Armour & Weapons

88 HORSE ARMOUR CHAP. V altar hangings, or inversely, when trappings were needed, the churches were despoiled, of their embroideries to provide them. The mailed horse appears as early as the Roman period, and is shown on the Column of Trajan, but in Europe he does not seem to have been commonly in use much before the thirteenth century. As the man was sometimes defended entirely by garments of quilted fabrics, so the horse also wore pourpointed housings. We can only surmise, from the folds and lines shown on seals or draw- ings, which variety is intended ; but the stiff lines of the housing Fig. 38. Trapper of Mail, from the Painted Chamber, Westminster, thirteenth century. Fig. 39. Ivory chessman, from Hewitt’s Ancient Armour, fourteenth century. on the seal of Roger de Quinci, Earl of Winchester (1219-64), and its raised lozenges, seem to suggest a thicker substance than does the more flowing drapery on Fig. 11. Matthew Paris, in describing the Battle of Nuova Croce in 1237, writes that ‘ A credible Italian asserted that Milan with its dependencies raised an army of six thousand men-at-arms with iron-clad horses An ordinance of Philip the Fair, in 1303, provides that every holder of an estate of 500 livres rental should furnish a man at-arms well mounted on a horse ‘ couvert de couvertures de fer ou de couverture pour- pointeThe caparisoned horse first appears on royal seals in the