Fig. 5.—Mail coif, round-topped, with jewelled fillet.
From the effigy of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, died 1221. Hatfield Broad-Oak Church.
Fig. 6.—Mail coif, conical top, with coronet and mantelet.
From the effigy of John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, died 1334. Westminster Abbey.
The defence of the body was for a time wholly left to the mail with the underlying gambeson, and the shield, but the head had always received the additional protection of a cap of steel, called the chapelle-de-fer, worn indifferently under or over the coif of mail. Effigies of the first half of the thirteenth century show it both round and flat at the top (Figs. [4], [5], [6], and [7]). The nasal piece associated with the conical helm ([Fig. 2]) of the eleventh century tended to disappear in the twelfth.
The fact that English armies under Richard I. were made to abandon their ancient formation and to engage on horseback, and to rely on the battle-axe and mace as their chief weapons, and the presence of the large bodies of archers and arbalisters which he brought into the field, led to the introduction, probably by Richard himself, of the great heaume worn over the steel cap and padding, and only put on at the moment of battle. It is first seen on Richard’s second seal, and consisted of a cylinder, usually flat-topped, with two horizontal clefts for vision, and strengthened by bands crossing each other over the face and top. Breathing-holes were added towards the middle of the century, and the grated front was introduced soon after, to admit more air. This is seen in the first seal of Henry III., and another advance, the movable vantail, hinged at the side, in his second seal. An oft-described specimen in the Tower weighs 13 lb. 8 oz., but is regarded by Lord Dillon, the present Curator of the Armouries, as a forgery. About 1270 we sometimes find it with a round top, though the flat top did not go quite out till the beginning of the fourteenth century. The attempts made to seize and drag it off, so often noticed by Chroniclers, led to its being secured by a chain. The further changes seen were improvements in the visor, giving better vision and more air, fixing it more securely, and so transferring the weight from the head to the shoulders, and changing the flat top to a cone, on which blows fell with less stunning effect.
These heaumes, by concealing the face, intensified a difficulty already felt at Hastings, when Duke William was obliged to raise his helmet to contradict a rumour of his death. Recognition, now become impossible, led to the use of heraldic badges, at first painted on the helm, as they already were on the shield; and of crests, first in the fan or peacock’s feather shape, as on the second seal of Richard I., and afterwards to more distinctive crests and badges. The Crusading Chroniclers relate that the crests were brilliant with jewels, and they are represented as circled by coronets in the seals of Henry III. and his son Edward. The heaume of St. Louis, 1249, was gilded. Richard himself, in gala dress, on the day after his marriage with Berengaria, is described by Vinsauf as wearing a Damascus sword with gold hilt and silver-scaled scabbard, his saddle inlaid with precious stones, his horse bitted with gold, and in place of the high defensive plates before and behind in general use two little golden lions with raised paws.