If one of these strong military crossbows was aimed horizontally at the forehead of a man standing at a distance of 50 yards, the bolt would not strike lower than his chin.

A few years ago I tested the shooting powers of many fine examples of crossbows, military and sporting, made near the end of the fifteenth century, some of which were formerly in a well-known Continental arsenal, and others in my own collection.

I fitted their steel bows with thick hempen strings, set their stocks and locks in order, and shot, to and fro over level ground, numbers of bolts of diverse lengths and weights, which I had caused to be made in exact imitation of the decayed originals to be found in Continental and other armouries.

The longest flight I obtained from one of the best and strongest of these weapons, originally carried by a crossbowman in battle, was 390 yards.¹ The shortest flight, from the same bow, was 380 yards. The weight of this crossbow, without its windlass, was 15 1/2 Lbs. Its steel bow was 2 ft. 7 1/2 in. long, and at its centre 1 3/4 in. wide and 3/4 in. thick. The former distance, in my opinion, is considerably further than any longbow archer of mediaeval, or later times, could drive the arrow used in sport or in warfare.

Very few of the most powerful and skilled of modern archers, even with selected bows and light flighting arrows, are able to achieve a range of 300 yards, 280 to 290 yards being an exceptional feat. There is no reason whatever to suppose that our ancestors were so vastly superior in the use of the longbow, as to excel these distances by so much as 90 yards - especially with the heavy shafts and heads of warfare²  - and thus to equal with the arrow of the longbow, the length of flight (370 to 380 yards) attained by the bolt of a large military crossbow with a thick steel bow.

In 'King Henry IV.,' Second Part, Act III, Scene II, Shakespeare makes Shallow exclaim of Double - ' Dead ! a' would have clapped i' the clout at twelve score ; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half.'

From this it is evident that in the time of Shakespeare, 1564-1616, it was considered a notable performance to send a forehand shaft (presumably a flight arrow) 14 to 14 1/2 score yards (280 to 290 yards that is), which,
 

¹ 'On March 21, 1661, 400 archers, with their bows and arrows, made a splendid and glorious show in Hide Parke, with their colours flying and crossbows to guard them. Several of the archers shot near 20 score yards with their crossbows.' - Extract from Wood's Bowman's Glory, 1682.

² There is no doubt that the heads, or piles, of the war arrows used by our ancestors were far heavier than those of the target-arrows of the present day. The arrow of the ancient longbow had a barbed head, in order that its extraction might be a dangerous and difficult matter.

In the ninth year of the reign of Edward III. 'the King commanded the Mayors and Sheriffs of the county to supply 300 good bows, and four chests of arrows of the length of one ell, the heads of the said arrows to have flukes or barbs of a large size.' - Cotton MS.