The limbs began to be definitely protected over the mail in the second half of the thirteenth century. Effigies and manuscript illustrations of that date commonly represent globose knee-caps, sometimes ridged down the front, and usually gilt. In the fourteenth century they are always present and frequently treated very decoratively, with shields, roundels, scalloped edges, etc. The technical name for these appendages is “Genouillière,” or “knee-cap.” Subsidiary plates often appear below the knee, and sometimes above it, and are continued under the mail.
The greave was a rigid gaiter fitting at first only over the front of the leg below the knee, but afterwards enveloping it; and it was either of metal or cuir-bouilli. When seen on English fourteenth-century monuments it usually seems to be of steel fitting closely over the mail, and laced or buckled at the back, but at times it is so richly decorated as to suggest cuir-bouilli. Greaves are usually omitted on early monuments, and are only commonly seen when they had become an integral part of the suit of armour. As yet they were not habitually worn except in battle, and knights were not at this time represented in their effigies accoutred for war, but in ordinary military costume. Thus the effigy of Aymer de Valence shows no plate armour, except the genouillière; but the two mounted figures of the canopy present the visored bassinet, the high gorget, the arm and elbow plates, the tubular greaves and steel sollerets for the feet. The tubular leg defence is not seen in earlier representations, and its introduction may coincide with the first recorded appearance in the field of large bodies of Welsh armed with long knives. It was usually hinged and buckled, and becomes more general as the century advances. This appears in the inventory of Piers Gaveston, 1313, who possessed three pairs of such greaves. Monstrelet relates that the bailiff of Evreux, sallying out without his greaves, had his leg badly broken by the kick of a horse.
Defences of plate armour for the feet are called sollerets, and are first, if somewhat indistinctly, visible in the small equestrian figure on the canopy of the tomb of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, in Westminster Abbey, the mail not being continued over the front of the feet as in the older effigies. One of the small equestrian figures of the adjoining tomb of Aymer de Valence has the feet, though mutilated, distinctly covered with small rectangular plates, arranged longitudinally in continuation of the greaves. In the D’Abernon and other brasses of the second quarter of the fourteenth century laminar plates are fastened across the upper part of the foot. Other varieties are the scaled sollerets of the De Cheney brass, 1375; the De Sulney brass, with sollerets of laminar plates, and one large plate over the instep; the Littlebury effigy, with longitudinal plates like those of De Valence. In the effigy of John of Eltham, 1334, we seem for the first time to meet with the whole foot visible incased in plate, as it continued to be during the rest of the century. In the Warwick collection a pair of sollerets are made each of one piece like sabots. The long curved sollerets with pointed toes of the second half of the fourteenth century are called pouleynes or poulaines, from the souliers à la Polaine, and differ slightly from those known as Cracowes, introduced by Richard II. from Bohemia. There are two fine pointed sollerets at Warwick, one measuring twenty-five inches from toe to heel, or with the spur thirty-two and a half inches. Another beautifully-made one attached to leg armour has the plates scalloped along the edges, and is attributed to Edward, son of Henry VI.
Fig. 16.—Effigy of the Black Prince on his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. From the cast in the Crystal Palace, Sydenham.
The gilt spur was the honorific and distinguishing badge of the knight, and was put on in the ceremony of investiture, and hacked off by the king’s cook if the knight was formally degraded. An immense spoil of gilt spurs fell to the victors after the battle of Courtrai. Both the goad and rowel forms were in use throughout the century, and when knights habitually dismounted to fight, they were taken off. Froissart mentions instances where they were fixed in the ground like caltrops. The extravagantly long, rowelled spurs of Henry VI.’s time must have been peculiarly inconvenient.
No great time could well have elapsed before similar defences of plate were found necessary to protect the shoulders and elbows, which were scarcely less vulnerable than the legs. The shoulder-pieces, however, are rarely visible in illustrations and effigies, being much concealed by the surcoat. The earliest arm-defence is in the form of an elbow-guard, and appears in the effigy at Salisbury, date about 1260, consisting of one cupped rosette over another. Elbow-guards are more commonly seen in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, when they consist of cups and discs, or both combined, the latter occasionally spiked. The equestrian figures of the De Valence monument, already mentioned, show in one case gilt rosettes on the shoulders and elbows, and in the other the forearms sheathed in plate. John of Eltham, 1334, has a roundel on the elbow, with articulated plates beneath. In the Ifield effigy the arms are shown by Stothard completely sheathed, and with shoulder and elbow roundels bearing embossed lions’ heads. Plain roundels, rosettes, shells, or lion masks were worn on the shoulders, and articulated plates are seen between 1320 and 1350. The singular and exaggerated plates known as ailettes, picturesque objects which rose above the shoulders like epaulettes, were as useless apparently as the shoulder-knots of the present day. They first appear on the scene in the Windsor tournament, 1278, and disappear in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. They are of many shapes and sizes, and are well seen in our illustration ([Fig. 10]) from Queen Mary’s Psalter, in an elegant brass in Weaver’s Funeral Monuments, as well as in many others, and in several stained-glass windows. Usually they bear the armorial bearings of the owner, though those of Piers Gaveston, 1311, were “frettez de perles.”
Mail gloves continued to be worn, though with divided fingers, during the first part of the fourteenth century. The first effigy to show any change is that of a Whatton, engraved by Stothard, of the time of Edward II. Gloves of leather were sometimes worn between 1311 and 1360, as well as others of whalebone, metal studs and splintwork, iron scales and brass. Plate-armour gauntlets first appear towards the middle of the century with articulated fingers and a broad plate for the back of the hand and wrist; whilst a steel cuff, sometimes articulated, was shortly afterwards added. They are at times spiked, or with gads like knuckle-dusters, as in the case of the Black Prince, and frequently richly jewelled. The jewelled example given from the effigy of Sir Thomas Cawne, of the time of Edward III., is reproduced from Stothard’s drawing. The other is from the monument of the Earl of Westmoreland, of the first years of Henry VI. Gauntlets are constantly represented as gilt in MSS. of these periods.