No. 60.

No. 61.

The forms of the ailette are various: the most frequent is the quadrangular, as in the Ash Church effigy given above, and in this example from Add. MS. 10,293, fol. 58; a book dated in 1316. The round form occurs on the ivory casket engraved in vol. 4 of the Journal of the Archæological Association, and in Plates cxiii. and cxiv. of Carter's Sculpture and Painting. The pentagonal is seen in an illumination of Sloane MS. 3,983, engraved as the frontispiece to Strutt's Dress and Habits; the cruciform, in the figure of a knight from Roy. MS., 2, A. xxii. fol. 219 (our woodcut, No. [62]). And on folio 94vo. of Roy. MS., 14, E. iij. is an example, the only one ever observed by the writer, of a lozenge-formed ailette. It is clear, from the Cross on the shield having the same position as the other, that the ailette is not a square one worn awry.

The size of this appendage differs greatly in different monuments. In the round example of the ivory casket, cited above, it is scarcely larger than the palm of the hand: while, in an illumination of Roy. MS., 20, D. 1, fol. 18vo, it is little less than the ordinary shield of the period. Its position is generally behind the shoulder, or at the side of it: sometimes it appears in front: but too strict an interpretation must not be given to the rude memorials of these times.

The use of the ailette has somewhat perplexed antiquarian writers. The French archæologists of the present day confess that it is "difficile d'en expliquer l'usage[340]." Some writers have considered it as a simply defensive provision: others look upon it as an ensign, to indicate to his followers the place of a leader in the field. Against the supposition that it was merely armorial, may be urged that in many cases it has no heraldic bearing at all: sometimes it has a cross only, sometimes a diaper pattern, and sometimes it is quite blank. See examples of all these varieties in the Tewkesbury glass paintings, the Gorleston brass (Stothard, Pl. li.), and the Buslingthorpe brass (Waller, Pt. 10). In vellum pictures it is often seen worn by knights in the tilt; where the heraldic bearings already exhibited on the shield, crest, and surcoat of the rider, and on the caparisons of the horse, would to no useful purpose be repeated on the ailette. In the case of the Clehongre example, quoted above, the outside knotting of the lace does not seem consistent with the display of armorial distinctions on the wing beneath. In Germany they are called Tartschen (Hefner: Trachten, Pt. 2, Pl. xli.), and their purpose of shields seems most in accordance with the numerous ancient evidences in which they appear. The knights, indeed, not content with their panoply of steel, seem in the course of the middle-ages to have fortified themselves with a complete outwork of shields. Thus we have the ailettes, the shield proper, the garde-bras, or elbow-shield, the shoulder-shield, the Beinschiene, or shield for the legs, the vamplate on the lance, and the steel front of the saddle, which was in fact but another shield for the defence of the knight's body. Referring once more to the Clehongre effigy, it will be observed that, while the "défaut de la cuirasse" (where the arm joins the body) is strengthened in front with a steel roundel, this assailable point is covered at the back of the arm with the ailette. See the Details on Hollis's third plate of this monument. The analogy between these defences and those curious upright pieces of steel on the shoulders, so frequent in the armours of the sixteenth century, will at once be recognised.

Ailettes of a superb construction appear in the Inventory of the effects of Piers Gaveston in 1313: "Item, autres divers garnementz des armes le dit Pieres, ovek les alettes garniz et frettez de perles[341]." They are named also in the Inventory of the goods of Umfrey de Bohun in 1322: "iiij peire de alettes des armes le Counte de Hereford[342]."