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Collection: Felix Joubert, Esq.

Collection: Godfrey Williams, Esq.

Maidstone Museum

blade abnormally wide; but the quillons are of light build and drop slightly towards the blade at their ends. The grip is a restoration. Many swords of this general type have been found in the Thames and other watercourses in England; but no other can be placed so conclusively in the early years of the XIIIth century as that in the Musée d'Artillerie. The Wallace Collection shows us a sword (Fig. 101) which it is almost safe to assign to the first quarter of the XIIIth century. In this instance the pommel is not of the wheel form but of the Brazil nut shape, while the quillons are straight, heavy, and of quadrilateral section. The late Herr Hefner-Alteneck, in his famous work Waffen, etc. (on Plate 8), shows us a sword (Fig. 102)—then in the collection of Count von Erbach zu Erbach Odenwald—where we see a different formation of pommel, that of the faceted beehive form, but with a straight and perfectly rectangular quillon guard. His authority for placing this sword at so early a date being its almost exact portrayal in an illumination (Fig. 103) which he considered dated from the end of the XIIth century, but which we feel, noting the development of the gauntlet sleeves on the hauberk worn by the knight, belongs more likely to the first half of the XIIIth century. Three other swords we propose to illustrate showing variations of the Brazil nut shaped pommel. The first is a weapon of unusual length of blade, forty-four inches (Fig. 104), in the collection of Mr. Felix Joubert. In this sword the pommel is very massive, though the Brazil nut form we can hardly consider strongly accentuated. The second (Fig. 105) is a fine weapon with a considerably smaller pommel, but with longer and narrower quillons, now in the collection of Mr. Godfrey Williams at St. Donats Castle, Wales. On the blade of this sword are religious phrases