ARMS AND ARMOUR, FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST DOWNWARDS.
The Conquest and subsequent confiscations put the land of England so
entirely into the hands of William the Conqueror, that he was able to
introduce the feudal system into England in a more simple and symmetrical
shape than that in which it obtained in any other country of Europe. The
system was a very intelligible one. The king was supposed to be the lord
of all the land of the kingdom. He retained large estates in his own
hands, and from these estates chiefly he derived his personal followers
and his royal revenues. The rest of the land he let in large lordships to
his principal nobles, on condition that they should maintain for the
defence of the kingdom a certain number of men armed after a stipulated
fashion, and should besides aid him on certain occasions with money
payments, with which we have at present no concern.
These chief tenants of the crown followed the example of the sovereign.
Each retained a portion of the land in his own hands, and sub-let the rest
in estates of larger or smaller size, on condition that each noble or
knight who held of him should supply a proportion of the armed force he
was required to furnish to the royal standard, and contribute a proportion
of the money payments for which he was liable to be called upon. Each
knight let the farms on his manor to his copyholders, on condition that
they provided themselves with the requisite arms, and assembled under his
banner when called upon for military suit and service; and they rendered
certain personal services, and made certain payments in money or in kind
besides, in lieu of rent. Each manor, therefore, furnished its troop of
soldiers; the small farmers, perhaps, and the knight's personal retainers
fighting on foot, clad in leather jerkins, and armed with pike or bow;
two or three of his greater copyholders in skull caps and coats of
fence; his younger brothers or grown-up sons acting as men-at-arms
and esquires, on horseback, in armour almost or quite as complete as
his own; while the knight himself, on his war horse, armed from top to
toe--_cap-à-pied_--with shield on arm and lance in hand, with its knight's
pennon fluttering from the point, was the captain of the little troop. The
troops thus furnished by his several manors made up the force which the
feudal lord was bound to furnish the king, and the united divisions made
up the army of the kingdom.
Besides this feudal army bound to render suit and service at the call of
its sovereign, the laws of the kingdom also required all men of fit
age--between sixteen and sixty--to keep themselves furnished with arms,
and made them liable to be called out _en masse_ in great emergencies.
This was the _Posse Comitatus_, the force of the county, and was under the
command of the sheriff. We learn some particulars on the subject from an
assize of arms of Henry II., made in 1181, which required all his subjects
being free men to be ready in defence of the realm. Whosoever holds one
knight's fee, shall have a hauberk, helmet, shield and lance, and every
knight as many such equipments as he has knight's fees in his domain.
Every free layman having ten marks in chattels shall have a habergeon,
iron cap, and lance. All burgesses and the whole community of freemen
shall have each a coat of fence (padded and quilted, a _wambeys_), iron
cap, and lance. Any one having more arms than those required by the
statute, was to sell or otherwise dispose of them, so that they might be
utilised for the king's service, and no one was to carry arms out of the
kingdom.
There were two great points of difference between the feudal system as
introduced into England and as established on the Continent. William made
all landowners owe fealty to himself, and not only the tenants _in
capite_. And next, though he gave his chief nobles immense possessions,
these possessions were scattered about in different parts of the kingdom.
The great provinces which had once been separate kingdoms of the Saxon
heptarchy, still retained, down to the time of the Confessor, much of
their old political feeling. Kentish men, for example, looked on one
another as brothers, but Essex men, or East Anglians, or Mercians, or
Northumbrians, were foreigners to them. If the Conqueror had committed the
blunder of giving his great nobles all their possessions together, Rufus
might have found the earls of Mercia or Northumbria semi-independent, as
the kings of France found their great vassals of Burgundy, and Champagne,
and Normandy, and Bretagne. But, by the actual arrangement, every county
was divided; one powerful noble had a lordship here, and another had
half-a-dozen manors there, and some religious community had one or two
manors between. The result was, that though a combination of great barons
was powerful enough to coerce John or Henry III., or a single baron like
Warwick was powerful enough, when the nobility were divided into two
factions, to turn the scale to one side or the other, no one was ever able
to set the power of the crown at defiance, or to establish a
semi-independence; the crown was always powerful enough to enforce a
sufficiently arbitrary authority over them all. The consequence was that
there was little of the clannish spirit among Englishmen. They rallied
round their feudal superior, but the sentiment of loyalty was warmly and
directly towards the crown.
We must not, however, pursue the general subject further than we have
done, in order to obtain some apprehension of the position in the body
politic occupied by the class of persons with whom we are specially
concerned. Of their social position we may perhaps briefly arrive at a
correct estimate, if we call to mind that nearly all our rural parishes
are divided into several manors, which date from the Middle Ages, some
more, some less remotely; for as population increased and land increased
in value, there was a tendency to the subdivision of old manors and the
creation of new ones out of them. Each of these manors, in the times to
which our researches are directed, maintained a family of gentle birth and
knightly rank. The head of the family was usually a knight, and his sons
were eligible for, and some of them aspirants to, the same rank in
chivalry. So that the great body of the knightly order consisted of the
country gentlemen--the country _squires_ we call them now, then they were
the country _knights_--whose wealth and social importance gave them a
claim to the rank; and to these we must add such of their younger
brothers and grown-up sons as had ambitiously sought for and happily
achieved the chivalric distinction by deeds of arms. The rest of the
brothers and sons who had not entered the service of the Church as priest
or canon, monk or friar, or into trade, continued in the lower chivalric
and social rank of squires.
When we come to look for authorities for the costume and manners of the
knights of the Middle Ages, we find a great scarcity of them for the
period between the Norman Conquest and the beginning of the Edwardian era.
The literary authorities are not many; there are as yet few of the
illuminated MSS., from which we derive such abundant material in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries;[370] the sepulchral monuments are not
numerous; the valuable series of monumental brasses has not begun; the
Bayeux tapestry, which affords abundant material for the special time to
which it relates, we have abstained from drawing upon; and there are few
subjects in any other class of pictorial art to help us out.
The figure of Goliath, which we gave in our last chapter (p. 322), will
serve very well for a general representation of a knight of the twelfth
century. In truth, from the Norman Conquest down to the introduction of
plate armour at the close of the thirteenth century, there was wonderfully
little alteration in the knightly armour and costume. It would seem that
the body armour consisted of garments of the ordinary fashion, either
quilted in their substance to deaden the force of a blow, or covered with
_mailles_ (rings) on the exterior, to resist the edge of sword or point of
lance. The ingenuity of the armourer showed itself in various ways of
quilting, and various methods of applying the external defence of metal.
Of the quilted armours we know very little. In the illuminations is often
seen armour covered over with lines arranged in a lozenge pattern, which
perhaps represents garments stuffed and sewn in this commonest of all
patterns of quilting; but it has been suggested that it may represent
lozenged-shaped scales, of horn or metal, fastened upon the face of the
garments. In the wood-cut here given from the MS. Caligula A. vii., we
have one of the clearest and best extant illustrations of this quilted
armour.
In the mail armour there seem to have been different ways of applying the
_mailles_. Sometimes it is represented as if the rings were sewn by one
edge only, and at such a distance that each overlapped the other in the
same row, but the rows do not overlap one another. Sometimes they look as
if each row of rings had been sewn upon a strip of linen or leather and
then the strips applied to the garment. Sometimes the rings were
interlinked, as in a common steel purse, so that the garment was entirely
of steel rings. Very frequently we find a surcoat or chausses represented,
as if rings or little discs of metal were sewn flat all over the garment.
It is possible that this is only an artistic way of indicating that the
garment was covered with rings, after one of the methods above described;
but it is also possible that a light armour was composed of rings thus
sparely sewn upon a linen or leather garment. It is possible also that
little round plates of metal or horn were used in this way for defence,
for we have next to mention that _scale_ armour is sometimes, though
rarely, found; it consisted of small scales, usually rectangular, and
probably usually of horn, though sometimes of metal, attached to a linen
or leather garment.
[Illustration: _Quilted Armour._]
The shield and helmet varied somewhat in shape at various times. The
shield in the Bayeux tapestry was kite-shaped, concave, and tolerably
large, like that of Goliath on p. 322. The tendency of its fashion was
continually to grow shorter in proportion to its width, and flatter. The
round Saxon target continued in use throughout the Middle Ages, more
especially for foot-soldiers.
The helmet, at the beginning of the period, was like the old Saxon conical
helmet, with a nasal; and this continued in occasional use far into the
fourteenth century. About the end of the twelfth century, the cylindrical
helmet of iron enclosing the whole head, with horizontal slits for vision,
came into fashion. Richard I. is represented in one on his second great
seal. A still later fashion is seen in the next woodcut, p. 334. William
Longespée, A.D. 1227, has a flat-topped helmet.
The only two inventions of the time seem to be, first, the surcoat, which
began to be worn over the hauberk about the end of the twelfth century.
The seal of King John is the first of the series of great seals in which
we see it introduced. It seems to have been of linen or silk.
The other great invention of this period was that of armorial bearings,
properly so called. Devices painted upon the shield were common in
classical times. They are found ordinarily on the shields in the Bayeux
tapestry, and were habitually used by the Norman knights. In the Bayeux
tapestry they seem to be fanciful or merely decorative; later they were
symbolical or significant. But it was only towards the close of the
twelfth century that each knight assumed a fixed device, which was
exclusively appropriated to him, by which he was known, and which became
hereditary in his family.
The offensive weapons used by the knights were most commonly the sword and
spear. The axe and mace are found, but rarely. The artillery consisted of
the crossbow, which was the most formidable missile in use, and the long
bow, which, however, was not yet the great arm of the English yeomanry
which it became at a later period; but these were hardly the weapons of
knights and gentlemen, though men-at-arms were frequently armed with the
crossbow, and archers were occasionally mounted. The sling was sometimes
used, as were other very rude weapons, by the half-armed crowd who were
often included in the ranks of mediæval armies.
We have said that there is a great scarcity of pictorial representations
of the military costume of the thirteenth century, and of the few which
exist the majority are so vague in their definition of details, that they
add nothing to our knowledge of costume, and have so little of dramatic
character, as to throw no light on manners and customs. Among the best
are some knightly figures in the Harleian Roll, folio 6, which contains a
life of St. Guthlac of about the end of the twelfth century. The figures
are armed in short-sleeved and hooded hauberk; flat-topped iron helmet,
some with, some without, the nasal; heater-shaped shield and spear; the
legs undefended, except by boots like those of the Goliath on p. 322.
The Harleian MS. 4,751, a MS. of the beginning of the thirteenth century,
shows at folio 8 a group of soldiers attacking a fortification; it
contains hints enough to make one earnestly desire that the subject had
been more fully and artistically worked out. The fortification is
represented by a timber projection carried on brackets from the face of
the wall. Its garrison is represented by a single knight, whose
demi-figure only is seen; he is represented in a short-sleeved hauberk,
with a surcoat over it having a cross on the breast. He wears a
flat-topped cylindrical helmet, and is armed with a crossbow. The
assailants would seem to be a rabble of half-armed men; one is bareheaded,
and armed only with a sling; others have round hats, whether of felt or
iron does not appear; one is armed in a hooded hauberk and carries an axe,
and a cylindrical helmet also appears amidst the crowd.
In the Harleian MS. 5,102, of the beginning of the thirteenth century, at
folio 32, there is a representation of the martyrdom of St. Thomas of
Canterbury, which gives us the effigies of the three murderers in knightly
costume. They all wear long-sleeved hauberks, which have the peculiarity
of being slightly slit up the sides, and the tunic flows from beneath
them. Fitzurse (known by the bear on his shield) has leg defences fastened
behind, like those in our next woodcut, p. 334, and a circular iron
helmet. One of the others wears a flat-topped helmet, and the third has
the hood of mail fastened on the cheek, like that in the same woodcut. The
drawing is inartistic, and the picture of little value for our present
purposes.
The Harleian MS. 3,244 contains several MSS. bound together. The second of
these works is a Penitential, which has a knightly figure on horseback for
its frontispiece. It has an allegorical meaning, and is rather curious.
The inscription over the figure is _Milicia est vita hominis super
terram_. (The life of man upon the earth is a warfare.) The knightly
figure represents the Christian man in the spiritual panoply of this
warfare; and the various items of armour and arms have inscriptions
affixed to tell us what they are. Thus over the helmet is _Spes futuri
gaudii_ (For a helmet the hope of salvation); his sword is inscribed,
_Verbum di_; his spear, _Persevancia_; its pennon, _Regni cælesti
desiderium_, &c. &c. The shield is charged with the well-known triangular
device, with the enunciation of the doctrine of the Trinity, _Pater est
Deus_, &c., _Pater non est Filius_, &c. The knight is clad in hauberk,
with a rather long flowing surcoat; a helmet, in general shape like that
in the next woodcut, but not so ornamental; he has chausses of mail;
shield, sword, and spear with pennon, and prick spurs; but there is not
sufficient definiteness in the details, or character in the drawing, to
make it worth while to reproduce it. But there is one MS. picture which
fully atones for the absence of others by its very great merit. It occurs
in a small quarto of the last quarter of the thirteenth century, which
contains the Psalter and Ecclesiastical Hymns. Towards the end of the book
are several remarkably fine full-page drawings, done in outline with a
pen, and partially tinted with colour; large, distinct, and done with
great spirit and artistic skill. The first on the verso of folio 218 is a
king; on the opposite page is the knight, who is here given on a reduced
scale; on the opposite side of the page is St. Christopher, and on the
next page an archbishop.
The figure of the knight before us shows very clearly the various details
of a suit of thirteenth-century armour. In the hauberk will be noticed the
mode in which the hood is fastened at the side of the head, and the way in
which the sleeves are continued into gauntlets, whose palms are left free
from rings, so as to give a firmer grasp. The thighs, it will be seen, are
protected by haut-de-chausses, which are mailed only in the exposed parts,
and not on the seat. The legs have chausses of a different kind of armour.
In the MS. drawings we often find various parts of the armour thus
represented in different ways, and, as we have already said, we are
sometimes tempted to think the unskilful artist has only used different
modes of representing the same kind of mail. But here the drawing is so
careful, and skilful, and self-evidently accurate, that we cannot doubt
that the defence of the legs is really of a different kind of armour from
the mail of the hauberk and haut-de-chausses. The surcoat is of graceful
fashion, and embroidered with crosses, which appear also on the pennon,
and one of them is used as an ornamental genouillière on the shoulder. The
helmet is elaborately and very elegantly ornamented. The attitude of the
figure is spirited and dignified, and the drawing unusually good.
Altogether we do not know a finer representation of a knight of this
century.
[Illustration: _Knight of the latter part of the Thirteenth Century._]
A few, but very valuable, authorities are to be found in the sculptural
monumental effigies of this period. The best of them will be found in
Stothard's "Monumental Effigies," and his work not only brings these
examples together, and makes them easily accessible to the student, but it
has this great advantage, that Stothard well understood his subject, and
gives every detail with the most minute accuracy, and also elucidates
obscure points of detail. Those in the Temple Church, that of William
Longespée in Salisbury Cathedral, and that of Aymer de Valence in
Westminster Abbey, are the most important of the series. Perhaps, after
all, the only important light they add to that already obtained from the
MSS. is, they help us to understand the fabrication of the mail-armour, by
giving it in fac-simile relief. There are also a few foreign MSS., easily
accessible, in the library of the British Museum, which the artist student
will do well to consult; but he must remember that some of the
peculiarities of costume which he will find there are foreign fashions,
and are not to be introduced in English subjects. For example, the MS.
Cotton, Nero, c. iv., is a French MS. of about 1125 A.D., which contains
some rather good drawings of military subjects. The Additional MS. 14,789,
of German execution, written in 1128 A.D., contains military subjects;
among them is a figure of Goliath, in which the Philistine has a hauberk
of chain mail, and chausses of jazerant work, like the knight in the last
woodcut. The Royal MS. 20 D. i., is a French MS., very full of valuable
military drawings, executed probably at the close of the thirteenth
century, belonging, however, in the style of its Art and costume, rather
to the early part of the next period than to that under consideration. The
MS. Addit. 17,687, contains fine and valuable German drawings, full of
military authorities, of about the same period as the French MS. last
mentioned.
[Illustration: _Knight and Men-at-Arms of the end of the Thirteenth
Century._]
The accompanying wood-cut represents various peculiarities of the armour
in use towards the close of the thirteenth century. It is taken from the
Sloane MS. 346, which is a metrical Bible. In the original drawing a
female figure is kneeling before the warrior, and there is an inscription
over the picture, _Abygail placet iram regis David_ (Abigail appeases the
anger of King David). So that this group of a thirteenth-century knight
and his men-at-arms is intended by the mediæval artist to represent David
and his followers on the march to revenge the churlishness of Nabal. The
reader will notice the round plates at the elbows and knees, which are the
first _visible_ introduction of plate armour--breastplates, worn under the
hauberk, had been occasionally used from Saxon times. He will observe,
too, the leather gauntlets which David wears, and the curious defences for
the shoulders called _ailettes_: also that the shield is hung round the
neck by its strap (_guige_), and the sword-belt round the hips, while the
surcoat is girded round the waist by a silken cord. The group is also
valuable for giving us at a glance three different fashions of helmet.
David has a conical bascinet, with a movable visor. The man immediately
behind him wears an iron hat, with a wide rim and a raised crest, which is
not at all unusual at this period. The other two men wear the globular
helmet, the most common head-defence of the time.
[Illustration: _Knight of the end of the Thirteenth Century._]
The next cut is a spirited little sketch of a mounted knight, from the
same MS. The horse, it may be admitted, is very like those which children
draw nowadays, but it has more life in it than most of the drawings of
that day; and the way in which the knight sits his horse is much more
artistic. The picture shows the equipment of the knight very clearly, and
it is specially valuable as an early example of horse trappings, and as an
authority for the shape of the saddle, with its high pommel and croupe.
The inscription over the picture is, _Tharbis defendit urbem Sabea ab
impugnanti Moysi_; and over the head of this cavalier is his name
_Moyses_--Moses, as a knight of the end of the thirteenth century!