In August 1424 the armies of England, Scotland and France met in the open fields outside the walls of Verneuil in a battle that would decide the future of the English conquests in France. The hero king, Henry V had been dead for two years and the French felt that this was their chance to avenge their startling defeat at Agincourt, and recover the lands that Henry had won from them. Despite its importance, the battle of Verneuil is largely overlooked in accounts of the Hundred Years War, and this book is the first proper account of the battle and its significance. It is also one of the first books to outline the important part the Scots played in the wars in France in the years between the two great battles of Agincourt and Verneuil.

How was it that ordinary men in medieval England and Wales became such skilled archers that they defeated noble knights in battle after battle? The archer in medieval England became a forerunner of John Bull as a symbol of the spirit of the ordinary Englishman. He had his own popular literature that left us a romantic version of the lives and activities of outlaws and poachers such as Robin Hood. This remarkable development began 150 years after the traumatic events of the Norman Conquest transformed the English way of life, in ways that were almost never to the benefit of the English. This book is the first account of the way ordinary men used bows and arrows in their day-to-day lives, and the way that their skills became recognised by the kings of England as invaluable in warfare.