Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/240

 are large and splaying towards their bases; while the arm defences, although fashioned in sleeve-like form, have coudes of plate, which are covered with material resembling that of the brigandine. The taces are attached by aiglettes (Fig. 548).

Late XVIth century. Collection: W. H. Riggs

Metropolitan Museum, New York

From the famous St. Ursula Châsse by Hans Memlinc, painted in 1489

Hospital of St. John, Bruges

Among the various other types of later quilted defence we must mention the "Jack of Defence," the poor man's substitute for armour. In the Middle Ages every one could not afford to wear the hauberk of chain mail, jazarine, or brigandine, to say nothing of plate armour; so the poor man or the common soldier had to content himself with an alternative defence of linen or leather stuffed with folds of linen, sometimes as many as thirty, a deer's skin included. In the earlier times it was occasionally covered with velvet, as we see in a will of 1391 (Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. i, pp. 149-50):

Item do et lego Petro Mawley, filio meo, unum jak defencionis opertum nigro velveto.

Besides baser materials for stuffing, we find that silk was sometimes used for this purpose, for we read in the chronicle of Bertrand du Guesclin:

"Il fut bien armez de ce qu'il luy failli, S'ot une jacque moult fort, de bonne soie empli."