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Archery, medieval style. |
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© Companions of the Longbow |
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The 100th News Update by Mark Tustian |
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The 100th News Update – A Review of the Last 100 News Updates
Introduction
Picture the scene. The BBC’s Antiques Roadshow has come to town and you’ve just sat down opposite one of their reoccurring experts like Eric Knowles, David Battie or Hilary Kay. The expert is probably wearing a bow tie and a tweed jacket, even Hilary. They ask you what you’ve brought along and you carefully produce an object wrapped in old newspaper. Gingerly removing the object from the wrapping you place it on the table and the expert leans forward to peer closely at it. There’s a slight pause. Some pensioners standing around behind you peer critically at the object too. “Yes,” says the expert, “it appears to be a copy of the very first Companions of the Longbow News update.” One of the pensioners behind you nods to their friend in a told-you-so sort of way. “I wouldn’t dream of selling it of course,” you lie,”but is it worth much?”. “Nah, its rubbish.” says the expert. |
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News Number 1 was first published on the 5th April 2006 and it announced some pretty heady stuff I can tell you. There was the declaration on what happened to Shergar the racehorse after the kidnap, pictures of Lord Lucan enjoying the wave machine in Swindon’s very own Oasis Centre (he eventually got chucked out for dive-bombing at the shallow end) and information on who was driving a little white Fiat Uno around Paris in 1997 when Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed died (I don’t know, you take your eyes off the road for one second …)
Well not quite, but we did announce the date for the formation of the club and published the club logo for the first time. The now familiar logo was designed by Jen and this now appears on nearly everything Companions related. Dave A. has since created the animated spinning logos seen in the top left of the page from Jen’s design. But what else has happened since News Update Number 1 then? In no particular order … |
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Retinue Competitions
Since starting we’ve had four separate Retinue League competitions. Our archers were divided for the first retinue competition into groups serving in teams named after three Earls who fought at the Battle of Crécy in 1346. These were the Earls of Oxford, Warwick and Northampton and after an eight week competition based on a series of weird and wonderful games that hopefully stretched all of our archers’ skills (direct shooting, indirect shooting, finesse shooting, long range shooting, team work, speed shooting, a bit tactical thinking etc). The competition ended in July 2006 with the Earl of Northampton’s retinue winning outright. Captained by Sheila she presented her winning team members with replica pewter badges representing swans, the badge of Sir William Bohun Earl of Northampton. In the days of low literacy rates these types of badges were worn by retainers during the medieval period to easily identify who was who and who owned what. I still wear mine on my medieval outfit. |
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The second retinue competition took the form of two teams competing for the Earls of Arundel and Huntingdon (who also fought at the Battle of Crécy). After a six week competition ending in September 2006 the Earl of Arundel’s team won the competition which was once again captained by Sheila! Coincidence?
The third retinue competition was competed between King Edward III’s retinue (captained by Jenni) and Prince Edward of Wales retinue (captained by Ryan). After an eight week competition ending in April 2007 the competition ended for the first time in a draw (maybe because Sheila wasn’t captain of either team!)
The fourth retinue competition introduced mercenaries along with a reprisal of winning team names from the previous competitions plus a team from the drawn competition between the Prince of Wales and Edward III. These fourth retinue competition teams were the Prince of Wales, Earl of Northampton and Earl of Arundel. After an eight week competition ending in August 2007 this was won by Earl of Northampton’s for the second time (this time captained by Andy and naturally they were a team mostly made up of different archers, although see below).
Here a new individual award went to Kevin who won the first mercenary competition. The mercenaries in this game basically had to sell their archery skills each week to the main retinue teams. The main retinue teams were allowed to bid each week and buy in additional mercenary help from their limited retinue’s purse. Kevin ended the mercenary part of the competition with the most money making him the most successful mercenary overall due to having the whopping sum of seventeen shillings and nine pence – the equivalent of over 35 day’s wages for a medieval archer (all for just eight virtual days of work [the eight Saturdays of the competition]).
Dave A. was consistently the most sought after mercenary although he sadly didn’t win the mercenary competition outright because he missed the one week where the other mercenaries had a rush of socialism and decided to form a “free company” and divide their collective wages amongst themselves!
Of all four Retinue competitions over the last two years there has been only one archer who has never been on a losing team. That archer was on the Earl of Northampton’s team for the 1st competition, the Earl of Arundel’s team for the 2nd, the Prince Edward’s team for the 3rd and the Earl of Northampton’s team for the 4th. Got any ideas who? Answer at end of the article on page 2.
If you’ve forgotten which retinues you were in or want to learn more about the selected Earls who fought at the Battle of Crécy, members can log into the Members Area and check out the Retinue Leagues. |
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The Fifth (upcoming) Retinue Competition
At the time of writing the fifth Retinue League is currently being planned and in a bit of departure and to mark our second return to Sherwood Forest, it’ll be based on medieval outlaws. Robin Hood then? Well, no. The teams may be split into three made up gangs who each week compete against each other to complete events based on legendary or historical medieval outlaws. Separating fact from fiction as we go we will be shooting games based on the events in the lives of Hereward the Wake (an outlaw from the Norman conquest), Fulk FitzWarren (who legend says fell out with King John), Eustace the Monk (a French pirate who fought both for and against the English crown between 1205 and 1217), Eustace de Folville (who with his gang was responsible for two of the most notorious crimes of early fourteenth-century England), Adam the Leper (who’s gang seized Bristol in 1347), Piers Venables (who sprang a friend from Tutbury Castle in 1430’s), Jack Cade (who led a mini-peasants revolt in the 1450’s) plus many more. Okay, so Robin Hood might get a look in. |
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Mercenaries will be back, although as the retinues this time round are outlaws one of the mercenaries will be secretly working as a spy for the local sheriff and will be deliberately trying to scuttle each retinue’s chances by being a rubbish shot. At the end of the competition each retinue will get a chance to “lynch” (in a metaphorical sense of course) the mercenary who they believe is the spy (there could of course be a multiple lynching of the same mercenary!) Guess the correct mercenary and the retinue/gang gets bonus points, get it wrong and they lose points. The game for the mercenaries is simple. They must work hard not to get lynched at the end of game! Plus to make things even more interesting each retinue will have one of their own regular archers selected to also act as a spy for the sheriff with similar lynching rules at the end of the competition. Subtlety will be the watch word for the spies, paranoia for everyone else. |
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President’s Shield
As you may have read a couple of weeks ago (at the time of writing this article it’s Tuesday 15th April 2008) our second annual President’s Shield competition took place. This annual competition is run by the club President Bob (hence the name) and is awarded based on scores accumulated by shooting various testing targets set by Bob on the day. This year’s included clout shooting, target shooting (various), 3D animal targets (including that nearly impossible deer) and swinging targets as well as shooting a ship’s sail to determine the shoot off between the women. First won by Andrew in 2007 the second year in 2008 saw the prize split into men’s and women’s categories (because of average bow draw weights used). The 2008 competition was won this year by Mark and Jenni respectively (the new women’s trophy was designed by Bob too). |
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Companions Challenges
In between the Retinue Leagues we’ve also had the Companions Challenges. These are one off team or individual archery challenges based on events from history, from legends, in books, films or TV shows. Over time we’ve been finding out among other things if it’s possible to replicate shooting two Normans with two arrows shot from the same bow at the same time, as Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood did in the 1991 film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”, tried to match the shooting skills of Legolas Greenleaf from “Lord of the Rings”, shoot apples off a child’s head like the legend of William Tell (not a real child we hasten to add), shot arrows through the doors of Abergavenny Castle like Welsh archers did in 1182, make Saxon hoards huddle like the 2004 film “King Arthur”, shoot arrows between the fingers of a hand (not a real hand!), replicate a Howard Hill trick shot using a mirror, tried to do horse archery training without a horse, play penny prykking games like the ones that the bishop and dean of Exeter Cathedral complained about in the 1440’s and shoot various suspended objects such as eggs, purses of money and wineskins, plus many, many more. Currently the Companions are “winning” these challenges to the tune of sixteen successes to thirteen failures.
The Prize of Dubious Worth was introduced in 2007 for the overall winner or best shot for that week’s Challenge. This name comes from the fact that the prize might be worth something to someone while being totally worthless to someone else. Hence it’s dubiousness. The worst prize so far was plastic shower curtain rings which went to Alina. Of course if you’d had a shower curtain hanging off its rail because of some busted curtain rings these would’ve been a great prize … |
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