Easter: A tale of two cities - Kenilworth

The next day, I hopped on a bus 6 miles to Kenilworth, to check out the competition. Kenilworth castle was a royal residence - King John was one of many who made major renovations here, as did John of Gaunt and Henry VIII - and later the home of the Earls of Leicester. It was most famous as the home of Robert Dudley, the reputed lover of Elizabeth I, who hosted the queen here no less than three times.
This weekend though, it was all about earlier times, courtesy of a series of cracking shows by the Plantagenet Medieval Archery and Combat society. I arrived just in time to watch the ladies in all their finery shooting at 'pheasants' - each one re-enacting an historical character from the period, from 'Black' Agnes Randolf, daughter of Randolph, Earl of Moray, who held her castle at Dunbar for 5 months against the beseiging English in 1334, to Elizabeth de Clare, who I later learned endowed Clare College at Cambridge.

It was the lads, however, who stole the show with their awesome "Crecy" display. The Battle of Crecy is one of England's most famous victories against the French. Under Henry V (to whom Shakespeare gave the famous 'on St Crispin's day' speech), an estimated 900 men at arms and 5000 archers held, then routed and crushed, a French army of up to 36,000.

How did they do it? The boys at Kenilworth showed us. A longbowman had to be able to loose at least 10 arrows in a minute to be considered worth his salt. That requires practice but is possible. Six lads took up places, sending between 10 and 17 (!) arrows each into the target. In 60 seconds, it looked like this...

Now, they said, imagine that there are not 6 archers, but 5000. So not 80 arrows a minute, but at least 50,000. One begins to understand how arrows can fall 'like rain' and 'blot out the sun'. The French, unlike the legendary 300 of Sparta, could not fight in the shade - they couldn't even reach the English, over the boggy ground (miring their heavily armoured horses and footsoldiers) and they were cut to pieces.

The English didn't have it all their own way at Kenilworth though... the afternoon finished with a splendid foot tourney, complete with noble lords, an evil knight (the evil ones are always called 'Sir Guy'... why is that), lewd humour and loads and loads of biffo. The crowd loved it. I laughed so hard I nearly cried.

I spent too much money on mead and sweeties and books in the English Heritage shop before heading back to Warwick to gloat.

For the record, this takes my UK tally to 18 castles, 7 Cathedrals and 4 abbeys, four 'henges' and Britain's oldest chalk horse. Not bad for 12 months work.