There is a very amusing picture of Harold and his companions proceeding, in company with William of Normandy, to the conquest of Britanny. They came to the little river Coësnon, where, the tide being out, the river-bed was an expanse of slippery mud. The prudent ones dismounted and led their horses across; but one horse is represented coming down and the rider falling over his head, while his shield flies through the air attached to his neck by the guige [Bruce's Bayeux Tapestry, p. 61]. This "guige" was another most valuable improvement which probably came from Sicily with the new shape of shields. It was a leather strap sufficiently long to let it hang from the neck, and so, when two hands were required to wield a battle axe or heavy weapon, the shield could be flung loose and recovered again. I am aware that in Cotton MS. Cleopatra, cviii, written early in the eleventh century, a group of Saxon horsemen is represented on a journey, and the round shield of one hangs from his back, looking like the beehive which the knight in Alice in Wonderland thought might some day prove useful. It has, it will be seen, an absurdly awkward appearance [Hewitt, vol. i, p. 77; Cutts, p. 313].
The principle, then, of the kite-shaped shields which we see in the eleventh century was that, with as much compactness as possible, they should protect the body with the wider part, while the extended point was sufficient to defend the leg; and following so nearly the shape of the body the knight had his sword-arm free. They seem to have been five feet long or even more, for they served as a bier whereon to carry away the slain or wounded.[2] It is amusing to see Goliath represented with a kite-shaped shield, while the little David on the top of him tries to wield his huge sword. This appears in a Latin Bible of 1170. [Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 14789, fo. 10; engraved, Hewitt, i, 134.]
A remarkable recrudescence of old ideas both in the shapes and sizes of shields occurs from time to time as we proceed. At times they seem to have been nearly as much as five feet long—and then, as protective mail became more perfect, and probably the varying style of fighting required it, they were greatly reduced. King David and his followers appear [Cutts, p. 335], on their expedition against Nabal, in full mail of the end of the thirteenth century, with shields scarcely eighteen inches long—just sufficient to prevent the point of a lance reaching some flat or dangerous or vulnerable spot from whence it would not readily glide off, or to receive the blows of an assailant's sword. Nor can we suppose that one scale of size, or indeed one exact shape of shield, reigned universal at any one period; every knight had his own fancies as to which best suited him; and at length we find many illuminations of the sixteenth century in which knights appear jousting and fighting without any shields at all. They were hung up, to show the heraldry, on their tents, and the massive body-armour alone was considered sufficient protection.
These few explanatory words are necessary to introduce upon the scene the various shaped shields occurring during the centuries which follow. While considering these variations we must bear in mind that they are strongly marked into two great divisions, viz., before the sixteenth century, when shields were in actual use and any alteration in their outline was considered to be an improvement to meet some freshly noticed want; this will be further referred to as instances occur. During and after the sixteenth century, shapes were selected in an arbitrary way, as a matter of taste alone; and hence earlier examples were sometimes exactly adopted, while at other times details and alterations were introduced, just to suit the fancy of the purchaser or artist and the conventional style of the times.
As references for what has already been said, I would name the works of Meyrick and Hewitt, Planché's work on Costume, Strutt's Horda, and a learned paper on shields, by Sir Frederick Madden, in Archæologia, vol. xxiv. This, although primarily discussing the chessmen found in the Island of Lewis, contains the results of wide researches as to shields in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There is also a valuable and well illustrated book, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, by A. L. Cutts, published by Messrs. Virtue and Co., 1872.
The principal authority for the accurate dating and classifying of shields is the immense number of mediæval seals attached to deeds and charters, and with dates exactly known. If it were practicable to arrange in chronological sequence illustrations of a sufficient number of these, we should at once have the classification of dates, styles, and shapes, which would be so very valuable, and which it is the attempt of this paper to display. Hence it is that to the end of the fifteenth century seals form so large a part of the evidences submitted. The certainty of such records is unsurpassed: we have a parchment, itself dated, or the date of which in very early instances can be otherwise closely ascertained; and attached to this we have a seal with the shield; and, to make it perfectly certain, we have the owner's name inscribed around it, and so we know he is not using some one else's seal, found or come down to him from earlier times. Such instances frequently occur, and are at once in this way detected. There are instances where the same seal, acquired in early life, continued to be used for over fifty years; but that is the extent to which such valuable proofs can wander from the actual prevailing type and date.
Besides seals, the many invaluable illuminations in the British Museum and Bodleian Libraries, and in the great Continental Libraries, furnish numberless pictures of knights and their accoutrements, contemporaneously executed, and with the most manifest exactness in every detail. Many of these have been engraved in our popular literature, as well as in the learned works named above; but to enable the mind to form correct conclusions these should be all cut out and arranged in groups of exact dates, or drawn as they are in a student's note book.