Introduction
In April 1453, the last English expeditionary force sent to France during the Hundred Years War set sail from Plymouth. Led by John, viscount Lisle, the force of 2,325 men mostly consisted of archers equipped with longbows for ranged combat, along with a much smaller number of men-at-arms.Footnote 1 The latter were heavily armed and armoured, donning plate and mail armour, and wielding spears, poleaxes and swords for fighting in melee.Footnote 2 Both types of soldiers dismounted prior to combat, although men-at-arms, and many archers, typically took horses with them on campaign. This was an army raised using long-standing procedures developed during the Hundred Years War, with most contingents recruited through indentures of war for expeditionary service contracted between their captains and the Crown.Footnote 3
Sixty years later, in 1513, Henry VIII invaded northern France, accompanied by a radically different force. This was a much larger army of over 30,000 men, which was also far more diverse in its composition.Footnote 4 The vast majority of the host consisted of footmen, many of whom were archers, but a significant proportion were armed with bills, pikes or halberds.Footnote 5 There was also a smaller force of cavalry, made up of men-at-arms who, unlike their fifteenth-century predecessors, primarily fought on horseback. This was made up of units of three men, known as lances, as well as other units of more lightly armoured cavalrymen, called demi-lances. Many retinues were raised by summons issued by the king to the nobility and gentry, as opposed to through indentures, and a sizeable proportion of the army, notably amongst the cavalry and pikemen, were foreign mercenaries.Footnote 6 English armies therefore changed significantly between the mid-fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. But when and why did these changes take place?
The traditional view, held by military historians of the Tudor period, such as the highly influential scholar Sir Charles Oman (1860–1946), was that early sixteenth-century English armies resembled their medieval predecessors. According to this assessment, England’s isolation from Continental developments, since the Plantagenet loss of Gascony in 1453, had resulted in military obsolescence. For Oman, this could be seen, most notably, in the English reluctance to adopt the pike and handgun, due to a preference, since the time of the Hundred Years War, for formations equipped with the old fashioned ‘bow and bill’.Footnote 7 Gilbert J. Millar contended that the hiring of large numbers of mercenaries for the 1513 expedition to France was due to the ‘obvious deficiencies of Henry’s own national forces’, due to its lack of handgunners and pikemen, and paucity of heavy cavalry.Footnote 8 Similarly, Helen Miller characterised the same army as ‘an old fashioned force, raised by quasi-feudal methods, fighting with out-of-date weapons’.Footnote 9
More recently this assessment has been challenged, particularly by scholars of the reign of Henry VIII (1509–47), who have argued that the English not only remained aware of changes in European warfare but retained their prowess when matched against their Continental rivals. Gervase Phillips has highlighted their success against armies equipped with large numbers of the supposedly more modern pike, notably at the battles of Stoke Field in 1487 and Flodden in 1513.Footnote 10 He has also pointed out that other European powers, such as the kingdom of France, employed even larger numbers of mercenaries than Henry VIII in their armies.Footnote 11 This led him to the conclusion that although English soldiers of the early sixteenth century may have appeared ‘in equipment at least, backward’, this would not have been apparent to contemporaries at the time, and thus there was ‘little incentive for the English to abandon the bows and bills that had served them so well’.Footnote 12 James Raymond has likewise contended that the adherence to the bow and bill stemmed from their ‘repeated successes’, but also notes English awareness of the importance of pikes, and willingness to innovate through ‘blending old and new weapons, and tactical systems’.Footnote 13 Steven Gunn has illustrated the wider context by pointing out that although ‘The English may have been uncommonly attached to their bows and bills … authorities all over Europe struggled to persuade their subjects to take up the rulers’ weapons of choice’.Footnote 14 Luke MacMahon has shown that although the men who served in early sixteenth-century English armies were not professional in modern terms, neither was a large proportion of their counterparts in rival European armies.Footnote 15 The notion of ‘backwardness’ has also been called into question by David Grummitt’s research on the Battle of Flodden. Grummitt has argued that the English, contrary to past assessments, were more ‘modern’ than the Scots at Flodden, in relation to their tactics and weaponry, which was due to their success in ‘combining bows, bills, and pikes into an effective all-arms infantry force’.Footnote 16
Yet underlying assumptions about change and continuity continue to persist. These include the notion that the English of the early sixteenth century remained wedded to the ‘bow and bill’, and that this was a long-standing tradition that dated from decades, if not centuries, earlier. However, when and why did the English adopt the use of ‘bow and bill’ formations? Was this a long-established practice by the reign of Henry VIII, or was it a far more recent development? Historians of the Tudor period tend to assume the former, with Phillips, for instance, stating that ‘English infantry had been armed with bill and bow for centuries’.Footnote 17 Yet where is the evidence for this argument? A fundamental issue is whether the armies of the Wars of the Roses were similar to those of the Hundred Years War, or if they more closely resembled those of the Tudor period.
Anthony Goodman, in what is still the main work on the military as opposed to the political aspects of the Wars of Roses, has argued for both continuity and innovation. He claims that the period was transformative, as it ‘probably produced a revival of English cavalry fighting’, and saw ‘the deployment of ordnance and flanking cavalry in the field, in conjunction with bowmen and billmen’.Footnote 18 He furthermore claims that the ‘blending of traditional and innovatory methods in early Tudor armies was probably a development of precedents from the Wars of the Roses, not a completely new one’.Footnote 19 However, his argument rests upon assumptions about types of soldiers and how they were equipped. For example, he provides no evidence prior to the reign of Henry VII that billmen, alongside archers, were part of English armies.Footnote 20 Other historians of the Wars of the Roses have tended to focus on specific battles, such as Towton (1461) and Bosworth Field (1485), and so have provided limited insights into patterns of change over time.Footnote 21 The era also has the misfortune of being situated across the chronological division between the late medieval and early modern periods, with few scholars willing to bridge the historical gap. A consequence of this is that long-term trends have rarely been examined, especially those spanning the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries.
The principal exception to this has been David Grummitt’s research on the Calais garrison. Grummitt’s argument is that the three categories of soldiers listed in the fifteenth-century accounts for Calais – mounted men-at-arms, men-at-arms on foot and archers – was ‘an accounting fiction’ that ‘bore no direct resemblance to the actual military role the men performed in the garrison or on the battlefield’.Footnote 22 This led him to the conclusion that the substantial growth in the ratio of archers relative to men-at-arms in the fifteenth century ‘represented military experimentation and the growing importance of pole-armed, non-armigerous soldiers in English armies’.Footnote 23 His main evidence for this claim is the work of the eighteenth-century antiquarians Joseph Nicholson and Richard Burn, who cite an indenture made in 1449 between Walter Strickland and Richard, earl of Salisbury, with the former agreeing to serve the latter in times of both peace and war.Footnote 24 This document is included alongside a muster roll of the men who could be raised by Strickland, deputy steward of Kendal, from his servants and tenants in the county of Westmorland, which lists their names and equipment: principally bows, bills and armour.Footnote 25 The muster roll is undated, but Nicholson and Burn contend that it is the same Strickland as in the indenture, so must date to the fifteenth century. Grummitt, on this basis, claims that Strickland recruited a force of archers and billmen for service in Normandy in 1449.Footnote 26
Yet, as pointed out by Adrian R. Bell, Anne Curry, Andy King and David Simpkin, this evidence does not stand up to scrutiny.Footnote 27 The indenture does indeed date from the mid-fifteenth century, but the muster roll, as identified by Daniel Scott, instead dates from the sixteenth century, and refers to the men who could be raised by his grandson of the same name (d. 1569).Footnote 28 Bell, Curry, King and Simpkin instead contend, on the basis of the evidence of equipment possessed by archers, that ‘there is no evidence of clerks in the first half of the fifteenth century using “archer” as a catch-all term for soldiers receiving 6d per day’.Footnote 29
The principal evidence for Grummitt’s argument has therefore been refuted, but nonetheless this discussion reveals that important questions remain unexplored and unanswered. When exactly did the terminology used to describe English soldiers change? Further to this, when were the old types of soldiers, namely men-at-arms and archers, joined by new categories of soldiers such as billmen and demi-lances? Was this change sudden and consistent across different types of sources? Did it reflect a change in the organisation of warfare, or simply the updating of outdated terminology? This article explores the topic through analysing two main types of sources: indentures of war and financial accounts.
There is also the related issue of whether the terminology used to describe different types of soldiers accurately reflected how these men were equipped. Were these administrative terms that obscured how men fought in practice, as claimed by Grummitt; or instead, as argued by Bell, Curry, King and Simpkin, should we take these descriptions at face value? Notably, were archers only, or even primarily, equipped with bows, or did this category include men also equipped with melee weapons? Furthermore, was this true throughout the period, or did it change over time?
Another aspect considered in what follows is how changes in the ratios between types of soldiers and their weaponry both reflected and influenced developments in English warfare. What, for instance, were the practical consequences of the significant growth of the ratio of archers relative to men-at-arms in the later stages of the Hundred Years War?Footnote 30 How, after their appearance, did the ratio of billmen to archers change over time? When and why did demi-lances emerge as a new type of cavalry, and how were they equipped and recruited? Were these changes driven by overseas influences, or by the initiative of kings or their officials? Insights into these questions can be obtained through further analysis of administrative records, as well as examining the wider international and national contexts. The article concludes by providing a new explanation for how and why English armies changed and developed in this period.
Terminology
Two main categories of soldiers – men-at-arms and archers – made up the bulk of the men serving in English armies in the Hundred Years War. This system was developed during the reign of Edward III and continued into the fifteenth century.Footnote 31 Men-at-arms, also recorded as homines ad arma, lanceae, or later as spears, were typically mounted, and paid 12d. per day.Footnote 32 These men were often accompanied by one or more pages, but, unlike in France or Italy, the term lance referred to an individual man-at-arms, as opposed to a unit of three or more men.Footnote 33 Archers, also described as valetti or sagittarii, routinely received wages of 6d. per day, although this was sometimes reduced to 3d. if serving on foot.Footnote 34 These terms and pay rates continued in use for the remainder of the Hundred Years War, although the marked increase in the usage of English in administrative and financial documents during the reign of Henry VI meant that the words ‘spear’ and ‘archer’ often came to be used in preference to their Latin or French equivalents.Footnote 35 For example, on 25 July 1453, William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, indented with the Crown to serve under John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, as reinforcements for the latter’s expedition to Gascony, with fifty spears, at 12d. per day, and 500 archers, at 6d. per day.Footnote 36
It is more difficult to determine the types of soldiers present during the military campaigns of the Wars of the Roses, as there is far less surviving documentation, especially administrative and financial, than for the preceding period.Footnote 37 Many of the extant sources tend to use general descriptions such as ‘defensible men’, ‘soldiers’, or just ‘men’.Footnote 38 Nonetheless, the categories of men-at-arms and archers remained in usage. For example, Sir William Stanley is recorded in the accounts of the Duchy of Lancaster as having received wages for 400 archers in 1463, and the author of the Historie of the Arrivall of King Edward IV refers to ‘a good bande of speres and archars’ in the king’s army in 1471.Footnote 39
By contrast, the overseas expeditions of the reign of Edward IV are far better documented, revealing continuity with the campaigns of the Hundred Years War. On 10 September 1468, Walter, Lord Mountjoy, indented with the Crown for service in Brittany with a force of sixty men-at-arms and 2,940 archers; and on the same day, Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, indented to serve with five knights, fifty men-at-arms and 2,945 archers for a naval expedition to France. In both instances, the daily wages consisted of 2s. for knights, 18d. for men-at-arms and 6d. for archers.Footnote 40 Seven years later, Edward IV led an army to France consisting of some 11,451 men, of whom 1,278 were men-at-arms, receiving 12d. per day, and the rest archers, at 6d. per day.Footnote 41 Comparatively few records survive for the Anglo-Scottish war of 1480–2, but contingents of archers are specifically recorded as being provided by the cities of Coventry and York, and the county of Lancashire.Footnote 42
The reign of Henry VII saw major changes to the categories of soldiers recorded as serving in English armies. This can be seen from the army sent to Brittany in 1488, which, for the first time, included a new type of cavalryman called a demi-lance. (The unfamiliarity of the Exchequer clerks with the new term in this year can be seen from entries in the tellers’ rolls that referred to ‘a mounted soldier called a demi-lance’, and ‘other horsemen called demi-lances’.)Footnote 43 The most significant evidence, however, comes from the initial indentures drawn up for the 1492 expedition to France.Footnote 44 These documents mark an important point of transition in military organisation, as this was the last time indentures were used for an expeditionary army led in person by the king.Footnote 45 They also are noteworthy for the inclusion of unusual clauses and pay rates. Retinue commanders were obliged to pay their men within six days of receiving their wages and received conduct money for every twenty miles that they travelled. They were also required to adhere to the ‘Statutes and Ordenaunces of the Werre’, which, for the first time for English disciplinary ordinances, were printed, with each captain receiving a copy.Footnote 46 The indentures record that each man-at-arms received 18d. per day, and was accompanied by a type of soldier called a coutilier, as well as a page, thereby making up a ‘lance’ of three men, whereas the demi-lances are listed as each being paid 9d. per day.Footnote 47 The indentures also reveal the emergence of new types of melee-armed infantry, each receiving 6d. a day, the same rate as archers, with a significant number of men described as ‘bills’, along with smaller numbers of men with ‘long spears’, namely pikemen, and halberdiers.Footnote 48 The composition of the retinues specified in the indentures varied, but many included one or more man-at-arms, along with demi-lances, mounted archers, foot archers and billmen. Interestingly, billmen are not listed in the financial accounts for the expedition, with the only categories being men-at-arms, demi-lances and archers.Footnote 49 Five years later though, billmen and archers as a combined category are recorded in Exchequer payments made to soldiers serving in the Scottish campaign, although there is no mention of men equipped with pikes or halberds.Footnote 50
By the early sixteenth century, there were further modifications to these categories of soldiers, as can be seen from a draft scheme for an army, written in the hand of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, in 1512.Footnote 51 This document listed a proposal for a force of 30,000 men, consisting of 1,000 men-at-arms with barding (armour) for their horses, 1,000 men-at-arms without barding, 3,000 demi-lances (500 of which were specified to be Irish), 10,000 archers on foot, 4,500 English billmen and pikemen, and 5,000 landsknecht pikemen, in addition to gunners and pioneers. The actual composition of the force that accompanied the king to France a year later was somewhat different, with fewer English and Welsh pikemen, but nonetheless was broadly the same as the one outlined in the proposal.Footnote 52 Henry’s army was thereby similar to the one that his father had led to France twenty-one years earlier. The major innovation in the 1513 expedition was the presence of thousands of mercenaries, comprising men-at-arms and pikemen, recruited from the Low Countries and Germanic-speaking lands.
The terminology used to describe soldiers serving in English armies was therefore largely unchanged for much of the fifteenth century, with only men-at-arms and archers recorded prior to the late 1480s. This would indicate that major changes occurred early in the reign of Henry VII, when new categories emerged – as can be seen, most notably, by the stark differences between the indentures for the 1475 and 1492 expeditions. The former used the standard two categories of men-at-arms paid at the daily rate of 12d., and archers at 6d.; whereas with the latter, men-at-arms were now part of a three-man lance, paid at the higher rate of 18d., together with demi-lances at 9d., three types of melee foot infantry, billmen, pikemen and halberdiers (all at 6d.), along with mounted and foot archers, both also at 6d. Yet it is possible that some of these developments occurred earlier. The omission of billmen from the financial accounts, as opposed to the indentures, for the 1492 expedition, leaves open the possibility that this type of soldier was present in English armies prior to this date. Has their presence simply been obscured by the conservative record-keeping of Exchequer clerks, as suggested by Grummitt? To address this question, it is necessary to examine changes in the types of weapons provided to English soldiers in this period.
Armaments
Responsibility for equipping English soldiers rested principally with individuals, communities and retinue commanders.Footnote 53 The Assize of Arms of 1181 specified that all freeborn men in England were obliged to serve the king in the defence of the realm, equipped with arms and armour proportionate to their income. This obligation was affirmed in the Statute of Winchester of 1285, and remained in force throughout the Middle Ages.Footnote 54 It also applied to soldiers serving in royal armies, garrisons or fleets. Terms of service between the Crown and retinue leaders, as can be seen in indentures of war, specified conditions including rates of pay, the division of ransom payments, bonuses and compensation for lost horses. Yet these documents did not specify the provision of weapons or armour, other than the obligation for commanders to ensure that the men under their command were armed adequately.Footnote 55 Soldiers in royal service were expected, and indeed required, to be suitably equipped at their own expense as opposed to the Crown’s.
Yet from the reign of Edward III onwards, royal officials became involved in the procurement and distribution of large quantities of armaments. Initially, this was primarily organised and administered by the Privy Wardrobe, based at the Tower of London, under the direction of its keeper, who was appointed by the king.Footnote 56 This development was a consequence of the regular expeditionary warfare of the Hundred Years War, and in particular the need to ensure that soldiers were adequately resupplied with munitions.Footnote 57 Changes in the weaponry of English soldiers can therefore be traced through the examination of the Crown’s financial and administrative records. It should be noted though that officials never assumed responsibility for fully equipping soldiers in royal service. Inventories and other sources demonstrate that men-at-arms, for example, fought with a variety of weapons including daggers, swords, poleaxes, war hammers, maces and spears.Footnote 58 Yet procurement was primarily focused on the acquisition and distribution of large quantities of bows and arrows for archers, and spears for men-at-arms.Footnote 59 This can be seen with the campaigns of Henry V in northern France, such as the conquest of Normandy from 1417 to 1419, with large quantities of munitions sent from England.Footnote 60 After Henry’s death, in 1422, the Privy Wardrobe ceased to be involved with military procurement.Footnote 61 Nonetheless, the Crown was still active in sending large quantities of armaments to English forces operating in France. For the ‘Coronation Expedition’ of Henry VI in 1430–2, for example, the master of the ordnance, John Hampton, procured 6,307 bows, 244,992 arrows, 1,176 ‘swallow’ arrows, 800 shafts for spears and 710 spear heads.Footnote 62
The first evidence of a change in the weaponry of English soldiers occurred in 1436, during the Burgundian siege of Calais, with the delivery of 3,000 iron-bound lead mallets with spikes, 3,144 without spikes and 242 lead mallets to the Pale.Footnote 63 Some of these were transferred to Gilbert Parr, master of the ordnance for Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, commander of the English relief force, who distributed them to soldiers for relieving the garrison, and for an expedition into Picardy.Footnote 64 These mallets were afterwards retained in the stores of the Calais arsenal, and were used by archers in subsequent warfare in the fifteenth century.Footnote 65 Bows, arrows and spears continued to be procured for English armies for the remainder of the Hundred Years War, as can be seen by the 2,000 bows, 72,000 arrows and 500 spear heads ordered for Richard, duke of York, in 1441.Footnote 66
The year 1450 marks an important turning point, with the first references to the presence of new types of staff weapons, described as glaives and bills.Footnote 67 In April, the civic authorities of Coventry ordered that a night watch be kept with forty men equipped with ‘jacks, sallets, pole-axes or glaives’; and four months later, armaments were ordered to be dispatched to Carisbrooke Castle, on the Isle of Wight, which included forty mallets and glaives.Footnote 68 References to these weapons gradually increase in documentary and narrative sources in subsequent years. Small numbers of men are recorded as being equipped with them in the Bridport muster roll of 1457, for example; and a year later, in 1458, John Judd, master of the ordnance for Henry VI, was ordered to procure 500 glaives ‘otherwise called bills’, along with 500 lead mallets.Footnote 69 Bows, spears and mallets continued, however, to be the main armaments procured and expended during the early stage of the Wars of the Roses. This can be seen with the Yorkist sieges of Lancastrian-held Hammes Castle between 1461 and 1462, as well as the naval expedition of 1468.Footnote 70 In the case of the latter, 2,000 bows, 96,000 arrows, 600 spears and 1,500 lead mallets were supplied for equipping two expeditionary forces totalling five knights, 110 men-at-arms, 5,885 archers and 1,100 sailors.Footnote 71
The same year did, however, see the acquisition for the first time of bills and pikes for the arsenal at Calais, indicating the growing importance of staff weapons, which soon replaced spears as the main melee weapon provided to English soldiers.Footnote 72 These are subsequently recorded as being used in military engagements by the garrison of the territory, with, for example, fifty-two pikes and sixteen bills expended in skirmishes with the forces of John de Verre, earl of Oxford, in 1472–3.Footnote 73 Substantial quantities of staff weapons were acquired by William Rosse, the victualler of Calais, for the 1475 expedition to France, with his purchases totalling 400 pikes, 400 blackbills, 154 whitebills, 106 ungilded bills and twenty glaives, which was similar in quantity to the 1,159 bows supplied from the Tower of London for the expedition.Footnote 74 Rosse later obtained 600 pikes, four whitebills and eighteen halberds for the Anglo-Scottish war of 1480–2.Footnote 75 References to bills are also recorded during the reign of Richard III, with, for example, the king ordering the procurement of 2,000 Welsh bills on 17 August 1483.Footnote 76
Staff weapons, alongside bows, were procured for the Brittany and Boulogne expeditions of 1489–92, with textile armour made from cloth known as jacks also routinely provided to soldiers and sailors in royal service.Footnote 77 By the time of the Scottish expedition of 1497, melee weapons were supplied in greater quantities than bows, with some 6,190 bills, 2,140 pikes and 260 halberds shipped to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, along with 6,050 bows and 761 spears and demi-lances.Footnote 78 These were delivered to equip what was originally intended to be a much larger army, but, due to the outbreak of a rebellion in Cornwall, only a much smaller force, under the command of Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, was available for military operations.Footnote 79 A substantial portion of the armaments was subsequently transported by land during Surrey’s incursion into Scotland.Footnote 80 Munitions including 800 pikes and 1,060 bills, as well as bows and arrows in chests, were afterwards described as being ‘taken by the host and rauenously dispoiled upon Halidon Hill in Scotland the Kyng of Scottes beying in sight redy to yif batell and at the breking up of the Army’.Footnote 81 The requirements of the Anglo-French war of 1512–14 were even greater, as reflected in the vast scale of armaments procured for the expeditions to the Continent. An estimate of 1513 stated that an army of 3,000 horsemen and 15,000 footmen required munitions that included 2,000 spears, 4,000 demi-lances, 5,000 pikes of eighteen feet in length, 10,000 bows, 480,000 arrows and 10,000 fighting bills.Footnote 82
Bows and spears were thus the main weapons supplied to English soldiers in the first half of the fifteenth century, although mallets were also provided for archers from the mid-1430s onwards. Bills were first recorded in the 1450s but only began to be used in large numbers from the mid-1470s, and particularly the 1480s. Pikes were listed from the early 1470s and were present in comparable quantities to bills. By the late 1490s, staff weapons, mostly bills and pikes, but also some halberds, were supplied in greater numbers than bows. The adoption of staff weapons by the English therefore pre-dated the change in terminology used to describe soldiers. The term ‘archer’ was still used to describe footmen in the 1470s and 1480s, even though bills and pikes by then were used in large quantities. This means that some of the men recorded as archers in this period were equipped with melee weapons. The increased provision of armour specifically for footmen in the late fifteenth century, particularly jacks but also to a certain extent brigandines, was undoubtedly a linked development, due to the need to ensure that melee-armed soldiers were suitably protected.
A comparison of the quantities of armaments procured in this period also demonstrates that the assumption that the bill was much more popular than the pike is erroneous, with the latter also supplied in large quantities in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Many of the pikes procured for the Anglo-French war of 1512–14 were supplied to equip landsknechts in English service, but this was not the case for the expeditions of Henry VII in the 1480s and 1490s. It is not clear, however, from this examination, when changes in the armaments of cavalry occurred, notably the emergence of the more lightly armoured demi-lance. This is principally because armour for men-at-arms and demi-lances appears to have rarely been provided by royal officials. Thus to explore this topic further, it is essential to link these developments with how the organisation of English armies changed in the period.
The organisation of English armies
English armies of the Hundred Years War predominantly consisted of men-at-arms and archers in a ratio of approximately 1:1 in the late fourteenth century, but by the early fifteenth century it was typically 1:3.Footnote 83 From the 1430s onwards, however, there was a substantial increase in the number of archers relative to men-at-arms (see Appendix 1). For example, the army sent to relieve Calais in 1436 consisted of a ratio of 1:7 men-at-arms to archers.Footnote 84 This rose to as much as 1:9 in 1450 and 1:10 in 1453 for the armies sent to Normandy and Gascony.Footnote 85 By the reign of Edward IV, the proportion of men-at-arms to archers was significantly lower than earlier in the century. The ratio of 1:50 in 1468 was admittedly exceptional, but it was still 1:8 in 1475.Footnote 86 These developments coincided with changes in the weapons used by infantry, the mallet, bill, pike and halberd being supplied and used in large quantities from the 1470s.Footnote 87 This demonstrates that archers were increasingly expected to play a major role in melee combat, unlike their predecessors in the early fifteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Yet despite this, other categories of infantry are only known from the reign of Henry VII onwards. What is more, archers initially far outnumbered other types of infantry, as can be seen from the draft indentures for the 1492 expedition to France. These reveal that, where specified, archers comprised 85 per cent of the total (2,678), compared to the remaining 18 per cent, made up of billmen (244), halberdiers (26) and pikemen (200) (see Appendix 2).Footnote 88 For example, Sir John Risley indented to provide twenty-five mounted and forty-five foot archers, as well as eighteen billmen; and Sir Thomas Darcy six mounted and ten foot archers, in addition to four billmen.Footnote 89 Given the large quantities of staff weapons procured for the expeditions of the 1490s, the implication is that some men listed as archers were still equipped with these weapons, even after the emergence of new categories of melee-armed infantry in this period.
The proportion of billmen and pikemen to archers increased significantly in the early sixteenth century, as can be seen from the extant letters sent by Henry VIII to retinue leaders in February and April 1513, specifying which soldiers they were to recruit for the expedition to France of that year. These demonstrate that most commanders were expected to supply almost as many billmen or pikemen as archers.Footnote 90 In some instances, captains were only asked to provide billmen and pikemen for the infantry, as with the 200 billmen and seventy-five pikemen requested of Sir Henry Marney.Footnote 91 Entries in the payment records for the vanguard provide further evidence for this development, with Robert, Lord Fitzwater, and George, Lord Hastings, each receiving wages for sixty archers and forty billmen, whereas Thomas, Lord Cobham, received wages for fifty archers and fifty billmen.Footnote 92
The scale of the change can be seen by comparing the records for 1492 and 1513. In the indentures for the former year, there were forty-two all-archer retinues, as opposed to twenty-nine that included archers alongside billmen, pikemen and halberdiers; and there were none that only included billmen, pikemen or halberdiers, and no archers. By 1513, the expectation was instead for mixed retinues. This development appears to have been prompted by Henry VIII’s need to recruit an exceptionally large army for his expedition to France, and changing tactics in English warfare, which placed a greater emphasis on mixed retinues.
Cavalry also changed significantly in the late fifteenth century, with substantial decreases in the numbers of men-at-arms. Almost 1,500 men-at-arms served in the 1475 expedition, amounting to 11 per cent of the total combatants; but in 1492, only some 300 men-at-arms, or 4 per cent of the total combatants, are recorded as receiving wages. Even accounting for the much smaller size of the army recorded in the payment records for 1492, the proportion of men-at-arms had decreased drastically compared to 1475. This decline coincides with the emergence of the demi-lance as a new category of soldier. Initially they were only present in small numbers in 1488, with thirty-three demi-lances as opposed to 130 men-at-arms, but from the early 1490s they far outnumbered men-at-arms. Of the proportion of cavalry of armies raised in this decade, demi-lances comprised 75 per cent in 1492, 93.5 per cent in 1497 for the proposed vanguard against Scotland and 77.5 per cent in 1497 for the Blackheath campaign (see Appendix 3).Footnote 93 This may indicate that far fewer men were being recruited as men-at-arms at the end of the fifteenth century, because they were instead, at least in some instances, being raised as the more lightly armoured demi-lances.
Although it is difficult to determine the exact composition of the army in 1513, demi-lances significantly outnumbered men-at-arms. For example, a document titled ‘The Order hough the Kinges bataill shall procede’ states that the army was to be preceded by a force, led by Sir Richard Wingfield, consisting of forty men-at-arms, 300 demi-lances and 200 mounted archers.Footnote 94 Demi-lances were recruited from all parts of the kingdom, but certain regions contributed more than others. Especially large numbers were recruited in Wales in the 1490s, for example. Sir Richard Pole served with 101 demi-lances in 1492 and 100 in 1497, all from Merionethshire in north Wales; whereas, from south Wales, Sir Rhys ap Thomas provided 286 in 1492, and as many as 696 in 1497.Footnote 95 Significant contingents were also raised from the northern border counties with Scotland, as well as from Ireland, by at least the early sixteenth century.Footnote 96
A new assessment
The preceding discussion about terminology, weaponry and organisation allows for a new explanation of how and why English armies changed between the mid-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This is well illustrated by the case of archers, whose role changed considerably in the period. In the earlier decades of the fifteenth century, they were placed in a supporting role on the wings or in front of one or more formations of dismounted men-at-arms.Footnote 97 In this configuration, the purpose of the men-at-arms was to resist the initial enemy attack in hand-to-hand combat, with the archers inflicting damage at range, only joining the melee once their arrows had been expended, and their enemies sufficiently weakened in combat. Decreases in the numbers and proportion of men-at-arms from the 1430s onwards, however, meant that archers were forced to adopt a new more melee-focused role. This was reflective of cost-cutting measures, with archers cheaper than men-at-arms, as well as Europe-wide trends towards the increased adoption of staff weapons.
Swiss victories in the second half of the fifteenth century were influential in driving changes in the weaponry and tactics of England’s main Continental rivals, France and Burgundy.Footnote 98 The francs-archers, founded in 1448 by Charles VII, initially consisted of archers equipped with bows and swords, but by 1466 included soldiers armed with voulges and spears.Footnote 99 Similarly, the Burgundian military ordinance of 1471, included a footman armed with a pike, as part of the nine-men lances of the ordinance.Footnote 100 This trend of equipping soldiers with staff weapons increased markedly following the triumph of the Swiss over Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in the Burgundian Wars (1474–7). Maximilian, duke of Austria, succeeded in defeating the French army at the Battle of Guinegate (1479), principally due to his Flemish militia armed with pikes. Subsequently, from the 1480s onwards, Maximilian relied upon landsknecht infantry armed and trained in the Swiss style.Footnote 101 The defeat at Guinegate conversely prompted Louis XI to disband the francs-archers, who were replaced with a new permanent force of infantry. This initially consisted of 10,000 footmen raised from northern France, with major cities ordered to supply at least 5,500 pikes of twenty-two feet in length, along with 14,500 halberds.Footnote 102 The cost of Louis’s permanent infantry force led to the abandonment of the scheme following his death in 1483: the francs-archers were revived, and by 1522 it was specified that two-thirds of them should serve as pikemen, with the remaining third consisting of arquebusiers, crossbowmen and halberdiers.Footnote 103
The English adoption of staff weapons, such as the bill and pike, therefore reflected and was contemporary to Continental trends, with archers equipped with staff weapons in comparable quantities to the bow by 1475. The main difference was that whereas the French, for example, primarily armed their infantry with pikes and only smaller quantities of staff weapons such as halberds, the English used larger numbers of bills as opposed to pikes. Archers of the fifteenth century thereby evolved into a form of hybrid infantry armed with both ranged and melee weapons. The formal separation into new categories of soldiers early in the reign of Henry VII does suggest that the importance of staff weapons increased in this era. Analysis of the ratios, however, demonstrates that archers considerably outnumbered exclusively melee-armed infantry. This suggests that the bow continued to be regarded as the single most important weapon for English infantry until the end of the fifteenth century, with billmen and pikemen very much in a supporting role. The value placed on the bow provides an explanation for the comments of foreigner observers, such as the Italian monk Dominic Mancini, who in his description of English soldiers in 1483, described their bows, arrows, swords and armour, without any mention of staff weapons.Footnote 104 Similarly another Italian, around 1500, went so far as to claim that the bow was ‘as decidedly the weapon of the English, as the pike is that of the Germans’.Footnote 105 It was not until the reign of Henry VIII that non-bow armed infantry were employed in comparable numbers to archers. The ratio evidence therefore indicates that the infantry of late Yorkist and early Tudor armies may have fought in mixed formations using different types of staff weapons alongside bows.Footnote 106
Men-at-arms also changed significantly, with major decreases in their numbers throughout the course of the fifteenth century, most notably in the last quarter. This stemmed in part from the new role of archers in melee combat, which meant there was increasingly no longer a need for dismounted men-at-arms. It was also a consequence of the adoption of the French-style lance in the reign of Henry VII, which made men-at-arms considerably more expensive to employ. Linked to this was the revival of cavalry in English armies in the second half of the fifteenth century, as identified by Goodman.Footnote 107 Contemporary chronicle and documentary evidence, however, suggests that only relatively small numbers of heavy cavalry were present in the era of the Wars of the Roses.Footnote 108 This most probably was due to the difficulty of converting sufficient numbers of men-at-arms from mounted infantry into cavalry, as, to act as the latter, they needed to be trained and proficient in mounted combat. The English practice of dismounting their men-at-arms to fight on foot for the previous one hundred years meant that few men, even those who could afford to arm themselves with suitable equipment and horses, would have had experience of fighting on horseback. This would also explain the comments of the writer Philippe de Commines in his description of the soldiers in the English army in the 1475 expedition who, he claims, despite being very well mounted and equipped, rode in poor order.Footnote 109 A shortage of suitable mounts may also have been a factor. An act passed in the parliament of 1495 complained about ‘the smaller nombre of goode horses to be within this realme for the defence therof’. This was blamed on exports, which were said to be responsible for the ‘price of every of theym to be greatly enhaunced here to the losse and noiaunce of all the kingis subgettis within the same’.Footnote 110 Concerns about the availability of warhorses persisted into the reign of Henry VIII, with subsequent parliaments enacting legislation designed to limit exports and to encourage the breeding of larger horses.Footnote 111
The adoption of the demi-lance as a new category of cavalry in the reign of Henry VII may have been intended as a solution to this issue. At half the price, demi-lances were considerably cheaper than men-at-arms, a factor which is explicitly identified in a letter of 3 April 1513 sent by Sir Edward Poynings to Henry VIII. Poynings identified demi-lances as more useful and cost effective in warfare, claiming that coutiliers and pages were in practice ineffective combatants, and pointing out that demi-lances were as well horsed and equipped as men-at-arms (except for leg armour).Footnote 112 Demi-lances were clearly valued in the early Tudor period, which would explain why they were recruited in much larger numbers than men-at-arms from the 1490s onwards. They were readily available from northern England, Wales and Ireland by the sixteenth century, but elsewhere they were far less numerous. As much is clear from another letter written by Ponynges, dated 26 April 1513, in which he offered to replace the fifty demi-lances he had been asked to raise with six men-at-arms and nine barded horses. The reason for this, he explained, was the fact that in Kent there were few men with ‘exper(ti)s(e)’ in serving as demi-lances.Footnote 113 As Ponygnes’s difficulties implied, demi-lances were not just second-rate men-at-arms, but soldiers with specific skills that were in high demand.
Conclusion
The role of archers and men-at-arms evolved considerably over the course of the fifteenth century. This gives credence to the argument that these categories should not be taken at face value when interpreting their function in warfare. Archers and men-at-arms of the late fifteenth century were markedly different from their predecessors, although this is not apparent from the financial accounts. Grummitt’s characterisation of this disconnect as an accounting fiction is an overstatement, implying deliberate falsification, as opposed to the persistence of antiquated practices. Nonetheless, his questioning of the terminology used in these documents is a valid one, which demonstrates the need to use contextual evidence when interpreting these sources. Documents created by medieval clerks for accounting purposes reflected financial concerns, not military practice.
It would be wrong, however, to suppose that the terminology used in these accounts is entirely meaningless. The term archer was not simply retained due to the traditionalism of Exchequer clerks, but also because common soldiers continued to be associated with the bow, which foreign observers identified as a uniquely English weapon. These men were described as archers because, even when soldiers were equipped with melee weapons, the bow was still considered to be their main armament, in both military and cultural terms.Footnote 114 It was not until the 1490s that new categories of infantry emerged. But even then, archers still far outnumbered billmen, pikemen and halberdiers until at least the early sixteenth century. That this was the case also refutes the argument that the bill was, by this period, long established as the preferred English melee weapon. On the contrary, the spear was the main armament for infantry for much of the century. It was only from the mid-1470s that it was superseded by the bill and pike. The English combination of the ‘bow and bill’ was not, therefore, one that had served them well for centuries by the reign of Henry VIII; it was in fact a far more recent development of the late fifteenth century.
European influences were important in driving changes in English warfare. Notably, the growth in popularity of staff weapons and the revival of heavy cavalry in the second half of the fifteenth century were responsible for changing the composition of armies and armaments of soldiers. This is most apparent in the reign of Henry VII, with the adoption of the French-style lance and the separation of infantry into new categories, developments most likely influenced by the king’s time spent in exile in Brittany and France.Footnote 115 Yet other factors were also crucial. Decreases in the numbers of dismounted men-at-arms, most probably for financial reasons, forced archers to assume a more prominent role in melee combat. Similarly, the decision to recruit mostly demi-lances as cavalry from the 1490s onwards was not only influenced by their tactical role and availability, but also by the fact that they were substantially cheaper than much more expensive men-at-arms.
The army that Henry VIII took to France in 1513 was not only radically different from earlier armies of the Hundred Years War, but it was also modern and innovative, integrating billmen and pikemen with archers, supported by a strong force of cavalry, supplemented by landsknechts and other mercenaries. English armies of the mid-fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries were not therefore characterised by insular conservatism. Instead, they were subject to a continuous process of evolution, with European influences integrated into a distinctive English style of warfare.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Dr Robert Blackmore for reading and providing feedback on drafts of this article, and to Professor Mark Stoyle for his assistance with accessing archival material. I am also indebted to the editor and anonymous peer reviewers of this journal for their suggestions for improvements. Any mistakes or omissions are my own.
Appendix 1. English armies, 1415–75
Sources: Bell et al., The Soldier in Later Medieval England, 272–4; TNA, E 404/74/1, nos. 67, 102; Lander, ‘The Hundred Years’ War and Edward IV’s 1475 Campaign in France’, 321. Note that the figure for men-at-arms also includes knights.
Appendix 2. Draft indentures for the 1492 expedition
Sources: TNA, E 101/72/3, nos. 1065–95; E 101/72/4, nos. 1096–1109; E 101/72/5, nos. 1122–45; E 101/72/6, nos. 1146–62. Note that * denotes blank, damaged or crossed out entries.
Appendix 3. English armies, 1488–97
Sources: TNA, E 405/75, mm. 38r–40v; E 36/285, fos. 22v–54v; E 405/79, mm. 35v–37v; E 405/79, mm. 30r–33r. Note that the figure for men-at-arms also includes knights.
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