lay, bowles, claish and other unlawful games, prohibited by many
good and beneficent statutes, much impoverishment hath ensued: Wherefore,
the King's Highness, of his great wisdom and providence, and also for zeal
to the public weal, surety, and defence of this his realm, and the antient
fame in this behalf to be revived, by the assent of his Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and his Commons in this present parliament assembled, hath
enacted and established that the statute of Winchester for archers be put
in due execution; and over that, that every man being the king's subject,
not lame, decrepit, or maimed, being within the age of sixty years, except
spiritual men, justices of the one bench and of the other, justices of the
assize, and barons of the exchequer, do use and exercise shooting in long
bows, and also do have a bow and arrows ready continually in his house, to
use himself in shooting. And that every man having a man child or men
children in his house, shall provide for all such, being of the age of
seven years and above, and till they shall come to the age of seventeen
years, a bow and two shafts, to learn them and bring them up in shooting;
and after such young men shall come to the age of seventeen years, every of
them shall provide and have a bow and four arrows continually for himself,
at his proper costs and charges, or else of the gift and provision of his
friends, and shall use the same as afore is rehearsed." Other provisions
are added, designed to suppress the games complained of, and to place the
bows more within the reach of the poor, by cheapening the prices of them.

The same statute[68] (and if this be a proof that it had imperfectly
succeeded, it is a proof also of Henry's confidence in the general
attachment of his subjects) was re-enacted thirty years later, at the
crisis of the Reformation, when the northern counties were fermenting in a
half-suppressed rebellion, and the catholics at home and abroad were
intriguing to bring about a revolution. In this subsequent edition of
it[69] some particulars are added which demand notice. In the directions to
the villages for the maintaining each "a pair of buttes," it is ordered
that no person above the age of twenty-four shall shoot with the light
flight arrow at a distance under two hundred and twenty yards. Up to two
hundred and twenty yards, therefore, the heavy war arrow was used, and this
is to be taken as the effective range for fighting purposes of