© Companions of the Longbow

Arrows

The Clothyard Arrow

Although there's no contemporary 100 Years War reference to the "cloth yard arrow" (the term itself does not seem to have been written down before 1465) one theory says that this comes from the reign of Edward III when he introduced Flemish weavers into England. The weavers brought their own system of measurement with them. Known as the "clothyard ", "clothier's yard", "ell", or "Flemish yard", it was 27 4/10 inches long.  

However, due to the mass production of the arrows, the need to accommodate those archers with longer draw lengths and the differing final lengths of the arrow depending on the arrow head attached, the typical "clothyard arrow" could have been anything from 28" to 34" long or more.

The body of the arrow, called the "shaft" or "stele", could be made from any one of a variety of timbers.  Roger Ascham lists fifteen, of which he prefers birch, hardbeam, some oak, and some ash. Most of the Mary Rose arrows are poplar, but some are of beech, ash, and hazel. (For sport & re-enactment traditional arrows are usually made of ash, birch, willow or elm.)

They used "flight" (lighter arrows for long range) and "standard" arrows, also called "sheaf" or "livery" arrows.   Sir John Smythe, writing over a hundred years after the Hundred Years War said that of every sheaf of 24, 8 arrows should be flights.

By documentary evidence, the most common wood for "war arrows" seems to have aspen (Populus tremula).   Indeed, a statute of 1419 reserves aspen solely for arrows. Ascham, however, preferred good ash to aspen for war arrows, saying that ash is "hevye to geve a great stripe," which is to say, "strike a hard blow." Clearly, as with any pre-industrial mass produced product, different qualities of arrows were manufactured, for in 1359 William de Rothwell, Keeper of the King's Privy Wardrobe, was told to buy 10,000 sheaves of good arrows and 1,000 sheaves of the best arrows.

Illustration by Gerry Embleton.

The bottom arrow shows the most common fletching for the war arrow.

Most of the Mary Rose arrows are made "taper fashion," going from 1/2 inch thick at the head to 3/8 inch thick at the nock. They range from 28 to 32 inches in length, but average 30 1/2 inches from the nock to the shoulder of the head. The second Mary Rose type is parallel-sided and about 7/16 inches in diameter. Ascham speaks of two other shapes of steles: "barreled" and "big breasted" or "chested," recommending the "chested" arrow for strong shooters. Modern experiments have shown the chested type to be the most aerodynamically stable.

Of the Mary Rose arrows, the socket for the heads, which, unfortunately, have all rusted away, would have fitted flush with the shaft.  The drawlength from nock to shoulder is 30 1/2" though a few vary 2" either side of that.  Depending on the arrowhead used, for example the long bodkin arrowhead, the full length of the arrow could have had an additional 4" or more added to it's overall length.

All but two of the horn or bone inserts, which strengthened the nock against splitting from the thrust of the string, have disappeared but the slits cut in the shaft show they were 2" long and 1/16" thick, slightly tapering.  The nock, or notch, for the string is 1/8" wide and 1/4" deep.  Unless you're lucky enough to have bow with a draw weight in excess of 90lbs you can probably get away with re-enforcing your knocks with thread and glue.  Unfortunately, plastic nocks stick out like sore thumbs, so you’ll either have to buy arrows in or learn to make your own nocks.  Fortunately, The Archery Centre have a handy “how to” section and there are countless guides on-line.

The picture on the left shows half-, three-quarter and full nocks.  The first used on war arrows, the other two, though not common, on “best” target arrows.

The picture below shows are re-enactment arrow made by Richard Head.   Here you can clearly see the war arrow type horn insert.

For the arrows found on the Mary Rose the feathers have all rotted away but would certainly have been from the grey lag goose, though peacock wing and swan were sometimes used for "best" arrows.  Some of the fragmentary feathers recovered from the Mary Rose may be swan.   Following the usual practice, the feathers were tied down with thread as well as glued - a couple of turns at each end and about five turns to the inch.  The shaftment area has the remains of a greenish-tinted compound which was applied on top of the thread. Iolo Goch, bard of Owain Glendower, speaks of "long low fletchings bound with green silk" - although silk for everyday arrows was most unlikely!

Surviving marks show that the feathers on these shafts were 6" - 6 1/2" long, but there are fifteenth century references for feathers up to 12" long - whether different lengths related to different heads is not known.  The height feathers can be deduced from the Zamora Tapestry.  They start 2" down from the nock.  The reason for this distance much further than modern arrows, or even contemporary target ones, is that, probably to speed production, the feathers are simply cut to a triangular shape leaving the natural backward slope, so enough space has to be left to ensure the fingers of the drawing hand do not crush them. Ascham worries little about the color of the feathers save that the cock feather be "black or grey, as it were to give a man warning to nock right".  Some archers fletch their arrows with feathers all of the same colour and just put a small mark on the nock to quickly and easily identify the correct way up it should be nocked.

The most common Mary Rose arrows are believed to have borne Museum of London Type 16 heads (left). The secondary type are believed to have borne Type 8 heads (right).

Heads similar to Type 16 are shown in period illustrations and it is the most common "medieval" type in the collections of the Museum of London and the British Museum.

It is not an armour-piercing head per se, rather it appears to be a compromise design halfway between an armour-piercing bodkin and a broad head (also called swallow-tail) such as would be used for hunting: an all-purpose head, if you will.

Type 16

Type 8 Bodkin

Type 8 is called a "bodkin" point and was designed to pierce armour. Some bodkins had much longer bodies and blades, very suitable for punching deep between links of mail. Recalling that the Mary Rose archers would be shooting most likely at unarmoured men and possibly at long ranges, and so it's possible to speculate that their common arrows were "flights".

A second type of arrow found, in much fewer numbers, was identical to the above in most respects except that the shafts were parallel sided, about 7/16" in diameter, and may have borne another type of head.

Most re-enactment arrows are this second parallel type as it's easy to manufacture a parallel shaft than go to the bother of tapering one down.  Most people wouldn't notice the 1/8" taper over an arrow shaft that's 30"+ in length anyway.

We only use field points bullet or mod bods for target shooting as all medieval and machine bodkins arrow heads will destroy bosses and can also cut boss strings.

Pictured far left, mod bods.  Near left, various field points.

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