Armour & Weapons
Forfatter: Charles Ffoulkes
År: 1909
Forlag: At The Clarendon Press
Sted: Oxford
Sider: 112
UDK: 623 Ffou
With A Preface By Viscount Dillon, V.P.S.A. Curator Of The Tower Armouries
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34
THE TRANSITION PERIOD
CHAP. II
regulations of Louis XI of France ordering these coats of defence
to be made of from 30 to 36 folds of linen.1
Leather, either in its natural state or boiled and beaten till it
could be moulded and then allowed to dry hard, was frequently
used at this period for all kinds of defensive armour.
In Chaucer’s ‘ Rime of Sir Thopas from which we have quoted
before, occur the words, ‘ His jambeux were of quirboilly.’ The
jambeaux were coverings for the legs. This quirboilly, cuirbully, or
cuirbouilli, when finished was an exceedingly hard substance, and
was, on account of its lightness as compared to metal, much used
for tournament armour and for the Barding or defence for the horse.
In the Roll of Purchases for the Windsor Park Tournament, held
in 1278, mention is made of cuirasses supplied by Milo the Currier,
who also furnished helms of the same material.2 In the Inventory
of Sir Simon Burley, beheaded in 1338, we find under ‘ Armure de
guerre ’ :—‘ Un palet (a headpiece) de quierboylle.’ There is
a light leather helmet of the ‘ morion ’ type, dated sixteenth
century, in the Zeughaus at Berlin.
Banded mail still appears in drawings or on monuments up to
the end of the fourteenth century.
We may now turn to the making up of these varied materials,
and will endeavour, step by step, to trace the gradual evolution
of the full suit of plate from the first additions of plate defence
to mail till we find that the mail practically disappears, or is only
worn in small portions where plate cannot be used.
Setting aside the plastron de fer, which, as has been noticed, is
seldom shown in representations of armour, we find the first
additional defence was the Poleyne or knee-cop. We must suppose
that there was good reason for thus reinforcing the mail defence
on this part of the body. Probably this was due to the fact that
the shield became shorter at this period, and also because the
position of the wearer when mounted exposed the knee, a very
delicate piece of anatomy, to the attacks of the foot-soldier (Fig.
11). Poleynes are mentioned in a wardrobe account of Edward I in
1 Arch. Journ., lx. 95-136. 2 Archaeologia, xvii.