202 CONIFEE^ 



England was commanded to have a bow of his own height, made of Yew, 

 wych-hazel, or awburne. Foreign Yew was, however, preferred to that of 

 English growth, and bows of "Outlandish Yew" sold at a high price. 

 Michael Drayton says, — 



"All made of Spanish Yew, their bows were wondrous strong." 



Ships trading to Venice were desired to bring ten bow-staves along with 

 every butt of Malmsey. Several of our British kings fell beneath the power 

 of the bow, as Harold, William Eufus, and Richard Coeur-de-Lion. It is, too, 

 the most ancient of weapons, and even by the earliest Greek and Roman 

 writers the Yew was renowned as the material especially valued by the 

 archer. 



In those cruel battles when our kings laid claim to the succession of the 

 throne of France, the archers were the chief reliance of England, and many 

 a noble Yew yielded its wood to the warrior, as Wordsworth has said — 



" Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands 

 Of Umfraville or Percy, ere they march'd 

 To Scotland's heaths ; or those that cross'd the sea, 

 And drew their sounding bows at Agincour, 

 Perhaps at earlier Crecy or Poictiers." 



So general was the use of the bow, that Grrafton relates how, in the reign 

 of Henry IV., after an aflfray at Cirencester, fourscore archers of the town 

 were thanked for their services, among which were "certaine good women." 

 Long after the introduction of fire-arms in the fourteenth century, the bow 

 was used in battle, as in that of Flodden Field ; and even as lately as the 

 days of Queen Elizabeth, fire-arms were so badly made that an archer is said 

 to have been able to shoot six arrows in the time required for charging and 

 discharging a musket. Even after the bow had almost, or quite, fallen into 

 disuse in battle, yet archery was much practised as an amusement. The 

 good and learned Roger Ascham not only amused himself with shooting at 

 the hazel-wands and rose-garlands, then used as marks, but published, in 1554, 

 his "Toxophilus, or the Schole and Partitions of Shootinge," wherein he tells 

 of the classical nature of the sport and its connexion with Apollo. He praises 

 the art as " the companion of vertue, the mainteyner of honestie, the encrease 

 of wealth and wealthinesse, which admitteth nothinge in a maner into his 

 company e that standeth not with vertue and honestie." From this old 

 advocate of the art, as well as from various other writers of those times, we 

 find how greatly the "Archer Yew " was prized. Ascham says : "The best 

 wood is Yew ; the colour should be uniform ; those made of a bough are for 

 the most part knotty, weak, and seldom wear to a good colour ; the plant is 

 better, but the bole of a tree is best of all." 



The trunk of the Yew-tree is short, thick, straight, and furrowed, and its 

 wide-spread boughs, well filled with foliage, cast a broad shadow — a shadow 

 which the ancients believed would be fatal to one who slept beneath it. 

 When fully grown, the tree is from thirty to forty feet high, and has at first 

 a brown bark, which soon peels off. Its almost sessile green leaves, placed 

 in two rows, are of a deep dark green, glossy above and paler beneath. The 

 flowers are axillary and solitary ; those having stamens are of a light yellowish 

 hue, from their abundant pollen; and the pistil-bearing ones, surrounded 



