Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

Another very valuable series of illustrations of Saxon military costume will be found in a MS. of Ælfric’s Paraphrase of the Pentateuch and Joshua, in the British Museum (Cleopatra B. IV.); at folio 25, for example, we have a representation of Abraham pursuing the five kings in order to rescue Lot: in the version of the Saxon artist the patriarch and his Arab servants are translated into a Saxon thane and his house carles, who are represented marching in a long array which takes up two bands of drawing across the vellum page.

Saxon Soldier, in Leather Armour.

The Anglo-Saxon poets let us know that chieftains and warriors wore a body defence, which they call a byrnie or a battle-sark. In the illuminations we find this sometimes of leather, as in the wood-cut here given from the Prudentius which has already supplied us with two illustrations. It is very usually Vandyked at the edges, as here represented. But the epithets, “iron byrnie,” and “ringed byrnie,” and “twisted battle-sark,” show that the hauberk was often made of iron mail. In some of the illuminations it is represented as if detached rings of iron were sewn flat upon it: this may be really a representation of a kind of jazerant work, such as was frequently used in later times, or it may be only an unskilful way of representing the ordinary linked mail.

A document of the early part of the eighth century, given in Mr. Thorpe’s Anglo-Saxon Laws, seems to indicate that at that period the mail hauberk was usually worn only by the higher ranks. In distinguishing between the eorl and the cheorl it says, if the latter thrive so well that he have a helmet and byrnie and sword ornamented with gold, yet if he have not five hydes of land, he is only a cheorl. By the time of the end of the Saxon era, however, it would seem that the men-at-arms were usually furnished with a coat of fence, for the warriors in the battle of Hastings are nearly all so represented in the Bayeux tapestry.

In Ælfric’s Paraphrase, already mentioned (Cleopatra B. IV.), at folio 64, there is a representation of a king clothed in such a mail shirt, armed with sword and shield, attended by an armour-bearer, who carries a second shield but no offensive weapon, his business being to ward off the blows aimed at his lord. We should have given a wood-cut of this interesting group, but that it has already been engraved in the “Pictorial History of England” (vol. i.) and in Hewitt’s “Ancient Armour” (vol. i. p. 60). This king with his shield-bearer does not occur in an illustration of Goliath and the man bearing a shield who went before him, nor of Saul and his armour-bearer, where it would be suggested by the text; but is one of the three kings engaged in battle against the cities of the plain; it seems therefore to indicate a Saxon usage. Another of the kings in the same picture has no hauberk, but only the same costume as the warrior in the wood-cut on the next page.

In the Additional MS. 11,695, in the British Museum, a work of the eleventh century, there are several representations of warriors thus fully armed, very rude and coarse in drawing, but valuable for the clearness with which they represent the military equipment of the time. At folio 194 there is a large figure of a warrior in a mail shirt, a conical helmet, strengthened with iron ribs converging to the apex, the front rib extending downwards, into what is called a nasal, i.e., a piece of iron extending downwards over the nose, so as to protect the face from a sword-cut across the upper part of it. At folio 233 of the same MS. is a group of six warriors, two on horseback and four on foot. We find them all with hauberk, iron helmets, round shields, and various kinds of leg defences; they have spears, swords, and one of the horsemen bears a banner of characteristic shape, i.e., it is a right-angled triangle, with the shortest side applied to the spear-shaft, so that the right angle is at the bottom.

No. 4.

A few extracts from the poem of Beowulf, a curious Saxon fragment, which the best scholars concur in assigning to the end of the eighth century, will help still further to bring these ancient warriors before our mind’s eye.