1. A complete suit of mail, with coif and mufflers, late twelfth century, said to have been found in a coffin in Goring Church.
2. A thirteenth-century suit, with reinforcing plates, said to have been found with the other.
It does not appear that any special study of mail has been undertaken, or that any good collection of mail has been formed, nor have the many varieties been arranged chronologically in the order in which they appeared. Materials for such a study exist, though not very abundantly, in the Tower, the British Museum, the collection at Woolwich and Dover Castle, the Armourers’ Hall, Warwick Castle, Parham, and in other private collections, and from these and the effigies of mailed knights it can be seen that an almost endless variety exists, not only in the sizes of the links, which vary from ⅙ to ¾ of an inch in diameter, but in the sections of the wire used, which may be round, flat, triangular, trapeziform, quadrate, polygonal, etc. Nor is there less diversity in the method of closing the rings, which was accomplished either by welding, single or double riveting, with a flattening and more or less overlapping of the links, soldering or merely butting. Again, there are many ways of arranging the links, producing mail of very different weights, either double or single, as well as mail in which certain parts are stronger than the rest. In European mail four links are usually made to pass through a centre one, though this is not an invariable rule. The statement in Beckman’s History of Inventions, that wire-drawing was invented in the fourteenth century, was held for a long time to furnish a safe date, but two Corporations of wire-drawers occur in Etienne Boileau’s Paris Livres des Mestiers, in the middle of the thirteenth century, and the art is actually of unknown antiquity. The mail, we read, was kept bright by barreling, but does not appear to have presented much scope for decoration. The Edda speaks of a byrnie of gold, and there are other allusions to gilded mail, and we find hauberks scalloped at the extremities, and finished off with rings of brass.
Two suits of mail (see [Fig. 3]), illustrated in the catalogue of the loan collection of Ironmongers’ Hall in 1861, now in the possession of Mr. J. E. Gardner, F.S.A., are formed of unriveted links, the ends of the rings being merely butted. Their authenticity has therefore been questioned. The description of them printed in 1861 was to the effect that they had been found in a chest or in a vault of a church in Oxfordshire. In the manuscript catalogue of the collection at Parham is a note to the effect that they were found in stone coffins built in the wall of the church at Goring, Berks, supposed to be coffins of the Beche or De Beche family, and contained skeletons, a third suit having been destroyed except the hood, which is now at Parham. However this may be, the larger suit affords a good representation of the mailed figure of the end of the twelfth, and the small one of that of the thirteenth century, with reinforcing pieces of plate. The possibility of their having been made for lying in state or funerals deserves perhaps a passing note, especially in view of their respective dimensions; and it is in any case very questionable whether the prices paid for them would have remunerated the labour of producing forgeries. Another hauberk of large size was found in Phœnix Park, Dublin, thirty years ago, but a silver badge of an O’Neil found with it showed it to have been buried not earlier than the middle of the fifteenth century. In the thirteenth century the curious and well-known banded mail appears on effigies and other representations, which Mr. J. G. Waller, F.S.A., regards as caused by the passing of a leather thong through each alternate row of rings, for the sake of extra strength. This variety may have originated with the single thong passed through the links of the coif over the forehead and below the knee, seen in early effigies like that of William Longespée ([Fig. 4]) at Salisbury.
Fig. 4.—Mail coif, flat-topped, with leather thong.
From the effigy of William Longespée, son of Henry II. by Fair Rosamond, who died 1227. Salisbury Cathedral.
