Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/88

 feet long and six inches wide in the blade as represented, but of the ordinary size of these swords of that time that have come down to us.

From the register of Hyde Abbey British Museum

The artist's inaccuracy in matters of proportion we again notice in the absurdly small feet of the same king. However, despite these irregularities, the details of the armaments are accurate. The swords represented have hilts which are almost the counterpart of two swords in the British Museum, a sword in the Collection of Mr. Godfrey Williams, and an example in the London Museum (Fig. 15, a, b, c, d). These weapons have the same shaped pommels, but the quillons droop slightly at the ends and lack that accentuated point over the centre of the blade. In the drawing (Fig. 14) the hindmost king has the hilt of his sword so fashioned, though by an artistic licence his sword is not so robust in proportions. The register of Hyde Abbey, written in the early years of the XIth century, shows a slightly different type of hilt, for King Cnut is represented wearing a sword with a three-lobed pommel and thick heavy straight quillons (Fig. 16). Of this make of quillons we can quote existing examples in the Wallace Collection (Fig. 17), in the collection of Sir Edward Barry, Bart. (although the pommel on the Barry sword is lobeless) (Fig. 18), a sword found in the Thames at Vauxhall, in the author's collection (Figs. 19 and 19), and finally a sword, with a differently formed pommel, but with the heavy, thick quillons. The last sword is of earlier date, probably of the Xth century, and is the true Saxon mœl, or hring mœl. It was found in the river Lee at Enfield (Fig. 20). It is now in the collection of Prince Ladislaus Odescalchi, Rome. For the richness of the harnessing, as represented in the MSS., we can but draw upon our imagination, but the actual ornamentation on the weapons in existence we can describe. They are nearly all decorated by the same process—gold, silver, and copper worked into intricate runic and geometrical designs, and