Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/79

64 prove disastrous to us.” It was evident that he was stricken with a belief in the delusion which was burning in Philip’s very heart. They resumed the work; but as they uncovered more, the form of the mass began to narrow again, then to get broader, and finally terminated, showing as one immense piece of gold apparently without a speck of alloy. By prizing it gently with the pick it moved; and then, getting their hands under the edges, with a great effort they raised it from its place, leaving the clear mould of one-half of it in the pipeclay wherein that part had been embedded; and they placed it on the ground—the richest nugget that had ever been seen, perhaps, by any man since men had hunted, or laboured, or fought for the precious earth.

archery of England, famed throughout all its ancient annals, by which, nearly to the close of the seventeenth century, her greatest battle-fields have been won, is an institution dating back from William the Norman. It was during the long-drawn struggle between Charles and his Parliament that our chronicles made their latest allusion to this grand old historic weapon.

It is a remarkable fact, that for at least two centuries after the invention of gunpowder, and gradual improvement in the construction of firearms coexistent with it, the bow should continue to hold its own as a valuable arm of the service. Bows were found on board that redoubtable man-of-war, the “Mary Rose,” sunk in an action with a French squadron at Spithead, temp. Henry VIII.; and one or two of those very rare specimens of old English missile weapons, found in the vessel’s arm-chest by the divers employed to remove her timbers and those of the “Royal George,” are now preserved amongst the most recherché curiosities of the Tower and of the United Service Museum.

It would be a great error to suppose that this long lingering affection for the weapon of their forefathers, in preference to the “hell-born murderer,” as Carew quaintly styles the musket, which was destined to supplant it, arose from the imperfection of the latter. More than two centuries ago, at all events, English guns and ammunition are proved to have been far from despicable. In an entertaining narrative of the struggles and dangers endured by a few hardy pioneers who, in 1621, sought to establish a home on the North American coast, it is said that “Mr. Hilton,” one of the settlers, strolling along the sea-shore, “perceived a great shadow over his head, the sun shining out clear. Casting up his eyes, he saw a monstrous bird soaring aloft in the air, and of a sudden all the ducks and geese, there being a great many, diving under water, nothing appearing of them but their heads. Mr. Hilton, having made ready with his piece, shot and brought her down to the earth. How he disposed of her I know not, but had he taken her alive and sent her over to England, neither Bartholemew nor Greenwich fair could have produced such another sight.” Here we have a sportsman of Charles the First’s time, who shoots flying, with a single ball, for as well might he have pelted a bird of that size with peas, as with small shot. An old tract, speaking of the arrival of the Ambassador from Morocco, 1637, says: “He is so good a shot with his piece, that he will shoot eight score at a mark as big as an English sixpence and hit it.” There is plenty of evidence, beside, to the same effect.

It is obvious enough that the bowman, when opposed to combatants so completely armed as the mediaeval chivalry, had a far more difficult game before him than has the modern rifleman; for, unless his shaft would punch a hole clean through their shields and breastplates, it was wholly ineffective, being splintered or glancing off. “Thrice did Locksley bend his shaft against De Bracy,” writes Sir Walter in his story of “Ivanhoe,” “and thrice did the arrow bound back from his armour of proof. ‘Curse on thy Spanish steel coat,’ shouts the enraged yeoman, ‘had an English smith forged it, these arrows would have gone through as if it had been silk or sendal. ” Our archers, therefore, adopted a shrewd expedient to get more on an equality with their foes. During the heat and dusty whirlwind of oft-repeated charges, the man-at-arms, with barred helmet tightly secured, and sweltering beneath eighty or a hundred pounds of iron, concentrating the rays of a mid-day summer’s sun, occasionally sought to refresh himself with a mouthful of the pure element, and opened his visor. But a hundred and more of remorseless spirits, with eyes sharp as those of the lynx, are watching the chance, and have seen it. A hundred shafts with lightning speed have left the string, to be buried in the brains of as many incautious foemen. Thus fell Harold on the shores of Kent, pierced through the eye; at the Battle of Barnet, during the Wars of the Roses, King Henry takes refuge in a poor man’s cottage, wounded in the face by one of a storm of arrows that flew “like a snowdrift around