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 CHAPTER II

EARLY NORMAN PERIOD. GENERAL HISTORY OF ARMOUR AND ARMS

A.D. 1070-1100

If the English king had held his own on the hill; if William's body and not Harold's had been dragged that October morning to a grave under the rocks of the Sussex shore, our tale of the armourer's changing fashions would yet go on. For a generation, for two generations or three, those old English who never loved change would have followed their fathers' customs, riding to the battlefield, but lighting down to fight with swinging weapons, Englishmen elbow to elbow. Yet we cannot doubt that, in the end, the English knight would be as the French knight, as the knights of Flanders or Almain, a horseman fully armed for the battle of horsemen.

But the Conqueror's host brought with them sudden change. When all was turned about in England the fashions of war-gear turned with the rest. "Englishmen," says Wace, "do not know how to joust with the lance or how to bear arms on horseback, they grasp haches e gisarmes." Yet they will learn their lesson of the sons of the men who came riding on great horses from Pevensey, lifting long lances. Long after the conquest of England will linger the memory of those axes that hewed down horse and rider on the hill-side. But the axe will go out of favour with warriors whose pride sits in the saddle, who can joust with the lance. From the Conquest onward the history of arms and armours is, in the main, a history of fashions of knights who will fight on horseback wherever they dare risk the skin of that costly beast, the destrier or great horse.

The memorable doings at the battle of Hastings may be seen pictured in the famous roll of needlework still preserved at Bayeux. Controversy has arisen as to the exact date of the production of this needlework roll. It was the former tradition that it was the work of Queen Maude, consort of the Conqueror, and her handmaidens; but of late years, a date, varying from fifty to one hundred and twenty years after the actual date of the battle, has been assigned to it. We ourselves, however, are inclined to think that as