It wasn’t just about who you knew. It was about who slew you.

And how they slew you.

As much as that might sound like a concept straight out of Monty Python, it’s not that far off the mark as a summation of the late medieval and Renaissance mindset, among England’s nobility as well as the European continent’s.

Essentially, the thinking went something like this:  You’re a nobleman, a warrior. Armed with sword and lance, you charge gloriously into battle on the expensive horse that only the lofty likes of you can afford. The grubby-fingered churls and peasants are both figuratively and literally below you.  Although armed, they are hardly worth a moment of your attention. 

There no glory lies.

No! You’re fighting to win renown. By God and Saint George, there’s no fame to be had fighting knuckle-draggers! You’re to go sword to sword, lance to lance with the cream of society, to live and die among them. Anything less spells oblivion.

That’s one reason the crossbow caused such dismay among such aristocratic warriors. The most foul-smelling bumpkin could, in a short time, become reasonably proficient and alarmingly deadly with a crossbow. A hail of arrows (called bolts or quarrels in their crossbow form, generally shorter and a bit heavier than the longbow variety) could create killing zones that noblemen on horseback rode through at their peril.