armour like the coif of mail, shown on the brass of Sir W. Molineux, appearing in 1548, or the sleeved hauberk in the Dresden Museum which was worn without plate defences for the arms by Herzog August at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1546. Acting on the method adopted in the preceding chapter, we may first consider the materials used during the beginning of the Transition Period, and afterwards we shall show how those materials were made up.

During the fourteenth century iron, leather, whalebone, and quilted fabrics were all employed for defensive purposes. The illustration from the Romance of Alexander (Fig. 9) shows the gambeson still worn under the mail, and the legs are covered in one instance with a metal-studded or pourpointed defence; a second figure wears what appears to be scale armour, while the third has no detail shown upon the legs, which may be an oversight on the part of the artist, or may suggest that plain hose were worn. Iron was used for the mail and scale armour and was also employed in making a pliable defence called Splinted armour, which at a later period became the Brigandine (Plate II).

There are several of these brigandines to be found in the Armouries of England and Europe, but the majority of them date about the middle of the fifteenth century. As will be seen in the illustration, the brigandine was made of small plates of iron or steel overlapping upwards and riveted on to a canvas-lined garment of silk or velvet. The plates were worn on the inside in most cases, and the rivet heads which showed on the silk or velvet face were often gilded, thus producing a very brilliant effect.

Plate II

(Outside.) (Inside.)

Brigandine in the Musée d’Artillerie, Paris.

We find many references to these splinted defences in the Inventories of the period, which form a valuable source of information on the subject of details of armour. The Inventory of Humphrey de Bohun,[9] Earl of Hereford, taken in 1322, gives:—‘Une peire de plates coverts de vert velvet.’ Again, in one of the Inventories of the Exchequer, 1331,[10] is noted:—‘Une peire de plates covert de rouge samyt.’ The Inventory of Piers Gaveston, dated 1313, a document full of interesting details, has[11]:—‘Une peire de plates enclouez et garniz d’argent.’ The ‘pair of plates’ mentioned in these records refers to the front and back defences. In the accounts of payments by Sir John Howard we find in the year 1465, 11s. 8d. paid for 20,000 ‘Bregander nayles’.[12] Brass was employed for decorative purposes on the edges of the hauberk, or was fashioned into gauntlets, as may be seen in the gauntlets of the Black Prince, preserved at Canterbury. Chaucer writes in the ‘Rime of Sir Thopas’:—

His swerdes shethe of yvory,
His helm of laton bright.

Laton, or latten, was a mixed metal, much resembling brass, used at this period for decorative purposes.

Whalebone was employed for gauntlets and also for swords used in the tournament. Froissart uses the words ‘gands de baleine’ in describing the equipment of the troops of Philip von Arteveld at the Battle of Rosbecque.

Quilted garments were still worn, either as the sole defence or as a gambeson under the mail. As late as the year 1460 we find regulations of Louis XI of France ordering these coats of defence to be made of from 30 to 36 folds of linen.[13]

Leather, either in its natural state or boiled and beaten till it could be moulded and then allowed to dry hard, was frequently used at this period for all kinds of defensive armour.

In Chaucer’s ‘Rime of Sir Thopas’, from which we have quoted before, occur the words, ‘His jambeux were of quirboilly.’ The jambeaux were coverings for the legs. This quirboilly, cuirbully, or cuirbouilli, when finished was an exceedingly hard substance, and was, on account of its lightness as compared to metal, much used for tournament armour and for the Barding or defence for the horse. In the Roll of Purchases for the Windsor Park Tournament, held in 1278, mention is made of cuirasses supplied by Milo the Currier, who also furnished helms of the same material.[14] In the Inventory of Sir Simon Burley, beheaded in 1338, we find under ‘Armure de guerre’:—‘Un palet (a headpiece) de quierboylle.’ There is a light leather helmet of the ‘morion’ type, dated sixteenth century, in the Zeughaus at Berlin.

Banded mail still appears in drawings or on monuments up to the end of the fourteenth century.

We may now turn to the making up of these varied materials, and will endeavour, step by step, to trace the gradual evolution of the full suit of plate from the first additions of plate defence to mail till we find that the mail practically disappears, or is only worn in small portions where plate cannot be used.

Fig. 11. From Roy. MS. 16. G. vi, f. 387, fourteenth century.		Fig. 12. Bib. Nat., Paris, Lancelot du Lac, fourteenth century.

Setting aside the plastron de fer, which, as has been noticed, is seldom shown in representations of armour, we find the first additional defence was the Poleyne or knee-cop. We must suppose that there was good reason for thus reinforcing the mail defence on this part of the body. Probably this was due to the fact that the shield became shorter at this period, and also because the position of the wearer when mounted exposed the knee, a very delicate piece of anatomy, to the attacks of the foot-soldier (