Which trade made crossbows?

[Brian G Turner]

Something I'm having difficulty finding out at the moment is which trade made crossbows?

Would there have been a specialist crossbow-maker trade? Simply that at the moment it would have been made by carpenters, rather than bowyers or smiths.

Can't find any confirmation, though.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Venusian Broon]

A history here about the worshipful company of Bowyers:

The Worshipful Company of Bowyers

In it they state that "From 1300 onwards, bowyers increasingly came to London hoping for large orders from the King's Bowyer, or Master Provider of the King's Bows, who had a special workshop and residence in the Tower of London. Most of them lived in Ludgate, later known as 'Bowierrowe', and made longbows, crossbows, arrows and bolts interchangeably."

 

[Brian G Turner]

Excellent.

I know archery clubs can be very funny about crossbows (the one I belong to will not allow them). It made me wonder if bowyers would consider crossbows too much towards the "dark side" and shun them as disrespectful.

But bowyers it is.

 

[thaddeus6th]

That's interesting stuff.

I'm going without crossbows (in serious-world, in the comedy my protagonist likes them), and going for bows and slings instead.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Excellent.

I know archery clubs can be very funny about crossbows (the one I belong to will not allow them). It made me wonder if bowyers would consider crossbows too much towards the "dark side" and shun them as disrespectful.

But bowyers it is.

Clearly in the UK no self-respecting Bowyer would probably admit to making good crossbows given the history of the longbow in English and Welsh history (the rest of the history on the Bowyer's website barely seems to mention crossbows for example), but if they mentioned as producing them in the heyday of the longbow then they must clearly be the correct trade.

My quick scootle over the Wikipedia pages might suggest that as least in England, longbow was a weapon of war, crossbow a instrument of hunting...perhaps.

I'm sure I will be corrected on this

 

[Brian G Turner]

My quick scootle over the Wikipedia pages might suggest that as least in England, longbow was a weapon of war, crossbow a instrument of hunting...perhaps.

Doesn't matter - if bowyers made crossbows then that's that, the historical precedent is made.

Whether bowyers care to boast of it or not is another thing.

 

[Gramm838]

Well, a bowyer who was accused of making crossbows would be very angry, so he would be cross bowyer anyway...

Ho Ho

 

[chrispenycate]

In Switzerland, crossbows can be found either in sports shops (which tells us nothing) or in "coutellerie", literally "knife shops" (English word "cutlery"), suggesting that the metal working was more important than the wood. Not all that surprising, especially for one with a spring-steel prod; all the windlass mechanism (or whatever cocking mechanism is chosen) and the trigger release are metal forged, and it's just about only the stock which is wooden.

I wouldn't be surprised in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries finding gunsmiths making crossbows – the mechanical skills required being very similar, and the clientele essentially the same.

 

[stormcrow]

I wonder if the absence of a single readily thought of name for this Trade is because of the combination of skills needed to manufacture one?

It's may be worth a look at the woodcuts and poems in The Book of Trades (1568) by Hans Sachs (1494 - 1576). The Crossbow-maker is one of the featured Trades and the picture is titled Der Armbrustmacher. So that's 'Crossbow-maker', I think.

A little prior to that, in the fifteenth century, at last, crossbows were seen as cheaper to produce and easier to train someone in the use of than the longbow, weren't they? Was this because the crossbow was 'manufactured' whereas a longbow was 'crafted'. I wonder?

 

[Venusian Broon]

It's may be worth a look at the woodcuts and poems in The Book of Trades (1568) by Hans Sachs (1494 - 1576). The Crossbow-maker is one of the featured Trades and the picture is titled Der Armbrustmacher. So that's 'Crossbow-maker', I think.

A little prior to that, in the fifteenth century, at last, crossbows were seen as cheaper to produce and easier to train someone in the use of than the longbow, weren't they? Was this because the crossbow was 'manufactured' whereas a longbow was 'crafted'. I wonder?

Possibly because of the type of wood that made a good longbow (yew wasn't it?), crossbows were by default cheaper, as perhaps alls sorts could be used to build it. And I'd imagine, although I have no evidence, that bowyers on the continent given the choice would go for crossbows - not as long ranged as the English bow, but very powerful close up - rather than make a substandard bow with substandard wood.

As for the manufactured versus crafted, I'd disagree. Campaigns on the continent called for English Bowyers to churn out thousands of longbows in a manufacturing process in very short times.

Also I remember a program once where they compared a reconstructed neolithic hunting bow with a reconstructed medieval longbow. The hunting bow, clearly the crafted weapon, had much more penetrative power, whereas the longbow built with manufacturing in mind just wasn't as good. Testing it on a haunch of meat - as these programs tend to do - the hunting bow was clean through even at a long distance, whereas the longbow arrow actually bounced off the skin.

Of course it could be that the longbow that they reconstructed was a bit of a 'tiddler' i.e. they didn't have anyone with the strength to pull a bigger one. So perhaps not a fair test