190 ANCIENT AND MODERN METHODS 



become stiffer in later years, requiring three fingers to bend 

 it, or whether (as more probable) the finders have become 

 weaker, thus requiring more fingers to do the work. 



It is interesting to find in these early works a uni- 

 formity in the method of release employed, and that the 

 Saxon, Norman, Fleming, French, English, Scandinavian, 

 and Italian practiced essentially the same release. 



Hansard says (see the "Book of Archery," p. 77), "All 

 representations of archers which occur in illuminated 

 manuscripts of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth 

 centuries and I have examined some scores of them 

 identify the ancient with the modern practice. The pen- 

 and-ink drawings of John de Rous, a bowman as well as 

 contemporary biographer of that Earl of Warwick who, 

 during the Wars of the Red and White Roses, was the 

 setter up and destroyer of many kings, will furnish 

 amusement and information to the curious. The neces- 

 sary slight inclination of the head and neck ' this laying 

 of the body in the bow,' the drawing with two and with 

 three fingers are there correctly delineated. They 

 may be found among the manuscripts in the British 

 Museum." 



According to Hansard, Ascham ordered the shooting- 

 glove to be made with three fingers, "and when Henry 

 the Fifth harangued his troops previous to the battle of 

 Agincourt, he endeavoured to exasperate their minds by 

 dwelling on the cruelties in store for them. Addressing 

 his archers, he said the French soldiers had sworn to am- 

 putate their three first fingers, so that they should never 

 more be able to slay man or horse." 1 



1 Meyrick, in his famous work on "Ancient Armour" (Vol. I., p. 9), in speaking of 

 the origin of the bow in England, says : '' The bow as a weapon of war was cer- 

 tainly introduced by the Normans; the Saxons, like the Taheite at the present 

 day, used it merely for killing birds. On this account, in the speech which Henry 

 of Huntington puts into the Conqueror's mouth before the battle, he makes him 

 stigmatize the Saxon as ' a nation not even having arrows. 1 " 



