1 04 Yew- Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



force that a certain number of bow-staves were to 

 be imported with every butt of wine from Venice 

 and elsewhere. 



It is not unlikely that yews may have been 

 planted in great numbers in churchyards and other 

 enclosures, and that only a few of these have 

 survived the severe cutting to which they were 

 subjected. It must not be forgotten, however, that 

 Giraldus' statement shows that the practice was 

 common long before any steps were taken for 

 providing a supply of bows in this manner. 



Hansard 1 gives the following reasons against 

 their having been planted in churchyards for this 

 purpose : 



' Is it not absurd to suppose that men would 

 plant, within these contracted bounds, a single tree 

 of such slow growth, that in the space of a century 

 its height and substance are scarcely sufficient to 

 supply half a dozen bow-staves, while numbers 

 were courting the bowman's axe on every hill-side ? ' 



' The piety, or, as some men choose to style it, 

 the superstition, of our ancestors would have been 

 decidedly opposed to the application of wood 

 reared within consecrated ground to any such 

 purpose/ 



' Not within consecrated ground only, but even 

 the domain of the clergy. When Henry iv. issued 

 his commission to Nicholas Frost, the royal bowyer, 



1 G. A. Hansard, The Book of Archery, etc., 8vo, 1841. 



