Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/227



Wearing the tippet of chain mail By the engraver I-D. 1545

Early XVIth century

In the collection of the Author

defence for the buttocks and privy parts was stepped into like bathing drawers, the undulations of the body being most carefully studied in the formation of the mail. A most interesting armament in the nature of a long tippet of chain mail reaching well over the shoulders is to be seen in a defence much employed in central Europe—the true tippet of mail. This had, as a rule, the reinforced collar and edging of brass rings as seen on the haussecol of the previous century. These tippets seem to have been rather peculiar to Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia, though many came from Venice, where they were termed "Bishop's Mantles." They mostly date from the last years of the XVth century well into the first half of the next.