Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

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.

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.