MARCH 47 



enthusiasm for its importance in the equipment of the 

 Plantagenet armies as to exclaim : 



' The warlike yeugh, by which more than the lance, 

 The strong-armed English spirits conquered France.' 



Perhaps it was only the exigency of rhyme which 

 prevented him writing ' beat the French,' which would 

 have been accurate enough, witness Crecy and Agin- 

 court ; but as for ' conquering France,' their archery 

 did not prevent the English being turned out of their 

 inheritance in that fair land. Our Henry n. inherited 

 Anjou and Touraine from his father, Normandy and 

 Maine from his mother; and held Guienne, Perigord, 

 Auvergne, Poitou, and other provinces in right of his 

 wife Eleanor, the divorced Queen of Louis vn. Only 

 Brittany was conquered by the sword (and bow) in 

 1165. Perhaps it was the stinting of the supply of 

 yews for bows that loosened the English king's grasp 

 on his French possessions. Certain it is that the stock 

 had run very low long before the year 1483, when, 

 despite the fact that gunpowder had been used in 

 warfare more than a century and a half, Richard m.'s 

 Parliament laid upon landowners the obligation to 

 plant yews for the supply of the king's troops. 



Plenty of yews grew in Scotland of old, as is testified, 

 not only by place-names, like Ben Urie, and the in- 

 digenous yews still surviving in the islands of Loch 

 Lomond and a few other places, but by the remains 

 of this tree in peat mosses. Yet Scotsmen never 

 learnt to apply it well to its proper use. Ettrick 

 bowmen, indeed, did some effective service in the war 



