Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/81

 VIIth centuries produced in Northern Europe an interlinked shirt of mail, its superiority over other warlike garments would have caused such mail shirts to find their way in the course of the next two centuries into the greater part of civilized Europe. Of the intricacies of "banded" and "tegulated" mail we will speak briefly later on. But for support of the theory that the ring-byrnie was of simple interlinked chain-mail, without the addition of leather thongs or lining, we may turn to the Bayeux needlework and point to the dead Englishman, whose hauberk of mail is being dragged inside out over his head, as live Englishmen pull off their woollen sweaters.

From the Bayeux needlework

In this picture the inside of the byrnie is plainly shown, and it will be noticed that it exhibits what may be taken as small links, and that it is unlined (Fig. 10).

As for the shield of the English thegn or full-armed warrior it had the form of that borne by lesser men, although it was possibly made of richer materials. In the British Museum there are examples of the boss having a silver disk of about the size of half-a-crown, soldered to a base of bronze,