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Rh quoits and dice, instead of practising their bows and arrows, until the King, who was the best rider and the best archer in England, set himself to "brace again the slackened sinews of the nation." He ordained that every man, with but few exceptions, under the age of sixty must have bows and arrows "ready continually in his house, to use himself in shooting"; that every boy from seven to seventeen must learn to shoot, possessing a bow and two arrows, and after seventeen a bow and four arrows. Certain it is that at this time Englishmen were a "sturdy, high-hearted race, sound in body and fierce in spirit, and furnished with thews and sinews which, under the stimulus of those great shins of beef—their common diet—were the wonder of the age." "What comyn folk in all this world &hellip; is so mighty, so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?" says a proud writer in 1515.

Strong indeed must our forefathers have been at this time, to have survived the insanitary conditions of their lives. The country during the sixteenth century was hardly ever free from outbreaks of the plague and "sweating sickness," partly owing to the "filthiness of the streets