It was the first duty of the archers in battle to send clouds of arrows against charges of cavalry, so as to disorganise their formation by killing or wounding as many of the horses of the opposing host as possible, thus causing confusion in the enemy’s ranks by rendering many riders _hors de combat_, and though rarely able to pierce a harness of proof, the arrows often found an interstice in the armour. Since the thirteenth century the armies of England maintained large numbers of mounted archers in their ranks, the complement of bowmen to a corps of fifteen hundred fully equipped lancers being from three to five thousand, while each lancer’s equipment was five or six mounted soldiers, at least two of whom were archers. German and Italian bows rarely exceeded five feet in length. The shape of their arrow tips varied exceedingly. An ordinance of Henry I. provides that when archers were practising and any one had the misfortune to be killed or wounded by accident, it was merely to be regarded as a misadventure. The form of the longbow of the fourteenth century was thick in the middle, narrowing towards the ends, and it was sometimes coated with paint. The price of longbows was fixed by statute in the reign of Edward IV. at a maximum price of three shillings and fourpence each; and in order to increase the number available, every merchant vessel carrying goods to London was compelled to bring a certain number of bows in proportion to the weight of the cargo. A statute of Philip and Mary ordains that all temporal persons having estates of a thousand a year and upwards are required to furnish to the State thirty longbows and thirty sheaves of arrows. Archers carried one or two pointed stakes as part of their equipment, for planting before them in the ground to resist cavalry; also a lead-headed mallet, to drive them in, which was also used for despatching the enemy’s wounded. Specimens of the English longbow are of the greatest rarity. The unfortunate loss of an English war vessel, the _Mary Rose_, which sank off Spithead during the reign of Henry VIII., in 1545, furnished us with some actual specimens of the period. The whereabouts of the wreck was known, and in 1843 divers recovered several bows, a couple of which are preserved in the Tower of London; they are six feet four and a half inches long, and are made of yew.