The flat kite-shield is not always to be identified in the drawings of the time, because the shadeless outlines of the limners may pass for either flat or bowed surfaces. But that some at least of those in the Bayeux tapestry were flat, seems clear from the soldiers using them as trays on which to set the cups and dishes of their "Prandium." (See Plate xi.) Ivory carvings also shew the flat kite-shield: the Isle of Lewis chessmen afford good examples.

As we have seen from the above passage of Anna Comnena, the old Northern fashion of the boss or umbo was still occasionally retained; but such an adjunct to a horseman's target seems rather for ornament than use. The bossed kite-shield occurs in the enamel of Geoffrey Plantagenet; in the pyx named above; and in Harl. MS. 2895, fol. 82.

GREAT SEAL OF KING STEPHEN.

No. 42.

In lieu of the convex boss, the shield has sometimes a projecting spike; as in the great seal of King Stephen, here given; and in the first seal of Richard I. It occurs also in the seals of William de Romara (temp. Hen. I.), in the office of the Duchy of Lancaster, and of a Curzun (Cotton Charter, V. 49).

About the middle of the twelfth century appears the triangular shield,—a form obtained by reducing the arched top of the kite to a straight, or nearly straight, line. This variety also was either bowed or flat; and though the earliest examples are as tall as the kite-shields of the eleventh century, the triangular target soon became much reduced in its height. The form of this defence, both the flat and the bowed kind, may be seen in the seals of Henry II. and Richard I. (cuts [1] and [44]), the figures from Hefner's Trachten, (cut [35]), and those from Harleian Roll, Y. 6 (cut [32]).