Serious military interest in the longbow faded after the seventeenth century but occasionally schemes to resurrect its military use were proposed. Benjamin Franklin was a proponent in the 1770s; the Honourable Artillery Company had an archer company between 1784 and 1794, and a man named Richard Mason wrote a book proposing the arming of militia with pike and longbow in 1798. Donald Featherstone also records a Lt. Col. Richard Lee of 44th Foot advocated the military use of the longbow in 1792. There is a record of the use of the longbow in action as late as WWII, when Jack Churchill is credited with a longbow kill in France in 1940. The weapon was certainly considered for use by Commandos during the war but it is not known whether it was used in action.