the quilted gambeson, with the steel cap, and the great helm for the
supreme moment of combat, seemed completely invulnerable unless to
missile weapons mechanically projected. Few men-at-arms fell in actual
battle on the winning side, and great slaughters were only consequent
on the complete rout of one of the parties. Under the warlike Edward
I. the powers of attack must have gathered renewed force, for a long
period of tentative changes set in which finally ended in the suit of
mail being completely hidden beneath an outer shell of steel plates.
The qualities of steel for offensive weapons must also at this same
time have undergone marked improvements, and we now begin to hear
of definite seats of manufacture attaining world-wide celebrity.
Cologne, Lorraine, Poitou produced weapons which are said to have
pierced mail and quilted armour with ease. The heavy blows given by
the battle-axe and mace, used by horse and foot, must, however, have
been chiefly instrumental in introducing extra means of defence. These
were by no means at first universally of steel, for cuir-bouilli or
boiled leather, a very impervious substance when properly prepared,
seemed at one time likely to rival it for general use; and trial was
made of every other kind of material that could be used for defence,
such as horn, whalebone, ivory, padded wool, leather, either alone
or strengthened with metal studs or splints, brass, and small plates
of iron fixed to textiles. It is almost certain that for a time the
moulded surface of cuir-bouilli, with its gilded and perhaps coloured
surfaces, was preferred to steel. During this tentative period every
combination of these materials with chain-mail is to be met with, and
the triumph of steel-plate armour only became definite after every
possible substitute, combined in every practicable way, had been tried
either at home or abroad and found wanting. It is at least improbable
that any armour pictured with enriched designs at this date was of
steel.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--Second suit of Sir Henry Lee, master of the
armoury, reduced fac-simile of No. 19 in the Armourer's Album, in the
South Kensington Museum.]
It would be impossible within the limits of this work, and of little
interest, to endeavour to describe the constant changes, often due
to individual caprice, that occur; for when groups of soldiery are
represented, even long after the Transition, it is rare to find two
individuals accoutred in precisely the same manner. We may rest
assured, however, that each piece as it successively appears was
introduced to meet some new perfection in the weapons of attack, or
to cope with some new tactics, in short, to protect some part that
had been proved by the practical experience of armed strife to be
vulnerable. These additions were naturally subject to modification,
according to the passing dictates of military display, or the changing
fashions of civilian dress.
Fig. 10 is taken from one of the English MSS. most valuable for
the knightly costume of the Transition. The armour is in this MS.
almost entirely mail, of the banded variety, worn beneath a surcoat,
which is hardly ever emblazoned. Plate-armour is only represented
by the kneecaps, with an occasional roundel and shoulder-plate.
The great helm, always with a fan-crest, the chapelle-de-fer worn
beneath or above the mail coiffe, the bassinet, often visored, and
the broad-brimmed round helmet are worn, except in jousts, quite
indifferently.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--_Melée._
From the early fourteenth-century English MS. known as Queen Mary's
Psalter, 2 B. vii., in the British Museum. The combatants are in banded
mail and long surcoats, and some wear the great helms with fan-crests.
Ailettes and knee-caps are the only plate-armour visible. Some of the
horses have long housings and also bear the fan-crest.]
The head, being the most vulnerable part of the body and the most
difficult to protect, received the greatest amount of attention. The
great helm, with bands and cross-cuts for the sight, continued in use
throughout the Transition, but with a sugar-loaf crown, and rendered
less insupportable in the reign of Edward I. by transferring the weight
from the head to the shoulders. It was occasionally of brass--Chaucer
mentions the knight's "helm of latoun bright," a metal used so far
back as Henry I.--and much more frequently of cuir-bouilli, as in the
tournament at Windsor in 1278, when twelve of the thirty-eight knights
had gilded helms, and were called digniores. There can be no doubt,
however, that a helm of Poitou steel was even then the surest defence.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--_The helm and crest of the Black Prince, with
his shield, from his monument in Canterbury Cathedral._]
To the custom of hanging arms in churches we are indebted for the
preservation of all the most valuable historic pieces. The first
record of this poetic usage occurs early in the thirteenth century,
when William of Toulouse hung his helm and splendid shield over St.
Julien's tomb at Brives, and his lance and sword, bow and quiver,
outside. By the middle of the century it had become the practice,
when a brave knight died, to hang his shield and helm on the walls
above his grave, and it appears in addition, from the instance of the
King of France after the battle of Cassel in 1328, that the victor
in some cases presented his arms to the nearest church. The helm of
the Black Prince, still suspended above his tomb at Canterbury (Fig.
11), is an illustration familiar to all. By the kindness of Sir Noel
Paton we are enabled to present an even finer helm (Fig. 12), in
more perfect preservation, which formerly hung above the tomb of Sir
Richard Pembridge, K.G., in Hereford Cathedral, who died one year
before the Prince of Wales, in 1375. Its admirable workmanship has
been fully described by Baron de Cosson, its fine steely quality
being such that no penknife would scratch its polished surface. It is
formed of three pieces--the cone, the cylinder, and the top-piece,
welded so beautifully that no seam is visible, and these are joined by
round-headed nails clinched on the inside. Every practical detail, down
to the minutest, has received careful attention. The metal is thickened
and turned outwards round the eye-piece, which is thus efficiently
guarded, and the bottom edge is rolled inwards over a thick wire, so
as not to cut the surcoat. These and other details given by Baron de
Cosson in the Catalogue of Armour exhibited at the Royal Archæological
Institute in 1880, show conclusively that this specimen at least is a
real war helm, fitted to resist and to strike fire under the shock of a
lance that might unhorse its wearer. The conical helm was worn over the
visorless bassinet next described, as the previous helms had been worn
over the chapelle-de-fer, and being only donned in the hour of danger,
is rarely represented in monuments, except as a pillow under the head.
When worn the face was invisible and recognition impossible, so that a
moulded crest of linen, leather, or some light material surmounted it
and became its most important feature. A mantling was also introduced,
at first in the simple form of a puggaree, as seen in the effigy
of the Black Prince (Fig. 16), but later of more ample dimensions,
fantastically shredded to represent the supposed rents of battle. When
the taste for military display increased, these mantles were usually of
scarlet lined with ermine. A wide-rimmed helm is often represented as
worn over or in place of the bassinet, and jewelled and crested. This
form reappears continually, its first introduction dating so far back
as the Bayeux tapestry.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--_The helm of Richard Pembridge, K.G., from
Hereford Cathedral. Sir Noel Paton._]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--_Bassinet from the tomb of Sir John de Melsa,
Aldborough Church, Holderness. From a photograph by Baron de Cosson._]
The bassinet, used with or without the helm, enjoyed a prolonged period
of favour from Edward I. to Henry VI. It differed from the older
chapelle-de-fer worn with the hood of mail, in having the mail hung
round it, instead of passing over or under it. This mail, now called
the camail or gorget, was laced to a series of staples along the edges
of the bassinet and fell like a curtain on to the shoulders. At the
outset merely a skull-cap, it was gradually prolonged at the back and
sides so as to leave only the face exposed. Early in the fourteenth
century its appearance was profoundly modified by the addition of a
movable visor, at first hinged at the side, but subsequently raised and
lowered from above the forehead. Being readily removed, the visor was
only worn in action, and is thus rarely represented in effigies and
brasses. No helm was worn over the visored bassinet, which became the
battle head-piece of the fourteenth century and part of the fifteenth,
the helm being reserved for jousts and tournaments. We are able, by
the kindness of Baron de Cosson, to give an illustration (Fig. 13) of
a real bassinet of large size, from the tomb of Sir John de Melsa in
Aldborough Church, Holderness. It is described in the Catalogue of Arms
already referred to as of the second half of the fourteenth century,
and was worn with a large visor. A second bassinet is illustrated
(Fig. 14) from Sir Noel Paton's collection, described by Baron de
Cosson as transformed into a sallad about the middle of the fifteenth
century. Fine bassinets are in the Tower and at Woolwich, and in the
Burgess, Christy, and Wallace collections, all happily belonging to the
nation, and in Warwick Castle and at Parham, but none are directly
connected with English wearers. The beaked visor, represented in so
many manuscripts of about the close of the fourteenth century, is a
fine defensive and not unpicturesque form. There are several real
examples in the Musée d'Artillerie in Paris, two of which are regarded
as English.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--_A bassinet transformed into a sallad in the
fifteenth century. From Sir Noel Paton's collection._]
The bassinet, like the rest of the knight's armour, did not necessarily
exhibit a surface of plain burnished steel. It was frequently covered
with leather, as mentioned in the inventories of Humphrey de Bohun,
1322, and of Dover Castle, 1344; while the King of France at one time
wore his bassinet covered with white leather. One of cuir-bouilli, in
Simon Burley's inventory, 1388, is coloured white and green. It was
also tinned or gilded, and even of pure gold, as prizes for tourneys,
or like one set with gems, sent to Edward I. by his father-in-law in
1334. In a bequest of William Langford, 1411, is a headpiece covered
with red velvet, and actual specimens so covered are not unknown. The
richness of the decorations bestowed on these helmets is shown in the
goldsmith's account of one made for the King of France in 1352, and
of another made in the same year for the Dauphin with a band of forty
large pearls. Effigies and brasses show that coronets and jewelled
fillets commonly adorned them, even in the case of simple knights,
and that these are not imaginary decorations may be gathered from
Froissart, who mentions that the King of Castille actually entered a
battle in 1385 with his bassinet enriched with 20,000 francs' worth of
gems. Sir Guy of Warwick, in the Romance, is given a helmet adorned
with a circle of gold set with most precious stones.
Some notable champions, like Sir John Chandos and the Earl of
Warwick, prided themselves on a disregard of danger and habitually
fought without a visor, yet the tendency to close every crevice with
plate defences developed continuously, and the frequent accidents at
tourneys, when the lance-point glanced upward and entered the throat
under the camail, led to the introduction, about 1330, of a gorget of
plate or scales, which with the visor converted the bassinet into a
closed helmet.
The defence of the breast was always considered next in importance
to the head, and fourteenth-century inventories constantly refer to
"pairs of plates large," perhaps like those till recently worn in
Persia, corsets de fer, cors d'acier, brust plate pour justes, and
other defences of plate. Chaucer writes, "Some would be armed in an
haubergeon, a bright breastplate and a gypoun." The globose form given
to the chests of effigies, such as that of the Black Prince, seems to
imply the presence of a rigid defence under the emblazoned surcoat.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.
1. Example of a ridged bassinet with banded camail, from the brass of
Sir John d'Abernon, died 1327.
2. Combed and jewelled bassinet from the effigy in Ash Church, of about
the same date.]
The limbs began to be definitely protected over the mail in the second
half of the thirteenth century. Effigies and manuscript illustrations
of that date commonly represent globose knee-caps, sometimes ridged
down the front, and usually gilt. In the fourteenth century they are
always present and frequently treated very decoratively, with shields,
roundels, scalloped edges, etc. The technical name for these appendages
is "Genouillière," or "knee-cap." Subsidiary plates often appear below
the knee, and sometimes above it, and are continued under the mail.
The greave was a rigid gaiter fitting at first only over the front of
the leg below the knee, but afterwards enveloping it; and it was either
of metal or cuir-bouilli. When seen on English fourteenth-century
monuments it usually seems to be of steel fitting closely over the
mail, and laced or buckled at the back, but at times it is so richly
decorated as to suggest cuir-bouilli. Greaves are usually omitted on
early monuments, and are only commonly seen when they had become an
integral part of the suit of armour. As yet they were not habitually
worn except in battle, and knights were not at this time represented
in their effigies accoutred for war, but in ordinary military costume.
Thus the effigy of Aymer de Valence shows no plate armour, except
the genouillière; but the two mounted figures of the canopy present
the visored bassinet, the high gorget, the arm and elbow plates, the
tubular greaves and steel sollerets for the feet. The tubular leg
defence is not seen in earlier representations, and its introduction
may coincide with the first recorded appearance in the field of large
bodies of Welsh armed with long knives. It was usually hinged and
buckled, and becomes more general as the century advances. This appears
in the inventory of Piers Gaveston, 1313, who possessed three pairs of
such greaves. Monstrelet relates that the bailiff of Evreux, sallying
out without his greaves, had his leg badly broken by the kick of a
horse.
Defences of plate armour for the feet are called sollerets, and are
first, if somewhat indistinctly, visible in the small equestrian figure
on the canopy of the tomb of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster,
in Westminster Abbey, the mail not being continued over the front
of the feet as in the older effigies. One of the small equestrian
figures of the adjoining tomb of Aymer de Valence has the feet, though
mutilated, distinctly covered with small rectangular plates, arranged
longitudinally in continuation of the greaves. In the D'Abernon and
other brasses of the second quarter of the fourteenth century laminar
plates are fastened across the upper part of the foot. Other varieties
are the scaled sollerets of the De Cheney brass, 1375; the De Sulney
brass, with sollerets of laminar plates, and one large plate over
the instep; the Littlebury effigy, with longitudinal plates like
those of De Valence. In the effigy of John of Eltham, 1334, we seem
for the first time to meet with the whole foot visible incased in
plate, as it continued to be during the rest of the century. In the
Warwick collection a pair of sollerets are made each of one piece like
sabots. The long curved sollerets with pointed toes of the second half
of the fourteenth century are called pouleynes or poulaines, from
the souliers à la Polaine, and differ slightly from those known as
Cracowes, introduced by Richard II. from Bohemia. There are two fine
pointed sollerets at Warwick, one measuring twenty-five inches from
toe to heel, or with the spur thirty-two and a half inches. Another
beautifully-made one attached to leg armour has the plates scalloped
along the edges, and is attributed to Edward, son of Henry VI.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--_Effigy of the Black Prince on his tomb in
Canterbury Cathedral. From the cast in the Crystal Palace, Sydenham._]
The gilt spur was the honorific and distinguishing badge of the knight,
and was put on in the ceremony of investiture, and hacked off by the
king's cook if the knight was formally degraded. An immense spoil of
gilt spurs fell to the victors after the battle of Courtrai. Both the
goad and rowel forms were in use throughout the century, and when
knights habitually dismounted to fight, they were taken off. Froissart
mentions instances where they were fixed in the ground like caltrops.
The extravagantly long, rowelled spurs of Henry VI.'s time must have
been peculiarly inconvenient.
No great time could well have elapsed before similar defences of
plate were found necessary to protect the shoulders and elbows, which
were scarcely less vulnerable than the legs. The shoulder-pieces,
however, are rarely visible in illustrations and effigies, being much
concealed by the surcoat. The earliest arm-defence is in the form of
an elbow-guard, and appears in the effigy at Salisbury, date about
1260, consisting of one cupped rosette over another. Elbow-guards are
more commonly seen in the second quarter of the fourteenth century,
when they consist of cups and discs, or both combined, the latter
occasionally spiked. The equestrian figures of the De Valence monument,
already mentioned, show in one case gilt rosettes on the shoulders
and elbows, and in the other the forearms sheathed in plate. John of
Eltham, 1334, has a roundel on the elbow, with articulated plates
beneath. In the Ifield effigy the arms are shown by Stothard completely
sheathed, and with shoulder and elbow roundels bearing embossed lions'
heads. Plain roundels, rosettes, shells, or lion masks were worn on
the shoulders, and articulated plates are seen between 1320 and 1350.
The singular and exaggerated plates known as ailettes, picturesque
objects which rose above the shoulders like epaulettes, were as useless
apparently as the shoulder-knots of the present day. They first appear
on the scene in the Windsor tournament, 1278, and disappear in the
first quarter of the fourteenth century. They are of many shapes and
sizes, and are well seen in our illustration (Fig. 10) from Queen
Mary's Psalter, in an elegant brass in Weaver's _Funeral Monuments_, as
well as in many others, and in several stained-glass windows. Usually
they bear the armorial bearings of the owner, though those of Piers
Gaveston, 1311, were "frettez de perles."
Mail gloves continued to be worn, though with divided fingers, during
the first part of the fourteenth century. The first effigy to show
any change is that of a Whatton, engraved by Stothard, of the time of
Edward II. Gloves of leather were sometimes worn between 1311 and 1360,
as well as others of whalebone, metal studs and splintwork, iron scales
and brass. Plate-armour gauntlets first appear towards the middle of
the century with articulated fingers and a broad plate for the back of
the hand and wrist; whilst a steel cuff, sometimes articulated, was
shortly afterwards added. They are at times spiked, or with gads like
knuckle-dusters, as in the case of the Black Prince, and frequently
richly jewelled. The jewelled example given from the effigy of Sir
Thomas Cawne, of the time of Edward III., is reproduced from Stothard's
drawing. The other is from the monument of the Earl of Westmoreland, of
the first years of Henry VI. Gauntlets are constantly represented as
gilt in MSS. of these periods.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--First suit of Sir Christopher Hatton,
Captain of the Guard, and subsequently Lord Chancellor. Reduced
fac-simile of No. 15 in the Armourer's Album in the South Kensington
Museum.]
The knight's dress for war now consisted, in addition to any ordinary
civilian underclothing, of a more or less complete suit of gambeson or
quilted material, sometimes called the haketon, as in Chaucer's _Sir
Thopas_:--
Next his shert an haketon
And over that an habergeon,
And over that a fin hauberk
Was all ywrought of Jeweswork,
Ful strong it was of plate;
And over that his cote-armoure.
The habergeon is the mail in this case, and the hauberk is of plate or
splint armour, while the cote-armoure is the surcoat, possibly thickly
padded, as in the still-existing surcoat of the Black Prince. In the
mutilated effigy at Sandwich the thick quilted gambeson is distinctly
seen at the knee and wrist underlying the mail, while the fine hauberk
of plate overlies it, and the surcoat is worn over all. The effigy at
Ash shows the plate armour, under the surcoat, fashioned in the curious
armadillo-like Jazerant or brigandine form, with an upper gambeson
under it, as well as the usual second gambeson under the mail. That two
separate quilted defences were worn at this time is supported by the De
Crell brass, 1325, the D'Abernon brass, 1327, and the Ifield and John
of Eltham brasses, 1334. The colours of these various garments, the
edges of which were allowed to show one above the other, were no doubt
effectively contrasted, while the edges of the mail, as we have seen,
were pinked, vandyked, or scalloped and gilt or finished with brass
rings, while the plate-armour finishes most commonly in a fringe-like
arrangement of small vertical plates.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.
1. Gauntlet from the effigy of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, in
Staindrop Church, Durham. Time of Henry VI.
2. Gauntlet from the effigy of Sir Thomas Cawne, Ightham Church, Kent.
Time of Edward III.]
The splendid glitter of polished steel, so associated in our minds with
the knight in armour, appealed scarcely at all to its wearers in this
Transition age. In fact, no decided preference can be discovered even
for the defensive qualities of steel, and this constitutes perhaps
the most marked peculiarity of the age. In the halcyon days of mail,
the steel was kept bright and bare, the helm and shield burnished,
with nothing to conceal its brilliancy but a coronet and the rich
sword-belts which merely enhanced the effect. But in Chaucer's _Sir
Thopas_ there is no mention of steel forming part of the visible
equipment:--
His jambeux were of cuirbouly,
His swerdes sheth of ivory,
His helme of latoun bright.
Over the body armour was a garment, called by Chaucer "the cote-armoure,
as white as is the lily floure."
His sheld was all of gold so red,
And thereon was a bores hed
A charbouncle beside.
The helmets were almost hidden by the large crests and the scarlet
mantling, and the metal exposed was generally gilt. The trunk armour
was concealed under the emblazoned surcoat or pourpoint; and when the
thighs and legs are visible below this they are seen to be clothed over
the mail by splinted or brigandine armour, showing velvet or satin
externally attached by gilt or silver nails; the knee-caps and greaves
are often richly moulded and probably cuir-bouilli, as seen in the
statues on the front of Exeter Cathedral, and in the paintings from St.
Stephen's Chapel they are also shown as gilt. The arms and at times
the hands are similarly clothed. The horse-armour was almost entirely
concealed by rich caparisons, as in Chaucer's _Knightes Tale_:--
Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapered wele.
The figures from the tomb of Edmund Crouchback and Aymer de Valence,
engraved by Stothard, show the emblazoned housings of the time of
Edward II. The equestrian figures in Queen Mary's Psalter show that the
fully-equipped knight of this period, when in full war panoply, was a
gorgeous object, blazing in colours and gold, and exhibiting little to
recall the stern realities of campaigns and sieges.