Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/306

 otherwise decorated bascinets must originally have been most richly studded with jewels, and garnished with gold and enamel, of which at a later date they were doubtless despoiled. The iron foundations, which were of an unusual pattern, would then be left behind in their denuded and consequently battered condition; and it can easily be understood that when the fashion changed even the common soldiery would discard these bascinets as being too dilapidated for use. We may therefore fairly consider this to be the reason why no bascinet helmet other than those of the more ordinary type exists to-day.

Showing the jewelled orle. After Stothard

(a) Full face; (b) Profile view

Which, according to well founded tradition, was worn in the helmet of Henry V at Agincourt, 1415. From a drawing of the jewel itself. Size of the original

The decoration of the helmet, not only that of the bascinet, but of every form of head-piece, was in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries carried to an extreme. An example can be seen in the effigy of Sir Hugh Calveley in Bunbury Church, Cheshire (Fig. 272, a, b); we have also evidence of excessive decoration in the accounts of Etienne de la Fontaine, Silversmith to the King of France (John III) in 1352. "Poure faire et forger la garnison d'un bacinet c'est a savoir 35 vervelles [rings or staples], 12 bocettes [bosses] pour le fronteau tout d'or de touche et un ecouronne d'or pour mettre sur icilui bacinet, dout les fleurons sont des feuilles d'espines, et le circle diapré de fleur-de-lys. Et pour forger la couroye a fermer le dit bascinet dont les clous sont de bousseaux et de croisettes esmaillées de France."

To follow the subject further, in the Crown of England we can point to a ruby of great beauty of colour, which, according to tradition, was worn