The Defensive Armour and the Weapons and Engines of War of Mediæval Times, and of the "Renaissance."

Transcriber’s Note
The cover was created by Transcriber, using text and artwork from the orignal book, and placed in the Public Domain.
Fig. 1.—Transitional Gothic Suit at Munich.
THE DEFENSIVE ARMOUR AND THE WEAPONS AND ENGINES OF WAR OF MEDIÆVAL TIMES, AND OF THE “RENAISSANCE.”
BY Robert Coltman Clephan, OF SOUTHDENE TOWER, GATESHEAD.
With 51 Illustrations from Specimens in his own and in other English Collections, and also from others in some of the Great Collections of Europe.
London: Walter Scott, Limited, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1900.
This volume has grown out of some “notes” printed in the Archæologia Æliana in 1898, and added to as any new facts and lights presented themselves to me. The text is compressed as much as possible, with a view to publishing at a moderate cost; and as a more general interest in arms and armour is decidedly growing, I venture to hope that this volume, however imperfect, may supply a want, and that it does not contain too many manifest errors and inaccuracies. The subject is treated chronologically, and no further detail entered into than seemed necessary for presenting it in a consecutive and concrete form.
All students, myself among the number, owe much to those experts whose original research and delineation of nice points of detail go to make history in the several branches of my subject, and it is to be regretted that more of them do not undertake further comprehensive work.
Defensive armour is the section I am most conversant with, and it is perhaps the one affording the most concrete materials for chronological classification and analysis.
The question of the weapons of the “middle ages” and of the “renaissance,” their chronology, description and classification, is far from being in a satisfactory state. There are no books dealing with the subject as a whole, and many of the “notes” and “papers” I have seen spread over many years are, most of them, very sectional and fragmentary in their scope and character. Technical terms vary exceedingly among the different writers, and some more generally intelligible codification is very desirable. International it cannot be, as Germany naturally has her own terms, while those of England are perhaps as necessarily mixed up with Norman-French.