GREAT SEAL OF KING JOHN.

No. 52.

The usual Body-armour of the knightly order was, in the early part of the thirteenth century, of interlinked chain-mail; but, in the second half of the century, portions of plate appear, in the form of shoulder-pieces, elbow-pieces, and knee-pieces. The chain-mail was of hammered iron, the art of wire-drawing not being found till about the middle of the next age. Other materials were occasionally employed for defensive purposes: leather, quilting, scale and jazerant-work, and, at the close of the century, a kind of armour which has been named Banded-mail, but of which the structure has not been exactly ascertained. There can be little doubt that, among the more humble troops, the Coustillers and the Ribauds, every kind of defensive material was in use which these men could obtain: a pectoral and a helmet of some sort were almost indispensable, to protect them from the downward flight of the arrows, which played so principal a part, whether in the field or the siege. The knights themselves, indeed, did not attempt a uniform costume: on the contrary, it is often made a reproach to them, that each endeavoured to outvie the other in the magnificence of his apparel. On rare occasions we find a band of cavaliers who exhibit the marvel of a similar equipment. When Richard, earl of Gloucester, visited the Pope, in 1250, "he travelled through the kingdom of France accompanied by the Countess, his wife, and his eldest son, Henry, with a numerous suite, and attended by a large retinue, in great pomp, consisting of forty knights equipped in new accoutrements, all alike, and mounted on beautiful horses, bearing new harness, glittering with gold, and with five wagons and fifty sumpter-horses; so that he presented a wonderful and honourable show to the sight of the astonished French beholders[328]."

The usual series of knightly garments was the tunic, the gambeson, the hauberk, the chausses, the chausson, and the surcoat. With these are found various accessories: the ailettes, coudières, poleyns, and greaves.

The Tunic has already been seen in the first seal of Richard I., and other monuments. It again appears in this curious group, part of a martyrdom of Thomas à Becket, from Harl. MS. 5102, fol. 32, a work of the beginning of the thirteenth century (overleaf.) It is found also in our woodcut No. [63], from Add. MS. 17,687, an example of the close of the century.

No. 53.

The Gambeson, that quilted garment which we have seen was worn as an additional defence beneath the hauberk of chain-mail, is in view in the monumental effigy from Haseley church, Oxfordshire, (woodcut [46],) a figure seemingly of the middle of this century. It is again very clearly shewn in our woodcut No. [59], an effigy in Ash church, near Sandwich. In both these examples the vertical lines of quilting are plainly expressed by the sculptor. Ducange, in his Observations on the History of St. Louis, cites an account of the year 1268, which includes "Expensæ pro cendatis et bourra ad Gambesones[329]." These might, however, have been the Gambesons that formed of themselves the body-armour of the soldier. It is very clearly distinguished as a horseman's garment in a passage of the Statutes of Frejus, in 1235; where also we see the gambeson alone accorded to the foot-fighter: "Militem sine equo armato intelligimus armatum auspergoto et propuncto (with hauberk and gambeson) et scuto: peditem armatum intelligimus armatum scuto et propuncto seu aspergoto." The Chronicon Colmariense, under the year 1298, is still more explicit: "Armati reputabantur qui galeas ferreas in capitibus habebant, et qui wambasia, id est, tunicam spissam ex lino et stuppa, vel veteribus pannis consutam, et desuper camisiam ferream."