The Bowyers' Crecy Lecture 17th September 2009
The Bowyers' Crecy Lecture is part of the Company's attempt to place our interest in the long bow into an historical context. This, the second lecture, was given by Professor Anne Curry on 17 September 2009 at the Athenaeum. Her topic was Agincourt: the Archer and the Bow. In the lecture she told us that her research into the call up of men for the campaign of 1415 was in the ratio of three archers to one man at arms in the musters. It was this overwhelming concentration of archers that played a great part in the victory together with their deployment by experienced leaders.
Professor Curry amply displayed her scholarship with warmth and humour. She made a considerable and memorable contribution to our understanding of tactics and strategy with longbows in the 100 Years' War. Her lecture will become available on the Company's website.
Professor Curry is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton, editor of the Journal of Medieval History and the world's leading authority on the battle of Agincourt. Her books include Agincourt: A New History; The Battle of Agincourt: Sources & Interpretations; Agincourt 1415 and The Hundred Years War.
She and a colleague are directing a large research project The Soldier in later Medieval England to challenge assumptions about the emergence of professional soldiery between 1369 and 1453. The online muster roll database, www.medievalsoldier.org, currently holds just under 90,000 service records. These are taken from muster rolls, housed in The National Archives, for the years 1369 - 1453.
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