A Description of English soldiers during the Wars of the Roses

The Italian scholar, Dominic Mancini, was in England for the first six months of 1483. He seems to have come on a diplomatic mission to gather information for the French court. His report, entitled De Occupatione Regni Anglie Per Riccardum Tercium, was written in December 1483, and contains important information on the political events during the reign of Richard III.  Mancini also includes in his work descriptions of the customs and geography in England, such as the following section where he relates how English soldiers were equipped.

The matter in hand prompts me to say a few words about the equipment of the English soldiery.  There is hardly any without a helmet, and none without bows and arrows; their bows and arrows are thicker and longer than those used by other nations, just as their bodies are stronger than other peoples', for they seem to have hands and arms of iron.  The range of their bows is no less than that of our arbalests; there hangs by the side of each a sword no less long than ours, but heavy and thick as well.  The sword is always accompanied by an iron shield; it is the particular delight of this race that on holidays their youths should fight up and down the streets clashing on their shields with blunted swords or stout staves in place of swords.  When they are older they go out into the fields with bows and arrows, and even the women are not inexperienced at hunting with these weapons.  They do not wear any metal armour on their breast or any other part of the body, except for the better sort who have breastplates and suits of armour.  Indeed the common soldiery have more comfortable tunics that reach down below the loins and are stuffed with tow or some other soft material.  They say that the softer the tunics the better do they withstand the blows of arrows and swords, and besides that in summer they are lighter and in winter more serviceable than iron.  The soldiers who had been sent for arrived [in London] equipped with this sort of armour, and in addition there were horsemen among them.  Not that they are accustomed to fight from horseback, but because they use horses to carry them to the scene of the engagement, so as to arrive fresher and not tired by the fatigue of the journey: therefore they will ride any sort of horse, even pack-horses.  On reaching the field of battle the horses are abandoned, they all fight under the same conditions so that no one should retain any hope of fleeing, but enough of this matter.

This text is from The Usurpation of Richard the Third: Dominicus Mancinus ad Angelum Catonem de occupatione regni Anglie per Riccardum tercium libellus, translated by C.A.J. Armstrong (Oxford, 1969).  We thank Oxford University Press for their permission to republish this item. If you are interested in reading more of this work, or others from the Oxford Medieval Text series, please visit the Oxford University Press website at http://www.oup.com