Some of the manuscripts, seals, effigies, brasses, and illuminated missals preserved, afford great help in deciding doubtful points; but very little of this kind of evidence goes farther back than the ninth century, besides being sometimes of a more or less fanciful and inaccurate character, and it is only by closely weighing and comparing that some reasonable degree of certainty can be got at.
In English brasses we have the best consecutive representation of armour, extending from that of Sir John Daubernoun, in the reign of Edward I., to that found at Great Chart, near Ashford, Kent, of the reign of Charles II.; but few have been preserved that date from earlier than the fourteenth century, though there are many military effigies. There was formerly a brass in St. Paul’s Church, Bedford, of Sir John Beauchamp (1208), and this would have been the oldest brass known had it been still to the fore. There is now an Elizabethan brass of a knight in this church. The figure on the brass of Sir John Daubernoun (1277), Stoke d’Abernon, near Leatherhead, Surrey, is entirely encased in mail, excepting, of course, the face. A large number of brasses may be seen in Boutell and Creeny, and you have the best series of effigies in Stothard and the continuation by Hollis. There are, besides, many other books treating both on brasses and effigies. The best German series exists in Hefner’s Trachten. Some of the foreign brasses are most artistic, but the iconoclast has left us only a couple of hundred, while the English brasses are to be numbered by thousands. The great majority of Continental brasses now left are in Germany and Belgium, while some half-dozen examples cover those of France, and there is only one in Spain. It must be borne in mind that the date on ancient monuments is that of death, so that the armour indicated may be the make of a quarter of a century earlier; besides, it may have been inherited by the defunct. There are also cases where these memorials were executed during the subject’s lifetime, or from contemporary models after his death. Suits were also sometimes “restored” by the armourer to correspond with a later fashion, and cases of this kind naturally give rise to some difficulty; and, as in the case of some Egyptian tombs, we have instances of misappropriation in English monuments. A case in point is the memorial of “Vicecomes et Escheator Comitatus Lincolniæ,” who died in the reign of Henry VIII. The armour is late fourteenth century, but to whom the monument was originally raised is unknown. Of course, the armour for the back is not shown on brasses and effigies. The Beauchamp effigy at Warwick affords, however, a notable exception, though this is of less importance owing to the fact of there being real armour of that period existing. Another valuable source of information arises from the custom prevailing during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, of leaving arms and armour as mortuaries to churches, and several helms and shields have come down to us in this way.
Later in these pages will be found a chapter headed “Details of Defensive Plate Armour.” This section deals as fully as a reasonable regard for space will allow with each important piece of armour, as regards its form, history, and chronology. It will serve also, to some extent, as a glossary of terms. It will be seen that there is usually a period of transition between the different well-marked styles of armour, just as is the case in architecture.
PART II.
CHAIN-MAIL AND MIXED ARMOUR.
Remarkably little is known of Britain during the centuries immediately following the Roman occupation, and the question as to when real chain-mail was first used in Europe is both difficult and obscure. There is a representation of loricas on the column of Trajan that looks remarkably like chain-mail, and it is almost certain that the Romans used iron chain-mail in Britain. The bronze scales of a lorica, or Roman cuirass, found at Æsica, do not help us;[2] but interlinked bronze rings of Roman origin have also been found, and if in bronze, why not in iron? This question is adequately answered by the masses of corroded iron rings of Roman times found at Chester-le-Street, and referred to in the report of a meeting held by the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Society of Antiquaries as far back as 1856.[3] These rings could hardly be massed together as they are without having been interlinked. The extract from the report of this early meeting of the Society runs thus:—“The Rev. Walker Featherstonhaugh had presented two pieces of chain armour, corroded into lumps, from Chester-le-Street.” Similar masses of rings of Roman date have been found at South Shields, and may be seen in “The Blair Collection” at the Black Gate Museum. These are of a date certainly not later than the fourth century. We may then reasonably conclude that these masses of corroded iron rings were once loricas of iron chain-mail. But the Romans were not the first to use chain-mail, for they got it probably, like so much besides, from Asia. In the British Museum are some corroded masses of links brought from Nineveh, similar in character to those found at Chester-le-Street, so it may be taken that this kind of armour is of a remote antiquity.
The Dano-Anglo-Saxon epic poem of “Beowulf,” written doubtless during the second half of the eighth century, bears frequent reference to the hero’s arms and armour:—
| Beowulf maœlode, | Beowulf spoke (or sang?), |
| On him byrne scan, | He bore his polished byrnie, |
| Searonet seowed | The war-net sewn |
| smipes orpanum. | by the skill of the smith. |
This poem has been cited as proof that chain-mail was in use in early Saxon England, and by the Vikings also, and there is some supposed confirmation of this idea as regards the latter in the finds of chain armour in the peat mosses of Denmark, which have been freely ascribed to the fifth and sixth centuries; but this mail is of such excellent workmanship, and so similar to that made at a much later period, as to cast grave doubts on this deduction, and there is really nothing whatever to show that it was of so early a date. Every ring of the Danish mail is interlinked with four surrounding rings, and so on throughout the garment. This is the prevailing fashion of all periods, and there is a great variety of mesh. It would seem that the “war-nets” alluded to in “Beowulf” were not chain-mail at all, but leathern or quilted armour with pieces of iron, shaped like the drawn meshes of a net, or steel rings sewn on to it, and that this combination constituted the “bright byrnie”[4] referred to in the poem, and that the chain-mail found at Vemose, Flensburg, and other places, was made much later. Quite independent of other evidence, the line in the poem, “The war-net sewn by the skill of the smith,” would point to the leathern or quilted tunic being fortified with rings or scales sewn on to the garment; and this was the general method up to and even beyond the time of William the Conqueror.
There are, however, other words in the poem referred to, such as “hand-locen” (hand-locked), and “handum gebroden.” The latter words might well read either twisted or embroidered with hands, while both might point to interlinked mail, so it clearly cannot be affirmed with certainty that there were no instances of real chain-mail in use in Britain at this very early period after the Romans; but if there were any hauberks of the kind it might indicate a much greater continuity from the Roman occupation than the historians of those shadowy times have hitherto imagined. Possibly chain-mail was introduced from Asia, through the Vikings, and that the byrnies mentioned in Beowulf were really made of interlinked rings; but it is probable that there was no real chain-mail in Northern Europe between Roman times and the ninth or tenth century. That it was in use in the East at an early period is shown by the discovery of a chain-mail tunic in a “barrow” in the Ukraine.[5]