Plate LXIV.

Towards the close of the thirteenth century we find an armour offering a new appearance, to which has been given the name of Banded Mail. Notwithstanding much careful consideration, its exact structure has not yet been discovered, though the representations of it are very abundant. For a whole century, manuscript illuminations, monumental brasses, painted windows, royal and baronial seals, metal chasings and sculptures of various kinds, afford us an infinity of examples; in none of which has hitherto been detected the exact evidence either of its material or its construction. Monumental sculptures, from their large size and the careful finish of their details, might have been expected to solve a problem which they only perplex. The effigy[344] here engraved, of a knight of the De Sulney family, exhibits the warrior armed from head to foot in a suit of banded-mail; and in the following woodcut we have given a portion of the armour of this figure, of its real size. The profile view has been copied with particular care, in the hope that it might be of use in determining the structure of this very singular defence. By many writers this fabric has been described as pourpointerie; by others it has been considered as only a conventional mode of representing the ordinary chain-mail. Mr. Kerrich, whose opinions will always be received with, the greatest respect, speaking of the rows of little arcs used to express the latter defence, says: "When there are lines between the rows, whether two or only one, I conceive it means still but the same thing[345]." M. Pottier, in the text to Willemin's Monuments Inédits, does not distinguish the so-called banded-mail from the other, but names it simply "armure de mailles[346]." But it seems difficult to believe that the common chain-mail could be intended, so widely different are the two modes of representation, whether in sculpture or in painting. Observe, for instance, the details—especially the portion in profile—from the effigy at Newton Solney. And in the following subject from the Romance of Meliadus, (Add. MS. 12,228, f. 79,) there seems no assignable reason for marking one figure so differently from the rest, unless the armour itself were of a distinct kind[347].

No. 65.

No. 66.

That the banded defences under consideration were of pourpointing is still more unlikely; for a gamboised garment, whether of velvet, silk, cloth, or whatever material, would, in painted representations, exhibit those various colours which are so lavishly displayed in the other portions of the knightly attire. Yet a careful examination of many hundred figures in illuminated manuscripts has failed in detecting a single instance of positive colour on banded-mail, except such as may be referred to the metals. Green, scarlet, crimson, diaper or ray, never appear. But gold or a golden tincture, silver or white, and grey of various shades, occur continually. And all these seem to indicate a fabric in which metal plays at least a conspicuous part. The examples among vellum-paintings, in which the banding is tinted grey or left white, are so numerous that one can scarcely open a manuscript of the period without finding them. Instances of it in silver may be seen in Cotton MSS., Vitellius, A. xiii., and Nero, D. vi.; in Roy. MS. 20, D. i., and Add. MS. 12,228. On folio 217vo. of the last-named book will be found the figure of a knight whose banded-mail is gilt. The same kind of armour, in gold colour, appears in the windows of Beer Ferrers Church, Devonshire, and of Fulborn Church, Cambridgeshire. See Lysons' Devonshire, p. 326, and Kerrich Collections, Add. MS. 6,730, fol. 61, for faithful copies of these examples. If from the foregoing evidences we derive the belief that the basis of this fabric was metal, from a monument figured in the superb work of Count Bastard, Peintures des Manuscrits, &c., we gather that the lines of arcs were rings; for the fillet that binds the coif round the temples is clearly passed through alternate groups of rings, exactly as in the ordinary mail-hood. The figure is from a French Bible of the beginning of the fourteenth century, and occurs in the seventh number of the Peintures. In fairness we must admit that this example is not altogether inadmissible as an evidence in favour of the theory of common chain-mail. And on that side may be ranged the very curious figure of Offa the First, given in our woodcut, No. [80], from the "Lives of the Two Offas," by Matthew Paris (Cott. MS., Nero, D. i. fol. 7); where the upper part of the warrior's coif is of "banded-mail," while the lower portion is marked in the manner usually adopted to express the ordinary chain-mail.