A further evidence of this additional arming of the breast may be derived from the present practice of the East, where quilted coats-of-fence have a lining of iron plates at that part only. In the museum of the United Service Institution may be seen Chinese armours of this construction.

No. 29.

Though from written testimonies we learn that the fabrics already enumerated were in use, and that the materials of the defences were iron, leather, horn, and various kinds of quilting, it is by no means easy to identify these structures in the pictorial monuments of the day. Nothing perhaps can more strongly mark this fact, than the diversity of interpretation that has been given to the armours in the Bayeux tapestry by some of the latest and most critical investigators of the subject. Von Leber sees in them a contrivance of leather and metal bosses: "ein Lederwamms mit aufgenähten Metallscheiben oder Metallbukeln[189]." M. Allou attires the warrior in a "vêtement particulier formé d'anneaux ou de mailles de fer, ou bien de petites pièces de même métal assemblées à la manière des tuiles ou des écailles de poisson[190]." In the Bulletin Monumental of the Société Française, vol. xi., page 519, we have: "On croit distinguer, d'après l'indication de la broderie, des disques en métal appliqués sur une jaque de cuir." Mr. Kerrich[191] considers the coats marked with rounds as chain-mail. M. de Caumont has remarked that "in the Bayeux tapestry some of the figures are in chain-mail, and others in a kind of armour composed apparently of metallic discs sewn to a leathern jaque[192]." In the following we have collected the various modes of indicating the armour in this tapestry, and it must be confessed that to appropriate each is no easy task. It is indeed rather from a comparison with numerous other monuments, than from the testimony of these examples alone, that one is able to form any opinion as to the fabrics intended; and even at last the conclusion must be doubtful, and may be erroneous. From analogous representations of various dates, however, it seems likely that the figures 1 and 2 are intended for interlinked chain-mail; Nos. 3 and 4 for jazerant-work (armour formed of small plates fastened by rivets to a garment of cloth or canvas); Nos. 5 and 6 appear to be plain quilted defences; No. 7 seems only a rude attempt to represent the quilted coif; No. 8 is one of many examples where different markings are used on the same garment. In some instances, the markings copied above are so strangely intermixed in the same dress, that one is led to doubt if, in any case, each differing pattern is intended to represent a different kind of armour.

If from the tapestries we turn to the seals of this period, we shall find a similar difficulty in appropriating the armours represented. The modes of marking the defences are four. One of these is a sort of honeycomb-work, formed by a number of small, shallow, circular apertures, leaving a raised line running round their edges, so as to give a reticulated appearance to the surface. See woodcuts [42] and [43]. This texture seems to represent interlinked chain-mail. A second mode consists of a series of lines crossing each other, so as to form a trellis-work of lozenges.

GREAT SEAL OF KING STEPHEN.

No. 30.