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With the finger plate as restored in imagination by Viollet-le-Duc

About 1380. Ightham Church, Kent After Stothard

Next in importance to the Ressman gauntlets is the pair formerly in the Nieuwerkerke, and now in the Wallace Collection, Nos. 6 and 7 (Fig. 566). M. Viollet-le-Duc gives an illustration of them in his Dictionnaire du Mobilier Français; but by an easy stretch of imagination he reproduces them with the missing finger plates, which they must once have possessed, attached to the metacarpal plate, and not to the lining glove as we personally imagine they were (Fig. 567). It will be observed that, supplied with the finger plates they resemble the gauntlets seen on the effigy of Sir Thomas Cawne in Ightham Church, Kent (Fig. 568). Inasmuch as this effigy has with some certainty been dated at about 1380, it is possible that the Wallace gauntlets may also be as early. They are fashioned with short bell-shaped cuffs with three radiating flutings between the knuckle joints, which are continued down the back of the hands. They are formed of one piece, with the exception of the under part of the wrist protection, at which point a small plate, one and a half inch wide, has been added, probably for the purpose of their enlargement at some later date. A band of brass or latten, one and a quarter inch wide, is