Warbows and Grilled Cheese...

[Condottiere]

No doubt the Honourable Company of Cheesemakers will be along to claim that Welsh Rarebit was actually invented in 1564 by a cheeseshop owner in Westminster.

Did someone pull an Ocean's Eleven on you with a grilled cheese sandwich, like these fellows in Shakespeare's tale?

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29821/29821-h/29821-h.htm

¶ Of Seynt Peter that cryed cause bobe. lxxvi.

¶ I fynde wrytten amonge olde gestes, howe God mayde Saynt Peter porter of heuen, and that God of hys goodnes, sone after his passyon, suffered many men to come to the kyngdome of Heuen with small deseruynge; at whiche tyme there was in heuen a great company of Welchemen, whyche with their crakynge and babelynge troubled all the other. Wherfore God sayde to saynte Peter, that he was wery of them, and that he wolde fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome saynte Peter sayd: Good Lorde, I warrente you, that shal be done. Wherfore saynt Peter wente out of heuen gates and cryed wyth a loud voyce Cause bobe, that is as moche to saye as rosted chese, whiche thynge the Welchemen herynge, ranne out of Heuen a great pace. And when Saynt Peter sawe them all out, he sodenly wente into Heuen, and locked the dore, and so sparred all the Welchemen out.

By this ye may se, that it is no wysdome for a man to loue or to set his mynde to moche vpon any delycate or worldely pleasure, wherby he shall lose the celestyall and eternall ioye.

[Harry von Fleischmann]

Caws pobi. It’s caws pobi and it’s our gift to the culinary world.

[Condottiere]

The "longbow" was reasonably ubiquitous around Western Europe would be my response and within what we now call the UK. IMHO it was really a matter of how they were deployed and used in their battlefield roll that is the question of whether they become the longbow of English use(?). For example where one the body the bow was drawn back to. The cheek or the ear? That sort of stuff.

One way to address the question is maybe to ask if the "longbow" was used at Hastings, though probably not to the same effect as in later centuries.

(As many on this particular section of the forum will know, during the latter stages of the HYW and certainly post 1453 here were were certainly efforts on the continent to replicate the use of the bow in English armies).

Kind Regards

In his Osprey title, Mike Loades suggests the archers at Hastings were using composite bows, but these could've been shortbows - hard to tell from the tapestry.

Was the effort at replication based on the bow or the tactics attached to the use of the bow? The best wood was imported from the continent and while self-bows were common, so why weren't there any Italian longbowmen? In Italian Militiaman 1260–1392,  David Nicolle mentions mentions massed archery using hand, self and composite bows giving way to crossbows. John Hawkwood had about 400 or 500 English archers at Castagnaro 1387 and the hail of arrows goaded the Veronese into advancing, but I don't recall a mass demand in the following years itenerant archers from the Isles. Charles the Bold employed plenty of Englishmen, yet they barely made an impact in his wars.

From a 2015 issue of The Journal of LAW & ECONOMICS: Institutionally Constrained Technology Adoption: Resolving the Longbow Puzzle 

For  over  a  century  the  longbow  reigned  as  undisputed  king  of  medieval  European  missile  weapons.  Yet  only  England  used  the  longbow  as  a  mainstay  in  its  military arsenal; France and Scotland clung to the technologically inferior cross-bow. This longbow puzzle has perplexed historians for decades. We resolve it by developing  a  theory  of  institutionally  constrained  technology  adoption.  Unlike  the crossbow, the longbow was cheap and easy to make and required rulers who adopted the weapon to train large numbers of citizens in its use. These features enabled usurping nobles whose rulers adopted the longbow to potentially organize effective rebellions against them. Rulers choosing between missile technologies thus confronted a trade-off with respect to internal and external security. England alone in late medieval Europe was sufficiently politically stable to allow its rulers the first-best technology option. In France and Scotland political instability prevailed, constraining rulers in these nations to the crossbow.

While there's some info in it for simulationists planning campaigns and I find the authors' theories interesting, though the importance of political instability is given too much importance, they ignore the role of tactics in favor of hyping the longbow and belittling the crossbow. At Verneuil 1424, the lack of prepared postions, resulted in the archers being overrun by the Lombard men-at-arms.

Footnote 23:

At the battle of Courtrai, for instance, the small principality of Flanders was able to muster an army  of  archers  larger  than  the  army  of  the  entire  kingdom  of  France,  which  consisted  of  knights  and men-at-arms (Rogers 1993, p. 252). In this sense, a weapon like the longbow allows for the military enfranchisement of commoners, which institutionally constrains the ruler.

Ignored is the role of the marshy terrain and infantry with polearms, like pikes and goedendags.

Footnote 24:

A longbow-equipped rebellion against a longbow-equipped king would likely end in the latter’s defeat. The probable victor would depend strongly on which side had the larger number of archers, and given the longbow’s cheapness, rebel archers could outnumber the king’s. Hence, a king would adopt the longbow only if he were politically secure. In contrast, given the expense of crossbows, a crossbow-equipped rebellion against a crossbow-equipped king was very unlikely. Hence, a politi-cally insecure king could adopt the crossbow

Oh dear... 

[Condottiere]

Caws pobi. It’s caws pobi and it’s our gift to the culinary world.

Ever used mayonnaise on the face down side of the slice? I hear it not only gives the bottom a fine crust and prevents the upper layer from drying out.

I was thinking of combining caws pobi with a layer of Nutella between the slice and the cheese...

A shame Trader Joe's no longer carries this English import! 

[Harry von Fleischmann]

Mayonaisse on toast? Chocolate cheese? We are Welshmen, sir, not savages.

[carlos marighela]

Caws pobi. It’s caws pobi and it’s our gift to the culinary world.

There was I thinking it was laverbread.

 Actually, given the very Trumpian skin colour that Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck  adopted in their later years, not to mention the countless thousands of young women out on the piss in Cardiff, one could be forgiven for thinking it was Terry’s Chocolate Oranges. 

[swiftnick]

Looking forward to the new osprey title " Grilled cheese snacks of the early medieval West"!

[Harry von Fleischmann]

Nah it’s not laverbread; there’s a shortage of that as Snowdon hasn’t erupted for a while.