(1) The above are the only notices found among Mr. Brand's papers on the subject of

ARCHERY.

With the history of this exercise as a milifary art we have no concern here. Fitzstephen, who wrote in the reign of Henry the Second, notices it among the summer pastimes of the London youth: and the repeated statutes from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, enforcing the use of the Bow, usually ordered the leisure time upon holidays to be passed in its exercise.

"In the sixteenth century we meet with heavy complaints," says Mr. Strutt, in his "Sports and Pastimes," p. 43, "respecting, the disuse of the long-bow, and especially in the vicinity of London." Stow informs us that before his time it had been customary at Bartholomew-tide for the lord mayor, with the sheriffs and aldermen, to go into the fields at Finsbury, where the citizens were assembled, and shoot at the standard with broad and flight arrows for Games; and this exercise was continued for several days: but in his time it was practised only one afternoon, three or four days after the festival of Saint Bartholomew. Stow died in 1605.

After the reign of Charles the First Archery appears to have fallen into disrepute. Sir William Davenant, in a mock poem entitled "The Long Vacation in London," describes the attorneys and proctors as making matches in Finsbury fields:

"With loynes in canvas bow-case tied,
Where arrows stick with mickle pride;

Like ghosts of Adam Bell and Clymme; Sol sets for fear they'll shoot at him!" About 1753 a society of archers was established in the metropolis, who erected targets on the same spot during the Easter and Whitsun holidays, when the best shooter was styled captain, and the second lieutenant for the ensuing year. Of the original members of this society there were only two remaining when Daines Barrington compiled his "Observations" in the Archæologia. It is now incorporated into the archers' division of the Artillery Company.

About 1789 archery was again revived as a general amusement; and Societies of bowmen and toxophilites were formed in almost every part of the kingdom. It lasted, however, but a few years; and the exercise of the bow for pastime, as well as war, seems now almost laid aside.

Sir Robert Dallington, in his "View of France as it stood in 1598," (sign. Y.) says: "Concerning their shooting with the crossebowe, it is used, but not very commonly. Once in a yere, there is in each city a shooting with the peece at a Popinjay of wood, set upon some high steeple (as also they doe in many places of Germany). He that hitteth it downe is called the King for that yere, and is free from all taxe: besides, he is allowed twenty crownes towards the making of a collation for the rest of the shooters. And if it happen that three yeres together he carry the prize, he is free from all taxe and imposition whatsoever all his life after."