Plate XX.
And the Saxon Chronicle tells us, in recounting the defeat of Anlaf in 937, how King Athelstan and his heroes
"the board-walls clove:
and hewed the war-lindens."
Leather was sometimes used in the construction of shields, as we learn from the Laws of Æthelstan, which forbid the employment of sheepskins for this purpose under a penalty of thirty shillings. In an example from the cemetery at Linton Heath, Cambridgeshire, the leather covering seemed to have been stretched over the iron umbo as well as over the wooden surface of the shield[126]. The edge was protected by a rim of metal. Portions of these rims have been found in the graves, both in England and on the continent; and as they present segments of circles, become of use in determining the shape of the shields themselves. In the Museum of Schwerin is an example of the metal rim which is complete: it is circular, and the central boss is also present.
The oval shield appears in a few examples only. One was found among the graves explored at Oberflacht, in Suabia; another is figured by Silvestre, (vol. i. pl. cxliv.) from a Longobardic miniature of the eleventh century; and a third occurs in the Bayeux Tapestry, Plate xvi. The surface of the Northern shields was painted in various fanciful devices, sometimes heightened with gilding. And, as Christianity was embraced by the various Northern tribes, the cross became a frequent decoration. The encomiast of Queen Emma, in describing the fleet of Canute the Great, says: "Erant ibi scutorum tot genera, ut crederis adesse omnium populorum agmina. Si quando sol illis jubar immiscerit radiorum, hinc resplenduit fulgor armorum, illinc vero flamma dependentium scutorum[127]."
Among the devices, there is nothing of a heraldic character, and even as late as the time of the Bayeux Tapestry, as Stothard has well remarked, "we do not find any particular or distinguished person twice bearing the same device[128]."
In the accompanying figure from Cotton MS., Cleopatra, C. viii., we observe that the Anglo-Saxon horseman carried his shield, when not in use, slung at his back. The knights of the fourteenth century carried their helmets in the same manner, as may be seen in the fine manuscript of the Roman du Roi Meliadus, Additional MSS., 12,228. Besides the ordinary Northern shields, we sometimes find them represented of so large a size as to cover the whole person. In Harleian MS. 2,908, fol. 53, are two such, but perhaps mere exaggerations of the draughtsman. Shields of this kind were, however, certainly in use in the East at an early date, and may be seen in Egyptian, Assyrian, and Indian monuments[129].