John of Eltham.
It would be easy, from the series of sculptured effigies in relief and monumental brasses, to give a complete chronological view of these various changes which were continually progressing throughout the fourteenth century. But this has already been done in the very accessible works by Stothard, the Messrs. Waller, Mr. Boutell, and Mr. Haines, especially devoted to monumental effigies and brasses. It will be more in accordance with the plan we have laid down for ourselves, if we take from the less known illuminations of MSS. some subjects which will perhaps be less clear and fine in detail, but will have more life and character than the formal monumental effigies.
We must, however, pause to mention some other kinds of armour which were sometimes used in place of armour of steel. And first we may mention leather. Leather was always more or less used as a cheap kind of defence, from the Saxon leather tunic with the hair left on it, down to the buff jerkin of the time of the Commonwealth, and even to the thick leather gauntlets and jack boots of the present Life Guardsman. But at the time of which we are speaking pieces of armour of the same shape as those we have been describing were sometimes made, for the sake of lightness, of cuir bouilli instead of metal. Cuir bouilli was, as its name implies, leather which was treated with hot water, in such a way as to make it assume a required shape; and often it was also impressed, while soft, with ornamental devices. It is easy to see that in this way armour might be made possessing great comparative lightness, and yet a certain degree of strength, and capable, by stamping, colouring, and gilding, of a high degree of ornamentation. It was a kind of armour very suitable for occasions of mere ceremonial, and it was adopted in actual combat for parts of the body less exposed to injury; for instance, it seems to be especially used for the defence of the lower half of the legs. We shall find presently, in the description of Chaucer’s Sire Thopas, the knight adventurous, that “his jambeux were of cuirbouly.” In external form and appearance it would be so exactly like metal armour that it may be represented in some of the ornamental effigies and MSS. drawings, where it has the appearance of, and is usually assumed to be, metal armour. Another form of armour, of which we often meet with examples in drawings and effigies, is one in which the piece of armour appears to be studded, at more or less distant regular intervals, with small round plates. There are two suggestions as to the kind of armour intended. One is, that the armour thus represented was a garment of cloth, silk, velvet, or other textile material, lined with plates of metal, which are fastened to the garment with metal rivets, and that the heads of these rivets, gilt and ornamented, were allowed to be seen powdering the coloured face of the garment by way of ornament. Another suggestion is that the garment was merely one of the padded and quilted armours which we shall have next to describe, in which, as an additional precaution, metal studs were introduced, much as an oak door is studded with iron bolts. An example of it will be seen in the armour of the forearms of King Meliadus in the woodcut on p. 350. Chaucer seems to speak of this kind of defence, in his description of Lycurgus at the great tournament in the “Knight’s Tale,” under the name of coat armour:—
“Instede of cote-armure on his harnais,
With nayles yelwe and bryght as any gold,
He had a bere’s skin cole-blake for old.”
Next we come to the rather large and important series of quilted defences. We find the names of the gambeson, hacqueton, and pourpoint, and sometimes the jacke. It is a little difficult to distinguish one from the other in the descriptions; and in fact they appear to have greatly resembled one another, and the names seem often to have been used interchangeably. The gambeson was a sleeved tunic of stout coarse linen, stuffed with flax and other common material, and sewn longitudinally. The hacqueton was a similar garment, only made of buckram, and stuffed with cotton; stiff from its material, but not so thick and clumsy as the gambeson. The pourpoint was very like the hacqueton, only that it was made of finer material, faced with silk, and stitched in ornamental patterns. The gambeson and hacqueton were worn under the armour, partly to relieve its pressure upon the body, partly to afford an additional defence. Sometimes they were worn, especially by the common soldiers, without any other armour. The pourpoint was worn over the hauberk, but sometimes it was worn alone, the hauberk being omitted for the sake of lightness. The jacke, or jacque, was a tunic of stuffed leather, and was usually worn by the common soldiers without other armour, but sometimes as light armour by knights.
In the first wood-cut on the next page, from the Romance of King Meliadus, we have a figure which appears to be habited in one of these quilted armours, perhaps the hacqueton. There is another figure in the same group, in a similar dress, with this difference—in the first the skirt seems to fall loose and light, in the second the skirt seems to be stuffed and quilted like the body of the garment. At folio 214 of the same Romance is a squire, attendant upon a knight-errant, who is habited in a similar hacqueton to that we have represented; the squires throughout the MS. are usually quite unarmed. In the monumental effigy of Sir Robert Shurland, who was made a knight-banneret in 1300, we seem to have a curious and probably unique effigy of a knight in the gameson. We give a woodcut of it, reduced from Stothard’s engraving. The smaller figure of the man placed at the feet of the effigy is in the same costume, and affords us an additional example. Stothard conjectures that the garment in the effigy of John of Eltham (1334 A.D.), whose vandyked border appears beneath his hauberk, is the buckram of the hacqueton left unstuffed, and ornamentally scalloped round the border. In the MS. of King Meliadus, at f. 21, and again on the other side of the leaf, is a knight, whose red jupon, slit up at the sides, is thrown open by his attitude, so that we see the skirt of mail beneath, which is silvered to represent metal; and beneath that is a scalloped border of an under habit, which is left white, and, if Stothard’s conjecture be correct, is another example of the hacqueton under the hauberk. But the best representation which we have met with of the quilted armours is in the MS. of the Romance of the Rose (Harleian, 4,425), at folio 133, where, in a battle scene, one knight is conspicuous among the blue steel and red and green jupons of the other knights by a white body armour quilted in small squares, with which he wears a steel bascinet and ringed camail. He is engraved on p. 389.
Squire in Hacqueton. Sir Robert Shurland.
And now to turn to a description of some of the MS. illuminations which illustrate this chapter. That on p. 339 is a charming little subject from a famous MS. (Royal 2 B. VII.) of the beginning of the Edwardian period, which will illustrate half-a-dozen objects besides the mere suit of knightly armour. First of all there is the suit of armour on the knight in the foreground, the hooded hauberk and chausses of mail and genouillières, the chapeau de fer, or war helm, and the surcoat, and the shield. But we get also a variety of helmets, different kinds of weapons, falchion and axe, as well as sword and spear, and the pennon attached to the spear; and, in addition, the complete horse trappings, with the ornamental crest which was used to set off the arching neck and tossing head. Moreover, we learn that this variety of arms and armour was to be found in a single troop of men-at-arms; and we see the irregular but picturesque effect which such a group presented to the eyes of the monkish illuminator as it pranced beneath the gateway into the outer court of the abbey, to seek the hospitality which the hospitaller would hasten to offer on behalf of the convent.
This mixture of armour and weapons is brought before us by Chaucer in his description of Palamon’s party in the great tournament in the “Knight’s Tale:”—