BATTLES,   BOWS.  
&   Bloody   Wars

 The local lord of the manor, when the king demanded it, would canvas his estates to discover who had what by way of weaponry the local men might have.  
Whether it was the bill hook he used to harvest his barley or a 9 ‘ pike or more importantly a long bow, it was all of use in a fight.  The single most formidable weapon of medieval England  was the simple longbow, with the archer that wielded it. These were 6’ feet long, made of English yew, and all males from the age of about 8 or 9 were required practice every Sunday, at the village butts . This training was under the tutorledge of an expert archer, often a soldier too old to go to war but able to pass on his skills.

 By the time they reached adulthood the ordinary men of England  had received many years of training and could let fly arrows at a rate of about one every 7 seconds.

Before a battle each archer would be given 60 or 70 arrows. They could sustain this rate of fire for only about 6 minutes, before their hand and arm muscles were too tired to continue. But the rain of arrows they created caused serious casualties to the enemy and their expertise made the English army a considerable opponent.

Agincourt, possibly the most famous English victory of all, was fought in 1415 by small English army against a much larger French army. Henry V English army had shrunk from about 30,00, through attrition & disease, to about 5,000 knights, men at arms and archers. They were confronted with a French army of somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 men  yet because of the English archers, they won the day.

1569 -1700

Troubles in Ireland were followed by the 1603 Nine Years' War with Ireland.

Henry VIII  also made war on France whilst fighting the Scots when they were having at go at England’s northern border lands. Between his wars and his castle building and his flamboyant lifestyle Henry VIII almost bankrupted England.

 His son the boy king Edward Vi  had Scottish troubles and the Battle of Pinkie Clough and Prestonpans in Scotland in September 1549 after which one Thomas Pomeroy was made a knight bachelor. We were uncertain which Sir Thomas this was because as far as we can tell Sir Thomas of Sandridge was imprisoned at the time for his part on the Prayerbook Rebellion.

 Elizabeth I tried to avoid war with Spain hence the Spanish Armadas, but she too had troubles in Ireland

1603 James V of Scotland  became James I of England thus no more Scottish wars

1627 to 1629 an Anglo-French War under Charles I followed by the devastation of the English Civil War 1639 -1651

1652 to  1654  First Anglo-Dutch War England ,during the period of the Commonwealth, & Dutch Republic

1654 to 1660     Anglo-Spanish War (1654–1660)   Commonwealth of England

 followed  in 1667 by another Anglo-Dutch War    

1672 to 1674  a third  Anglo-Dutch War then

1672 - 1678     Franco-Dutch War

1690   An Anglo Dutch Alliance lost  to the French at the sea Battle of Beach Head. The French in a spirit of Victory sailed  to Torbay a two weeks later and came into Teignmouth where they pillaged & burned the little town.  Battle of the Boyne in Ireland  happened the day before the sea Battle of Beachy Head . It was James II  against William of Orange who had been invited to take the throne by English Protestant nobles. They did not want another Catholic King after the devastation caused by Charles I & the Civil War. William III won the battle of the Boyne and rousted James, who fled to France where he and his descendants continued to make trouble giving us the Bonnie Prince Charlie,& Culluden.

William III reigned from 1629 to 1689 and when he died his wife, Mary daughter of James II, reigned in her own right until 1702  but they had no children and her sister Anne took the throne until 1714. She had 17 pregnancies and all the babies died...How awful  must that have been ! 
When Anne died  her 2nd cousin,  the 54 year old German George of Hanover,  took the throne in 1714

1702 onwards

 Queen Anne  fought Wars on three fronts:

    Spanish Florida and the English Province of Carolina were each subjected to attacks from the other, and the English engaged the French based at Mobile in what was essentially a proxy war involving primarily allied Native Americans on both sides. The southern war, although it did not result in significant territorial changes, had the effect of nearly wiping out the Native population of Spanish Florida, including parts of present-day southern Georgia, and destroying Spain's network of missions in the area.

    The English colonies of New England fought with French and Native American forces based in Acadia and Canada. Quebec City was repeatedly targeted (but never successfully reached) by British expeditions, and the Acadian capital Port Royal was taken in 1710. The French and Wabanaki Confederacy sought to thwart New England expansion into Acadia, whose border New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine.[6] Toward this end, they executed raids against targets in Massachusetts (including present-day Maine), most famously raiding Deerfield in 1704.

    On Newfoundland, English colonists based at St. John's disputed control of the island with the French based at Plaisance. Most of the conflict consisted of economically destructive raids against the other side's settlements. The French successfully captured St. John's in 1709, but the British quickly reoccupied it after the French abandoned it.

1739 hostilities with Spain   under George II  who  I think was the one who spoke no English... Great Britain, Hanover and Prussia and their allies were pitted against other European powers, including France, Austria, Russia, Sweden and Saxony. Multiple theatres of war  from Europe to North America and India, where British dominance increased ...

Then in 1745 there was the Jacobite  Rebellion in Scotland with Bonnie Prince Charles Stuart grandson of James II, attempting to take the throne. This was mainly  in Scotland  and culminated in the Battle of Culloden in April 1746. This single bloody slaughter lasted less than an hour with English cannon against Highlanders swords. It left some  2,000 Jacobites, Scottish Highland clansmen, dead. 

The aftermath brought brutal reprisals like no other. Highlanders forbidden to wear their traditional dress , the clan tartan, or speak their own language of Gaelic and prisons in London and in Scotland there were executions of a great many the clan chieftains.

Then as English landlords turfed  the highlands crofters out of their subsistence farming  crofts, in favour of  more profitable sheep, there began the Highland Clearances. Expelled, often violently, from the lands they had lived on for generations the ruthless treatment of the Highlands of Scotland by the crown of England caused mass migration of Scots to the uttermost parts of the earth.