numerous and
our King Henry knew this and used it to its best advantage. Of course and can I
just talk to you about the the the famous sort of theory that we the V-sign
came from the Battle of Agincourt so first of all what was the V-sign and what
is the theory behind the V-sign? Apparently the myth is that the fact that when an
archer was captured on campaign they would cut the three fingers off to deny
him the use of the bow; we have looked into this in great depth over the years
we cannot find anywhere a mention or picture or a reference to this ever happening
so we actually think it's a Victorian fallacy; it's easier, think practically,
it's easier just to kill the man because he might have lost his fingers but he
still got his knowledge to pass on and it makes perfect sense just to kill him
on the spot job. There's that theory gone! We're constantly learning. Yeah, yeah of course,
no it's great to know these facts. And can you tell me about this bow here that
you've got in front of you? Well this is a great bow or awar bow, the term
longbow is a Victorian word, we wouldn't have known this. It's a stout piece
of timber, normally about six foot, six foot two, six four three, it's made the
best bows are made of yew like this one here and it's very distinctive because
of that; it's got two separate colours; that's one piece of wood; we've got the
heartwood that likes to be held under compression or squeezed.
We've got the sapwood which likes to be held under tension or stretched; that
makes a really good, naturally laminated spring, which means if I had a bow maybe
of ash the same size, this would always give me more power.
So yew is the most sought-after, but it's quite hard to get hold of. And and how
much are you pulling here? This one I'm pulling about this is a light-pounded
bow because I'm on a short-range, I'm pulling 60 to 70 on this one and what was
an archer traditional archer what would he have pulled? A lot more than that, they
we have references if we look at things like the Mary Rose which is a little
bit later, but it's the biggest source of bows that we have. They're pulling over a
hundred pounds up to 180 which is a phenomenal amount of poundage and it
affects the human body because of that. It causes slight curvature of the spine,
a slight thickening of the forearm and forearm muscles, it causes the bone on
the shoulder, when you're young the tip floats, free-floating and it should
ossify with age. Typical mark of an archer is all that
strain going through the shoulders, it never happens
and we know this from battlefield graves that we've found, archaeology we can pick
out the arches straight away because these subtle deformities through what they're
doing. Fascinating. Well I know that you're going to give us an example of how this works so
let's see a bit of that shall we? So literally I'm going to take an arrow, now
most of us would either keep them in the back of our belt, on the ground, or some
archers would even hold the arrow in arrows in the hand while they shot; it
means you can get to them quickly and see how easy that was just to take it
out place it on, I place it on the on the bow, the cock-feather stands proud. My
technique means I don't wear a brace, don't wear wrist-guard because I cant
the bar over at an angle so that the string avoids my wrist. What's the significance
of this feather then that needs to be..? It's the cock-feather, it stands away from
the bow. If I had it on the cock, i.e. the wrong way around, when we loose the arrow,
it hits the timber, the timber strips the fleshing away and the arrow loses
stability in flight. I've got a different colour cock-feather, sometimes I just
put a smidgen of blood or a mark on a feather just to signify that, and you can
see as we look at the tip it's always at 90 degrees to the groove or the knock in
the end of the arrow. So that's how we know that the arrow is set correctly. And
a trained archer, how many of these arrows would he have been able to fire
in say a minute? Well first of all, we shoot rather than fire, fire is guns that
hasn't really happened yet. Sorry. So we would shoot. That's okay it's a
common mistake. From the records that we find, the
average, just to qualify, you had to prove that you could shoot 16 aimed arrows a
minute. Wow.Okay so.. That's a lot, that's a lot happening. And times that by how many
archers you had on a front line? At Agincourt you've got 5,000 archers, at that rate of
shooting, you've got your third arrow up in the air as your first one's coming
in, so it's approximately 15,000 arrows in the air at any one time. That's great
Dickon, I'm gonna let you have a fire, I'm going to stand clearly out of the way. So I'm gonna move
forward to a typical defensive position known as a hedgehog, this is to stop
enemy cavalry, I'm gonna shoot at a close-range target because I'm on a very
small range, so we go forward I'm gonna shoot my position and here we go. We
will try again, see if we can get a bit more central and you can see good
grouping. Really good grouping! Shall we go and have a look? Yeah please that'd be great.
so here we have the target what I've got in the target here is to replicate human
flesh and you can see I've got mail. What I haven't got is the padding but that
wouldn't make much difference. Can I just point out to the viewers that this has
gone right back significantly by a good few inches here as well. And it's
gone straight through, through its hit the ring, its burst the ring open, its but broken rings
around it and it's drawn all those rings into the wound; it's drawn any fabric
you're wearing from the padded tunic underneath, it would be drawn into the
wound again, that causes infection; the wound would fester, I don't think much for his chances.
Thank you so much Dickon that's been great! I want to have a go myself but I
won't put anybody else in danger! That's fine. Thank you so much.