THE WEARING OF ARMOUR

Though perhaps the wearing and putting on of armour was not directly part of the craft of the armourer, it was certainly a part of his duties to be present during the process and be ready to carry out any small alterations which might be needed on the spot.

As has been noticed in a preceding chapter, as late as 1625 we find this insisted upon by de Pluvinel (see page 115). Shakespeare describes the armourers as busy “accomplishing the knights” before Agincourt (page 33), and the fact that the travelling knight took his armourer with him shows that he was indispensable during the operation of dressing for war or joust.

Armour of the best kind was made to measure, and for ordinary purposes a mould or “dobble” was kept on which to make the ordinary harness for the man-at-arms (page 28). The following extracts show the methods employed for sending measurements, which were often obtained by submitting the clothes of the patron to the armourer:—

In the preceding chapter some notice was taken of the part which the linen armourer played in the equipment of the armed man, and it was to him that the clothing which was worn under the armour was entrusted. Under the heading of the “Cleaning of Armour” mention has been made of Chaucer’s knight whose “gipoun” was “besmoturyd with his haubergeon,” but this garment was an outer garment or surcoat. In the age of plate armour a complete dress was worn for legs, arms, body, and head to prevent the chafing of the armour, which in spite of its own lining of silk, velvet, cloth, leather, or other fabric would cause grave inconvenience, if not danger to the wearer. Besides this reason there was also a question of warmth, which was of importance, for in long marches and expeditions there was no warmth in a suit of plate, in fact there was an added cold which had to be counteracted by warm garments worn underneath.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries we have not much in the way of documentary evidence which will help us as to the clothes worn under the armour. The Bayeux Tapestry shows us the wounded and dead being stripped of their hauberks, under which nothing was apparently worn (Fig. 51). It should be remembered, however, that these hauberks were probably of quilted fabric, which therefore did not gall the body of the wearer. The drawing from a fourteenth-century manuscript on Fig. 52 gives some hint at the arming-doublet, which will be noted farther on in this chapter, and shows also the laces or points that held up the hose. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, however, we find on the incised brasses, which are such valuable records of the military equipment of the period, very distinct garments represented. On the brass to Sir John de Creke at Westley Waterless, Cambs, 1325, we see the “cyclas” or outer surcoat, the “upper pourpoint,” of fabric, studded with metal, “the hauberk,” and under all the “haketon” or “gambeson” (Fig. 53). According to William de Guilleville, in the Pèlerinage de l’Ame, written in the fourteenth century, the “pourpoint” was so called because of its quiltings:—

The illustration on Plate IV is from a wood-carving in the church of S. William, Strasburg. It represents the travelling armourer riveting what appear to be bands of iron on arms and legs. Whether these are some contrivance used in arming in the fifteenth century, or whether they are some instrument of torture used upon the saint, Duke William of Acquitaine, it is impossible to discover, as no other instances of the kind can be found.

For full details of the equipment of the latter half of the fifteenth century we cannot do better than refer to the Hastings MS. of the fifteenth century, which has been discussed by the late Albert Way,[123] and more fully by Viscount Dillon.[124] Under the heading of “The Abilment for the Justes of Pees” we find much that is of value in this respect. On page 122b of the manuscript we find the following minute directions for dressing a man for the joust, which should be compared with those given in Appendix C, page 173.

The gussets and, in the sixteenth century, the sleeves of mail protected the bend of the arm and armpit, and sometimes the bend of the knee, which were not adequately covered with plate. The two portraits of unknown noblemen by Moroni (National Gallery) show these details of the equipment very clearly (Plate XVIII). The arming-points or “tresses” were used in civilian as well as in military attire and joined the hose to the doublet, laced sleeves, and held coats together, much as laces are used in ladies’ dresses at the present day (Figs. 54–57). They are also shown tying up the hose on Fig. 52 and the brayette on Plate VIII.

Lord Dillon explains the hose of “stamyn sengill” as being a worsted cloth made in Norfolk. The “bulwerkis” were pads of blanketing fastened over the hose at the knees to prevent the chafing of the knee-cop, and the shoes were of Cordova leather fastened with laces. A complete underdress of this kind, with quilted doublet and hose with gussets of mail at the knees, is to be found in the Museum at Munich. The arming of a man began at the feet, and as far as was possible each piece put on overlapped that beneath it, to ensure that glancing surface upon the utility of which such stress has been laid in the first chapter of this book.

The arming of a man, therefore, was carried out in the following order and his equipment put on in the following order: Sollerets or sabatons, jambs, knee-cops, cuisses, skirt of mail, gorget, breast and back plates, brassards with elbow-cops, pauldrons, gauntlets, sword-belt, and helmet (Fig. 58).

The “tonlet” would appear to be a bell-shaped skirt of plate or deep taces such as is shown on Plate XXI, and is another example of the use of the “glancing surface,” especially in combats with axe and sword at barriers, for in these jousts the legs were often unarmed and were not attacked. The rerebrace, elbow-cop, and vambrace are usually joined by rivets in which there is a certain amount of play. Where this was not the case, each piece was separately strapped to the arm, as may be seen in the brasses of Sir John de Creke, 1325 (Fig. 53), and of Sir Hugh Hastings, 1347. When the three pieces, called collectively the Brassard, were joined together, they were kept in place on the arm by arming-points fastened to the “haustement” or doublet just below the shoulder. The operation of tying on the brassard is shown on the portrait now labelled the “Duc de Nevers” at Hampton Court (Fig. 55). In the list of the equipment taken by the Earl of Northumberland to France in 1513[125] we find mention of arming-pateletts of white satin quilted, for wearing under the armour, trussing-bolsters to wear round the waist to keep the weight of the cuirass from the shoulders, arming-hose, arming-doublets, arming-shoes, garters to wear under the armour, and coffers in which to keep the armour.

There is no mention of the pauldron in the Hastings MS., but when this was worn it was strapped to the neck-opening of the cuirass or hung from spring-pins which project from the shoulder-plate of the cuirass.

The staples mentioned in the Hastings MS. are often very elaborate contrivances, especially in jousting-armour, and the foremost fastening was called the “charnel.” Fig. 59 shows the methods of attaching jousting-helms to the cuirass. No. 1 shows the adjustable plate which fixes the front of the helm of the suit of Philip II (Madrid, A, 16). A similar contrivance was used with the “Brocas” helm (Fig. 12). No. 2 is the front of a helm (Mus. d’Art, Paris, G, 163) in which the lower plate is bolted to the breast and can be released from the helm by withdrawing the hinge-pin. No. 3 shows the back of the same helm. Fig. 60 is a larger sketch of the fixing-hook of this helm. A is the back-plate of the helm, E the pillar hinged at D and hooked into a lug on the back of the cuirass. B is a solid block of steel of circular section pierced with holes and connected to a screw in E. B can be turned by inserting a pin in the holes and the screw tightened or loosened. Minute details as to the fastenings of the helm will be found in Appendix D, page 178.

Details of the different parts that went to make up the complete suit, with the thickness of each plate, the laces or points, and various fastenings and methods of attachment, will be found in the fifteenth-century Treatise on Military Costume of which a portion is given in Appendix D.

The Marquis de Belleval published an interesting monograph on this manuscript in 1866, which is now scarce and difficult to obtain.

In the illustration on Plate XVII the squires are shown arming their masters from horseback, which appears to involve some gymnastic exercises.

That such agility of the armed man was by no means an artistic licence we may gather from the fact that Froissart[126] mentions Sir John Assueton leaping fully armed behind his page on to his war-horse. Again, Shakespeare makes Henry V (Act V, Sc. 2) say, “If I could win a lady at leapfrog or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back,” and Oliver de la Marche states that Galliot de Balthasin in 1446 leaped fully armed out of the saddle as though he had on a pourpoint only. That this was no mere figure of speech we may judge from a little book entitled The Vaulting Master, written by W. Stokes, an Oxford riding-master, in 1641.

The armour for the joust in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was far too heavy to allow of such vagaries. Pluvinel in his Maneige Royale, 1625, gives an imaginary conversation between himself and the King which bears upon the subject:—

A little pen-drawing of the sixteenth century in a manuscript dealing with jousts (Heralds’ Coll., M, 6, 56) shows the armourer on one of these scaffolds at the end of the lists (Fig. 61).

In the chapter on the Proving of Armour the question of disuse on account of weight was considered. From the sixteenth century and even earlier we have records of the discarding of armour because it hampered the wearer or for some equally cogent reason. The following extracts bear upon the subject:—

This refers to the action of Sir Hugh Calverly at the battle of Mont Auray, who ordered his men to take off their cuisses in order to move more easily.

Sir John Smith goes on to say that it was the discarding of his cuisses that cost Sir Philip Sidney his life, for he received a wound from a spent bullet which his armour might have deflected.

Against these extracts we must place the opinions of military leaders who deplored the disuse of armour:—

Marshal Saxe further suggests that the large proportion of wounds are received from sword, lance, or spent bullet, and that all these might be guarded against by wearing armour or a buff coat of his own invention which when reinforced with steel plates weighed 30 lb.

THE WEIGHT OF ARMOUR

We have but few records in contemporary documents of the actual weight of the different parts of the suit of armour, but we can obtain these from examples of the sixteenth century onwards from specimens in the different museums and collections.

That armour had become burdensome in the extreme owing to the necessity of subjecting it to pistol and musket proof we know from various writers on the subject.

La Noue in his Discours Politiques et Militaires, translated by “E. A.” 1587, writes on page 185: “For where they had some reason in respect of the violence of harquebuzes and dagges [muskets and pistols] to make their armor thicker and of better proofe than before, they have now so farre exceeded, that most of the have laden themselves with stithies [anvils] in view of clothing their bodies with armour ... neither was their armour so heavie but that they might wel bear it 24 hours, where those that are now worne are so waightie that the peiz [weight] of them will benumme a Gentleman’s shoulders of 35 yeres of age.”

Edward Ludlow, at the battle of Edgehill, 1642,[127] was dismounted in getting through a hedge, and says: “I could not without great difficulty recover on horse-back again being loaded with cuirassiers arms as the rest of the guard were also.”

It would be superfluous to mention the different occasions on which unhorsed knights were captured or killed through their inability to remount in battle. Froissart in describing the battle of Poitiers says that when once dismounted men could not get up again, and other historians bear equal witness of the disadvantage of armour when unmounted; and the Sieur de Gaya, who has been so often referred to in these pages, writing in 1678, says in his Traité des Armes, page 60: “Ils n’avoient trop de tort à mon avis d’équiper ainsi leurs chevaux parce qu’un Cavalier armé n’est plus propre à rien quand il est démonté.”

Although this may be taken as a reason put forward by the writer for more armour for man and horse, it shows at the same time that the fully armed man was considered to be comparatively useless when unhorsed, as the Spanish proverb ran: “Muerto el Cavallo, perdido el hombre d’armas.”

It may be somewhat of a surprise to learn that the present-day equipment is but little lighter than that of the fifteenth century. The Under Secretary for War, speaking in the House of Commons on November 28th, 1911, stated that the infantry soldier marched on an average thirty miles a day during the manœuvres, carrying 59 lb. 11 oz. of equipment and kit. Against this we may place the weight of some suits of foot-soldiers’ armour of the sixteenth century, which weigh with the helmet at the outside 25 lb.; leaving therefore a wide margin for underclothes and weapons. And this comparison of weight carried is even more interesting when considering the cavalry equipment, as will be seen from the annexed table on the opposite page.

Of course all these figures represent “dead weight”; and here we are brought back to one of those fundamental rules of good craftsmanship—the recognition of “Convenience in Use.”

Even in the Golden Age of armour, the fifteenth century, the armourer was hampered by material and by methods of construction which even the most expert craftsman could not overcome; but when we reach the period of decadence in the seventeenth century, the excellence of craftsmanship had deteriorated to an alarming extent and these difficulties were still greater. The secret therefore of the weight-carrying powers of man and horse at the present day is greater convenience in carrying, the scientific distribution of weight, and a more adaptable material, which when taken together give greater freedom and greater mobility, even though the actual weight be the same as the equipment of steel.

The following table gives the weights of typical suits from the fifteenth century onwards:—

ARMOUR FOR THE JOUST

WAR HARNESS

CAVALRY

INFANTRY