H. T. Griffith.
Spiked Maces represented in the Windows of the Abbey Church, Great Malvern.—There is an instrument of this nature described by some of the martyrologists under the name of "Scorpio," and figured by Hieronymus Magius (Jerome Maggi) in his treatise De Equuleo. It is there represented as a thick stick, set with iron points, and was used, together with rods, and the plumbetæ or loaded chain scourges, to torment the confessors.
I am inclined to think, however, that the weapons represented in the windows at Great Malvern are intended for morning stars, which were much employed in arming the watch in the cities of northern Europe in the Middle Ages, and at a later period as well. This weapon (a variety of which was called holy-water sprinkle, from the brush-like arrangement of its spikes) had a long shaft like a halbert, and is often introduced in paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as borne by the Jewish guard who appear in the various scenes of Our Lord's Passion.
Of course the artists represented their characters as wearing the dress and provided with arms of their own period; as we see the Roman soldiers at the foot of the cross in some German and Dutch pictures, mere portraits of the sworders and swashbucklers of the seventeenth century.
I may mention that a weapon of this coarse description is generally put into the hands of a ruffian, or at least of some very inferior character. In La Mort D'Artur, Sir Lancelot encounters on a bridge "a passing foul churl," who disputes his passage, and "lashes at him with a great club, full of iron pins."
I remember seeing a barbarous weapon taken from a piratical vessel, which consisted of a massive wooden club, heavily loaded with lead, furnished with a spike at the smaller end, and thickly studded with iron nails, tenter hooks, and the hammers of gun locks. This was something like the old Danish club.
W. J. Bernhard Smith.
Oxford.
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