382 TRANSACTIONS OF llOYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



manufacture of furniture ; and many antique, interesting, and 

 curious specimens are still preserved in the old mansions tlirougli- 

 out the countr)'. 



While the bow was for centuries tlie great weapon for defence or 

 attack of our ancestors, the yew was preserved witli the utmost 

 care, and statutes were framed for its protection and preservation. 

 In ancient Welsh laws a yew- tree, if consecrated (grown in a 

 churchyard), was valued at £1, and at Is. 3d. if w?/consecrated ! 

 These laws were made at first by our early kings, and afterwards 

 by Parliament, and provision was not only made for the preserva- 

 tion, but also for the planting of yew trees, for the supply of 

 yew-wood for bows, for prohibiting exportation, and for regulating 

 the importation and supply of yew timber. Every reader of 

 English history is well aware that the yew bow was for centuries 

 especially the Saxon weapon of warfare, and the doughty achieve- 

 ments of the bowmen — how fields were won, fortresses taken, and 

 deeds of valour and prowess displayed in encounters whose 

 story will not soon be let die in our country's history — all 

 attest the skill and high repute of the English archer of the 

 middle ages. 



By degrees, as the introduction of firearms and gunpowder into 

 general use displaced the long and cross bow alike, the yew 

 tree appears to have gradually fallen into oblivion, or at all events 

 into neglect, till during the reign of Elizabeth. So much at that 

 period had the art of bow-making and its kindred occupations 

 declined, that the trades of the bowers (bow-makers) and fletchers 

 (arrow-makers), with the stringers and arrow-head makers, were 

 threatened with extinction ; and these crafts accordingly, in L570, 

 l)etitioned Queen Elizabeth to enforce the statute of Henry YIII. 

 enjoining every man to have a bow in his house. She did so, and 

 butts, etc., were erected in ditferent places, such as Newington 

 Ijutts, London, at which every able-bodied man was enjoined to 

 practise archery, while the languishing business of the tradesmen 

 took fresh impulse from the royal favour. 



To Evelyn may be accredited the merit of having rescued the 

 yew from the neglect into which it had fallen, and from his time it 

 began once more to play an important part in our domestic history, 

 not in the art of warfare, but in the more peaceful practice of garden- 

 ing. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the use of the 

 yew in the formation of hedges for protection or ornament became 

 general. Its improved density when pruned, and its suitability 



