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As it was hard to draw again, that added strength to the saying; but it arose from the deliberation with which a good cross-bowman aimed. To the long-bow the cross-bow was the express rifle. The express delivers its bullet accurately point-blank the bullet flies straight to its mark up to a certain distance.

There was an officer styled Balistrarius Regius; and several estates were held by the service of delivering a cross-bow and thread to make the string, when the king passed through certain districts. These you will find in Blount's Tenures and Jacob's Law Dictionary. We find that the pay of a cross-bowman, in the reign of Edward II., was sixpence per diem.

Paid to Geoffry le Chamberlin for the wages of twelve cross-bowmen and thirteen archers for twenty-four days; each cross-bowman receiving by the day 4d, and each archer 2d., 7l. 8s. Paid to one master mason, receiving 6d. per diem, and five masons at 4d., and one workman at 3d.; for twenty-eight days, 3l. 7s. 8d. Sunday next, after the feast of St.

The foe darted in, made sure he had taken to the house, ransacked it, and got into the cellar, where by good-luck was a store of Malvoisie: and so the oak and the vine saved the quaking baron. Another lord of Beaurepaire, besieged in his castle, was shot dead on the ramparts by a cross-bowman who had secreted himself unobserved in this tree a little before the dawn.