How warfare changed

War was part of normal life for Norman kings and lords. Princes and young nobles had to learn to ride and fight as knights. Barons, earls, and bishops, with their knights, had to fight for the king when he needed them. This was how they paid the rent for their land.

Three hundred years later, kings and lords still went to war. And knights were still the main troops in the army. But there were some changes. Norman knights wore chainmail. By the fourteenth century, though, knights' armour had some solid plates of steel. In the fifteenth, they wore full suits of armour.

The Normans had archers, armed with short bows. From the year 1300, there were always archers with longbows in the English army. Longbows were two metres long, and could shoot arrows right through plate armour. By 1350, there were also some guns. But they often did more damage to their own side than the enemy.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, kings needed a lot of money to fight wars. Each of the great lords had his private army, and soldiers had to be paid wages. So the king gave money to the great lords, and they paid wages to the soldiers.

Walter Robson: Medieval Britain; Oxford University Press, 1991/2000, page 60