In this island, archery was greatly encouraged in former times, and many statutes were made for the regulation thereof; whence the English archers became the best in Europe, and obtained many signal victories. The Artillery Company of London, though they have long disused the weapon, are the remains of the ancient bowmen or archers. Artillery (_artillerie_) is a French term, signifying archery; as the king’s bowyer was in that language styled _artillier du roy_. And from that nation the English seem to have learnt at least the use of the cross-bow. William the Conqueror had a considerable number of bowmen in his army, when no mention is made of such troops on the side of Harold. And it is supposed that these Norman archers shot with the arbalist, or cross-bow, in which formerly the arrow was placed in a groove, termed in French, a quarrel, and in English, a bolt. Of the time when shooting with the long-bow first began among the English, there appears no certain accounts. Their chronicles do not mention the use of archery till the death of Richard I.; who, in 1199, was killed by an arrow at the siege of Limoges, in Guienne, which Hemingford mentions to have issued from a cross-bow. After this, there appears no notice of archery for nearly one hundred and fifty years; when an order was issued by Edward III., in the fifteenth year of his reign, to the sheriffs of most of the English counties, for providing five hundred white bows, and five hundred bundles of arrows, for the then intended war against France. Similar orders were repeated in the following years, with this difference only, that the sheriff of Gloucestershire is directed to furnish five hundred painted bows, as well as the same number of white. Philip de Comines acknowledges what our own writers assert, that the English archers excelled those of every other nation; and Sir John Fortescue says “the safety of the realme of England standyth upon archers.” And hence the superior dexterity of their archers gave the English a great advantage over their capital enemies, the French and Scots. * * * * * The Normans used the bow as a military weapon; and, under their government, the practice of archery was not only much improved, but generally diffused throughout the kingdom. In the ages of chivalry, the usage of the bow was considered as an essential part of the education of a young man who wished to make a figure in life. The ladies also were fond of this amusement; and by a curious representation from an original drawing in a manuscript of the fourteenth century, we see it practised by one who has shot at a deer, and wounded it with great adroitness; and in another previous engraving, the hunting equipments of the female archers, about the middle of the fifteenth century, are represented.