Blood and Crowns

So what does an archer wear? The problem is no one seems to really cares. As far as I can find there is no written primary sources saying what archers wore. (if anyone knows of any please comment below) They might be the great heroes of the 100 years war, but a peasant is still a peasant. The only thing we have are images from the period.

Those images so that they fought with little or no armour. On there heads they seem to wear, some kind of bacinet up to 1,000 are recorded in the Royal Armoury inventory. . Other, smaller skullcap-like helmets may have been worn as well. For defending the arms and torso, a cloth defense (sometimes called s jack) was most common. These could be made of padding quilted into cloth, or simply of multiple layers of cloth, generally linen. Though these armours do not look like much, they appear to be very effective – a 30 layer of jack protects well against sword slashes, longbow arrows and spears.

The equipment of archers at Agincourt is much murkier than the men-at-arms and knights. They were armed with a warbow with a draw weight of somewhere between 90 and 150 pounds. They would be armed with two dozen or so very stout arrows of around 30 inches in length However, the archers also fought in close combat with the French – they didn’t just shoot. Accounts of the archers joining the melee mention them taking up axes, swords, spearheads and ‘mauls’. What the mauls in particular were is unclear it is likely they were simply mallets used to drive their stakes into the ground.