various portions of the knightly equipment were remade and altered to suit new fashions and requirements. Perhaps still another reason may be found in the carelessness and lack of antiquarian interest in our ancestors, who, as soon as a particular style had ceased to be in vogue, destroyed or sold as useless lumber objects which to-day would be of incalculable interest and value.

For these reasons, therefore, we are dependent, for the earlier periods of our subject, upon those illuminated manuscripts and sculptured monuments which preserve examples of the accoutrements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Of these, as far as reliability of date is concerned, the incised monumental brasses and sculptured effigies in our churches are the best guides, because they were produced shortly after the death of the persons they represent, and are therefore more likely to be correct in the details of dress and equipment; and, in addition, they are often portraits of the deceased.

Illuminated manuscripts present more difficulty. The miniature painter of the period was often fantastic in his ideas, and was certainly not an antiquary. Even the giants of the Renaissance, Raphael, Mantegna, Titian, and the rest, saw nothing incongruous in arming St. George in a suit of Milanese plate, or a Roman soldier of the first years of the Christian epoch in a fluted breastplate of Nuremberg make. Religious and historical legends were in those days present and living realities and, to the unlearned, details of antiquarian interest would have been useless for instructive purposes, whereas the garbing of mythical or historical characters in the dress of the period made their lives and actions seem a part of the everyday life of those who studied them.

This being the case, we must use our judgement in researches among illustrated manuscripts, and must be prepared for anachronisms. For example, we find that in the illustrated Froissart in the British Museum, known as the ‘Philip de Commines’ copy,[1] the barrier or ‘tilt’ which separated the knights when jousting is represented in the Tournament of St. Inglevert. Now this tournament took place in the year 1389; but Monstrelet tells us[2] that the tilt was first used at Arras in 1429, that is, some forty years after. This illustrated edition of Froissart was produced at the end of the fifteenth century, when the tilt was in common use; so we must, in this and in other like cases, use the illustrations not as examples of the periods which they record, but as delineations of the manners, customs, and dress of the period at which they were produced.

The different methods of arming were much the same all over Europe; but in England fashions were adopted only after they had been in vogue for some years in France, Italy, and Germany. We may pride ourselves, however, on the fact that our ancestors were not so prone to exaggeration in style or to the over-ornate so-called decoration which was in such favour on the Continent during the latter part of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries.

For a fuller study of this subject Sir Samuel Meyrick’s great work on Ancient Armour is useful, if the student bears in mind that the author was but a pioneer, and that many of his statements have since been corrected in the light of recent investigations, and also that the Meyrick collection which he so frequently uses to illustrate his remarks is now dispersed through all the museums of Europe. Of all the authorities the most trustworthy and most minute and careful in both text and illustrations is Hewitt, whose three volumes on Ancient Armour have been the groundwork of all subsequent works in English. Some of the more recent writers are prone to use Hewitt’s infinite care and research without acknowledging the fact; but they have very seldom improved upon his methods or added to his investigations. For the later periods, which Hewitt has not covered so fully as he has the earlier portion of his subject, the Catalogues Raisonnés of the various museums of England and Europe will assist the student more than any history that could possibly be compiled.

CHAPTER I

THE AGE OF MAIL (1066-1277)

With the Norman Conquest we may be said, in England, to enter upon the iron period of defensive armour. The old, semi-barbaric methods were still in use, but were gradually superseded by the craft of the smith and the metal-worker. This use of iron for defensive purposes had been in vogue for some time on the Continent, for we find the Monk of St. Gall writing bitterly on the subject in his Life of Charlemagne. He says: ‘Then could be seen the Iron Charles, helmed with an iron helm, his iron breast and his broad shoulders defended by an iron breastplate, an iron spear raised in his left hand, his right always rested on his unconquered iron falchion. The thighs, which with most men are uncovered that they may the more easily ride on horseback, were in his case clad with plates of iron: I need make no special mention of his greaves, for the greaves of all the army were of iron. His shield was of iron, his charger iron-coloured and iron-hearted. The fields and open places were filled with iron, a people stronger than iron paid universal homage to the strength of iron. The horror of the dungeon seemed less than the bright gleam of the iron. “Oh the iron, woe for the iron,” was the cry of the citizens. The strong walls shook at the sight of iron, the resolution of old and young fell before the iron.’

The difficulty of obtaining and working metal, however, was such that it was only used by the wealthy, and that sparingly. The more common fashion of arming was a quilted fabric of either linen or cloth, a very serviceable protection, which was worn up to the end of the fifteenth century. Another favourite material for defensive purposes was leather. We read of the shield of Ajax being composed of seven tough ox-hides, and the word ‘cuirass’ itself suggests a leather garment. Now, given either the leather or the quilted fabric, it is but natural, with the discovery and use of iron, that it should have been added in one form or another to reinforce the less rigid material. And it is this reinforcing by plates of metal, side by side with the use of the interlaced chain armour, which step by step brings us to the magnificent creations of the armourer’s craft which distinguish the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Sir Samuel Meyrick[3] leads us into endless intricacies with his theories of the various kinds of defensive armour in use at the time of the Conquest; but these theories must of necessity be based only upon personal opinion, and can in no way be borne out by concrete examples. If we take the pictured representations of armour as our guide we find certain arrangements of lines which lead us to suppose that they indicate some peculiar arrangement of metal upon a fabric. The first and oldest of these varieties is generally called ‘Scale’ or Imbricate armour. We find this represented on the Trajan Column, to give only one of the many examples of its use in very early times. That it was a very pliant and serviceable defence we may judge from the fact that, with some alteration in its application, it formed the distinguishing feature of the