What did a medieval longbowman earn?
3 pennies a day on campaign.
About $1,100 a month in today's gold.
A month of that pay weighs about as much as 2 dice in gold.
Crécy, Poitiers, 3 pennies a day. An archer with a horse got 6, so save up for one.
Where the money came from
A longbowman drew a yew bow about six feet long, and the strain showed in his bones: archers' skeletons have enlarged left arms. Since the late 1200s English kings had led armies of tens of thousands of paid archers and spearmen. The pay was by the day. In July 1355 the crown set 3 pence a day for a foot archer and 6 pence for a mounted archer, so a horse doubled his wage; a knight got 2 shillings, eight times the foot archer's rate. The crown bought arrows by the sheaf of 24, and between 1341 and 1359 it obtained 1,232,400 of them. In 1358 a bow cost it 16 to 18 pence, five or six days of a foot archer's pay, and a sheaf cost 13 pence. The money did not always come. In 1346, as Edward III's army marched through Normandy, some units had not had their April wages, and none had been paid for the June quarter. Loot made up some of the gap: the army plundered Caen for five days, and after Crécy the English foot soldiers looted the French bodies and gathered up the arrows. Up to a thousand men in that army were convicted criminals serving for a pardon. In the 1330s a farm labourer earned under 2 pence a day, so an archer on campaign earned at least half as much again.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · themcs.org · en.wikipedia.org 2 · en.wikipedia.org 3
What a longbowman's pay bought in 1350
a gallon of ale: less than a day's pay
a plough: 6 days' pay
a fur-lined garment: 4 weeks' pay
a year at Oxford: 23 months' pay, more than a whole year of it
a craftsman's townhouse: 3 years' pay, more than a whole year of it
Every price of 1350, with its source, is on the prices page.