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 CHAPTER XV

THE GAUNTLET

When fighting was almost entirely hand-to-hand, the thorough protection of the hand was necessarily of paramount importance. Armour for the head and body was, after all, but a second line of defence against the attack which penetrated the guard of the weapon. Any damage to the hand which controlled all offensive movements, as well as all parries, would place a combatant at the mercy of his antagonist. But the armourer had not only to give his attention to the protective qualities of the covering which enclosed a part so vulnerable and so likely to receive a wound, he had also to consider how he should least interfere with the use of so complicated a piece of mechanism as the human hand. It was on account of these very important considerations that one finds the gauntlet always more complicated in the details of its construction than the rest of the protective harness.

Early XIVth century

Chartham Church, Kent. After Waller

About 1227. Cathedral church of Salisbury

After Stothard

To deal fully with the subject of gauntlets we must go back once more