"Military Archery in the Middle Ages" Topic

There does not appear to be any definite information obtainable as to when archery was first introduced to England. Ascham[1] says Sir Thomas Eliot, Kt., told him

that he had read and perused over many olde monuments of Englande, and in seking for that purpose (to ascertain this point) he marked this of shootynge in an excedyng olde cronicle, the which had no name, that what time as the Saxons came first into this realme in Kyng Vortigers dayes, when they had bene here a whyle and at last began to faull out with the Brittons, they troubled and subdewed the Brittons wyth nothynge so much as with their bowe and shafte, whiche wepon beynge straunge, and not sene here before, was wonderfull terrible unto them, and this beginninge I can thynke verie well to be true.[2]This would fix the date of the introduction at about 449, and from the fact that we use the Saxon words boga and arewa it is quite possible that this was the case. It is evident from a casket, in the British Museum (fig. 89), representing a man defending his house, which, from the Saxon runes on it, is ascribed by Mr. Stephens[3] to the eighth century, that archery was practiced in England in about 750…"
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Amicalement
Armand

The quote is from Viscount Dillon, a late 19th Century antiquarian. Not a good source for the history of Archery as so much has been found since.

We now know that archery was 'practiced' in the area now known as England well back into the stone age, archery equipment having been found in the vicinity of Stonehenge and at other pre and post Bronze age sites and on numerous Roman sites, all excavated well after Dillon was writing.