British and Foreign Arms & Armour

by Charles Henry Ashdown

Fig. 309.—Lance-rest, 1480. (Wallace Collection.)

Until about the year 1460 the sword was worn at the left side suspended by a narrow band passing over the right hip, as in the Surcoatless Period, but after the above date it appears upon brasses and monumental effigies in front of the body, with the point slightly inclined to the left as a rule, but sometimes hanging perpendicularly. It has a singularly short and ill-proportioned hilt, with a much-swollen grip and a pommel pear-shaped or circular, while the quillons are straight, with a slight droop at the ends towards the blade. The lance-rest was added in the latter half of the century, and is shown projecting from the breastplate in many brasses. Upon some existing suits of the period and later the rest is capable of being folded up when not in use, and kept in place in both positions by a spring. The lance-rest shown in [Fig. 309] dates from 1480, and has a strut or support beneath it to aid in bearing the weight of the lance.

Fig. 310.—German tilting armour, 1480, from the Collection in the Museum at Vienna.

Tilting Armour.—From the very earliest times since man bore arms he has engaged in friendly contest with others, not only as a means of recreation and engendering mutual respect, but it was readily recognised that the only way to obtain skill in deadly combat was to constantly practise the art of war in the time of peace. It was also natural and proper that these friendly combats should be governed by rules and regulations whereby the minimum of risk should be run, and so avoid the possibility of turning a manly pastime from a source of enjoyment into a combat of deadly earnestness. Although history records that the latter result really occurred at times, it was the exception that proved the rule, and tilting was part and parcel of a knight’s everyday life, and the glories of the tournament the hoped-for goal. During the early part of the Middle Ages single encounters, and also the mêlée, were fought in the usual harness which the knight was in the habit of wearing in battle, and no other precautions were taken excepting the use of blunted spears and restricting the use of the sword to the edge only. As time advanced, however, and armour became heavier and more cumbersome, the being hurled out of the saddle by a dexterous thrust of an opponent’s lance was a matter of moment, seriously endangering life and limb, whereas it had formerly been deemed comparatively trivial when the defences were of mail or textile fabrics. Hence as time progressed it became necessary to have special armour for the tilt, or to add such extra defences to the fighting armour that the increased weight promised security in the saddle, and the multiplicity of plates between himself and the weapons of his opponent practically guaranteed immunity from harm. This idea, once established, eventually led to the result that a knight armed for the joust could not mount to the saddle, but had prominent portions of this armour fitted when mounted. He became an apparently impregnable tower of steel, immovably fixed in a huge saddle. The student of armour must carefully discriminate between these tilting suits and actual war harness; the former were never used upon the field of battle, although at times we know that certain of the tilt defences were borrowed in order to reinforce the usual harness. The fifteenth century witnessed the inception and almost the culmination of the idea, and a few of the tilting suits of the latter part of that era are still extant. [Fig. 310] represents the upper portion of a suit of tilting armour from the collection in the Museum in Vienna; it dates from 1480, and is eminently typical of the period. The half-suit, No. 21 ([Fig. 418]) in the Wallace Collection, is very similar to the suit illustrated. The great tilting heaume is composed of three plates of varying thickness, ranging from nearly half an inch in the principal portions of the front to an eighth of an inch in the back. A comb, convex in section, runs down the centre of the crown, and radiating flutings are seen to ornament the back. The neck of the heaume is firmly fixed to the backplate, and three screws serve the same purpose in front for the breastplate. The occularium, formed by the aperture between the crown plate and the front, appears somewhat large when seen in this position, but remembering that the lance is held considerably lower than the heaume it is possible that an opening half an inch or even less would be presented to it. It was quite possible to have comparative freedom of movement for the head inside the heaume, which was invariably furnished with a quilted lining.

PLATE XXI*