As the Battle of Towton anniversary will be upon us next month, I have been contemplating the way in which mounted archers were deployed. That there were mounted archers is not in question. The issue is whether mounted archers always dismounted to fight or did they sometimes shoot from the saddle?
For anyone that has pulled on a hundred pound longbow, it seems almost impossible to contemplate how you would do this in the saddle, as a proper archer puts all of his body into the movement. For anyone that has ridden a spirited horse and tried to control it with spurs or by the knees, you can also appreciate the dilemma. For the equestrians among us, a medieval saddle would be more akin to a Western saddle, where you would sit long in the stirrups so that you would almost certainly have to rely on your spurs rather than deft movements from the knee, as the saddle would have been of such a thickness as to prevent this.
Yet, I believe there were mounted archers that did shoot from the saddle at Towton. These would have been very effective as a light cavalry, skirmishing force and would break the almost impenetrable defensive columns of billmen, allowing lancers to get amongst them and cause havoc? Was this tactic used by John Clifford’s “Flower of Craven”, an elite light cavalry unit, at the Battl of Ferrybridge on the previous day?
I certainly think this merits some speculation. Tristram Bolling, one of the characters in my book, actually says in his will: “I bequeath in honour of my mortuary my best horse wt. sadyll & brydll, jake, salet, bowe and harnes, sword and bockler, as I went to the warr”.
He is the son of a gentleman but takes care to mention the bow, giving it equal precedence to his horse and harnes (armour). He carries a sword but no poleaxe, the preferred weapon of the gentry. We know the Bollings were in the service of John Clifford and Tristram mentions the war, as opposed to just Towton, where his father was attainted, so it points to the potential of him fighting, and surviving the battle at Ferrybridge. In Andrew Boardman’s book about Towton, he reasons that the opposing Yorkist mounted archers were the reason that John Clifford was taken, uncharacteristically, by surprise.
I have fired a bow before now, and I have ridden lots of horses with a variety of saddles, so I would love to try the two out together to experience the complexity of this feat.
The YouTube footage below, gives a great insight into this dexterity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcpHB-flwJQ
Feb
22
2010