Plate II.—Second suit of Sir Henry Lee, master of the armoury, reduced fac-simile of No. 19 in the Armourer’s Album, in the South Kensington Museum.
It would be impossible within the limits of this work, and of little interest, to endeavour to describe the constant changes, often due to individual caprice, that occur; for when groups of soldiery are represented, even long after the Transition, it is rare to find two individuals accoutred in precisely the same manner. We may rest assured, however, that each piece as it successively appears was introduced to meet some new perfection in the weapons of attack, or to cope with some new tactics, in short, to protect some part that had been proved by the practical experience of armed strife to be vulnerable. These additions were naturally subject to modification, according to the passing dictates of military display, or the changing fashions of civilian dress.
Fig. 10 is taken from one of the English MSS. most valuable for the knightly costume of the Transition. The armour is in this MS. almost entirely mail, of the banded variety, worn beneath a surcoat, which is hardly ever emblazoned. Plate-armour is only represented by the kneecaps, with an occasional roundel and shoulder-plate. The great helm, always with a fan-crest, the chapelle-de-fer worn beneath or above the mail coiffe, the bassinet, often visored, and the broad-brimmed round helmet are worn, except in jousts, quite indifferently.
Fig. 10.—Melée.
From the early fourteenth-century English MS. known as Queen Mary’s Psalter, 2 B. vii., in the British Museum. The combatants are in banded mail and long surcoats, and some wear the great helms with fan-crests. Ailettes and knee-caps are the only plate-armour visible. Some of the horses have long housings and also bear the fan-crest.
The head, being the most vulnerable part of the body and the most difficult to protect, received the greatest amount of attention. The great helm, with bands and cross-cuts for the sight, continued in use throughout the Transition, but with a sugar-loaf crown, and rendered less insupportable in the reign of Edward I. by transferring the weight from the head to the shoulders. It was occasionally of brass—Chaucer mentions the knight’s “helm of latoun bright,” a metal used so far back as Henry I.—and much more frequently of cuir-bouilli, as in the tournament at Windsor in 1278, when twelve of the thirty-eight knights had gilded helms, and were called digniores. There can be no doubt, however, that a helm of Poitou steel was even then the surest defence.
