Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/149

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Construed by John Hewitt, from "Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe"

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Construed by John Hewitt, from "Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe"

the back of the helmet. Stephen's head-piece, on the second of his great seals, is inexplicable. At the end of the XIIth century the helmet was usually forged from one piece, and not as was mostly the case in earlier times made in sections joined together. Its medium may still have been sometimes copper; for an interesting helmet of large proportions found in 1835 near Saintfield, county Down, Ireland, and now preserved in the Belfast Museum, though made of iron, has ornaments and bindings beautifully fashioned of copper. The author has never had the opportunity of examining this helmet, but its date has been ascribed on good authority to the latter part of the XIIth century, though as we are fully aware it is extremely difficult to assign even an approximate date to mediaeval antiquities of Irish origin (Fig. 92). Iron,