SMYTHE, Sir John

by Sir John Smythe

£3,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

A reissue, with expanded preliminaries and cancel title page, of Certen instructions, observations and orders militarie (STC 22884), by the great contemporary authority on archery, the soldier and diplomat Sir John Smythe. Smythe (1533-1607) gained his military experience as a volunteer in France, the Low Countries and Hungary. Well-read and fluent in Spanish, he was appointed Elizabeth I s special Ambassador to Spain on the 18 November 1576. After his ambassadorship, Smythe re-entered the political arena as a critic of the English involvement in the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries. In 1590 Smythe published Certain Discourses , a fervent plea for the retention of the longbow as the weapon of choice for the English soldier. Citing both modern and ancient sources, Smythe recalls great victories won by the bow and associates its use with true manliness and English military potency. The book initiated a controversy on the relative strengths of bow and handgun, but it also contained vehement criticisms of the new disciplinated men of war who commanded English forces in the Low Countries. Leicester s party now used their influence at court to obtain the suppression of the book, and having gained their end, they spread the report that its circulation was prohibited on account of its falsehood and foolishness, and that its author was judged by her Majesty and her council to have been for some years in his dotage. Cockle. Smythe spent the months that followed unsuccessfully pet

• Binding: Hardcover

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