Plate III.—First suit of Sir Christopher Hatton, Captain of the Guard, and subsequently Lord Chancellor. Reduced fac-simile of No. 15 in the Armourer’s Album in the South Kensington Museum.
The knight’s dress for war now consisted, in addition to any ordinary civilian underclothing, of a more or less complete suit of gambeson or quilted material, sometimes called the haketon, as in Chaucer’s Sir Thopas:—
Next his shert an haketon
And over that an habergeon,
And over that a fin hauberk
Was all ywrought of Jeweswork,
Ful strong it was of plate;
And over that his cote-armoure.
The habergeon is the mail in this case, and the hauberk is of plate or splint armour, while the cote-armoure is the surcoat, possibly thickly padded, as in the still-existing surcoat of the Black Prince. In the mutilated effigy at Sandwich the thick quilted gambeson is distinctly seen at the knee and wrist underlying the mail, while the fine hauberk of plate overlies it, and the surcoat is worn over all. The effigy at Ash shows the plate armour, under the surcoat, fashioned in the curious armadillo-like Jazerant or brigandine form, with an upper gambeson under it, as well as the usual second gambeson under the mail. That two separate quilted defences were worn at this time is supported by the De Crell brass, 1325, the D’Abernon brass, 1327, and the Ifield and John of Eltham brasses, 1334. The colours of these various garments, the edges of which were allowed to show one above the other, were no doubt effectively contrasted, while the edges of the mail, as we have seen, were pinked, vandyked, or scalloped and gilt or finished with brass rings, while the plate-armour finishes most commonly in a fringe-like arrangement of small vertical plates.
