Re: Bow Bags

[Brent E Hanner]

Jonathan Davies wrote:
> 
> Ye there are illustrations of bows which are unstrung or apparently with the
> string not fully strung and I don't claim to have seen all of the
> illustrations that there are,who has?     

Partially sorry, I misread your tense although you still said "all the
contemporary illustrations of medieval archers" implying some great
spance of evidence when it took me less then 10 min to find
illustrations contrary to what you said.

As it stands right now there is no evidence for bow bags.  Are there
possible reasons for it sure but that doesn't change the fact that there
is NO evidence for it, not even bad evidence.  So the only thing you
have is your insistence that there Must Have Been bowbags because you
think.

So how much were bows worth.  From the York inventories we find the
following values.
worn bow  8d
bow and arrows  1s 8d
2 bows 1s
bow and 27 arrows with iron tips 1s 1d
bow 1s
2 bows with arrows 2s
bow and a dozen arrows  10d
bow  2s
bow (3 faded words)  1s 8d

So a bow is worth about 1s or two days pay, hardly an item to cherish
but certainly a tool to take care of.

I was going to post the cost of the bows for the troops sent in to Kent
after Tewksbury but the source has hidden itself in my room.  

I completely disagree with Dave's idea that bows were issued enmasse. 
The accounts simply don't support that in regards to the number of bows
purchased and the structure of the English army.  Even the bows of the
Calais garrison were primarily purchased privately.  Now that isn't to
say that they didn't store them when onboard ship but even there if your
crossing the English cannel you still might see combat in a very short
period of time.  Once again if this was how things were done we would
expect to see far more in the records.  For the French Expedition of
1475 the government purchased less then 1/4 of the number of bows then
archers, which makes sense for replacements but for distribution.  After
the expulsion from Normandy we see a real desire to increase the number
of bows owned by people in the kingdom, and in the invasion plan of 1453
which the expedition of 1475 was based on the majority of archers were
to be supplied by the counties and mustered and accoutered at their
expense.  If you look at the Burgundian army they were pretty much never
outside of a warzone.  I don't see any reason nor evidence that archers
generally traveled without their bows.

BTW Dave there are bowcases in the Howard accounts which is probably the
most likely place to find them.  Atleast one of the entries is contained
amid payments for shoes indicating it is likely out of leather.  
(a)  (1464) Acc.Howard in RC 57   267:  For a bowcas, viij d.  (1467)
Acc.Howard in RC 57   591:  The same day my master paid for a bow case
fore hym, viij d.  a1500 Hrl.1002 Gloss.(Hrl 1002)   624 fn.:  Hic
carichus i. est techa facta de corio, anglice bowcase. 
(b)  ?a1500 Lndsb.Nominale (Lndsb)   812/42:  Hic corintheus: a
bowehowse.  

IMO leather makes far more sense for something made to carry a bow, I
would suspect that if a bow was wrapped in linen of some sort while
campaigning or whatever it would be wrapped in a sheet or some such and
not a bag made for it.

Brent

-- 
To peel it down to the core / Of what I surely must have meant.  That is
what scholarship is for:  To misread, deconstruct, invent, to prove the
author asinine; Dwell on a phrase you can augment / And ignore the
opposite line, Until your theory fits fine, Interpreting and making
sense / At your pleasure, excluding mine.  
-Francois Villon