Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/84

 Bateman of Derbyshire, the iron framework of a helmet of Anglo-Saxon times. This framework is now in the Public Museum, Sheffield (Fig. 11). It was found in the year 1848 in a low mound, surrounded by a slight rampart of earth, at Benty Grange, near Monyash, Derbyshire. The iron bands are surmounted by the figure of a boar standing upon a bronze plate. The bands are partly enriched with inlays of silver. It has been surmised, and probably correctly, that the lining of the helmet was of copper or even horn. There is a form of nasal guard attached.

In an illustration (Fig. 12) chosen from Cott. MS. Claudius B. iv, Ælfric's Paraphrase of the Pentateuch and Joshua, to which we have already referred, we see in the top left-hand corner the two kings helmetless but each wearing a crown. The first king is clothed in the loose Saxon gunna caught up at the waist, and with puckers, characteristic of Saxon fashion, in the sleeves. Apparently he is without thongs binding his legs. He is armed with a sword, long and double-edged, but is shieldless. The figure immediately to his left is his shield-bearer, although his charge is curiously held. The second king is habited in the ring-byrnie, with loose sleeves which reach to the elbow, and, as far as can be seen, open at the neck, descending to just above the knee, and with a short split at the front. Besides brandishing a sword of similar form to that of the first king, he holds out in front of him a round, convex shield with a spiked boss in the middle. The surface of this shield is plain, although that of his shield-bearer beside him is represented as being constructed in segments.

The legs of the second king are apparently bare, but he has shoes or brogues of leather. The representation of the ringed mail is crude in the extreme, the links are the size of a crown piece, and would certainly appear to be sewn flat upon a foundation and not linked together.

But in spite of this, when we consider the conventional drawings of this period, with town walls like hen-coops, rocks and ploughed fields depicted as cloud-like forms, we can readily assume that a true interlinked chain-mail hauberk might be indicated in the inaccurate fashion of this illustration.

Concerning the weapons of the nobles, it has been asserted that none below the rank of thegn was girt with the sword, but to differentiate between the long knife of the ordinary soldier and the short sword of the thegn—more especially as the hring mœl or sword in the earlier Saxon times was practically quillonless—is to draw a sharp line. Many swords of this date have been handed down to us. They are fine, and, in many