In the briefest of explanations.
Footman = Lvl 3
Archers Bow = In a chest in the carpenters house
Promotion = DENIED! Requirements not met, No Archers bow.
I’m ofcourse going to see if getting the bow out of storage solves the issue, but i thought i’d let you know.
R866
Give us a save, will ya!
I was going to just now, as my game crashed… (i reinstalled it on my SSD and it seems settings and saves are not perserved and i hadn’t turned on auto save yet…)
i am very sorry, ill see if i can recreate it later, for now im gonna sulk cuz i was having a good time and lost all that progress 
Sorry to hear that! If you reinstalled it to a different location, the saves may still be in the old location.
that saves my the trouble of explaining to my stream that i accidently deleted the stream save (thanks a bunch haha) but this bug occured on the new installation witohut autosave, nor manual saves yet (bad programmer me) so it doesnt help you guys much sadly.
FWIW, I was able to promote a footman using a bow stored in a crate, so there must be something else in play there.
As if this moment i’m working to try and recreate the problem. If it’s fine for you, it must be a mod-interaction
Edit: i have just reached the same stage i was at as be4, The bow is in the same chest (same chest of the template building i used), but this time the footman promotes just as normal, it must’ve been a one off issue.
I’ll keep my eyes out for this incident may it reoccur.