Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/123

 CHAPTER XX

Until now we have only dealt with the sword and dagger; but there also remain for consideration auxiliary weapons of almost equal importance if less knightly in their significance—the lance, the mace, the battle- and pole-axe, exclusive of the various kinds of hafted weapons for use on foot. It is to the lance that we must first turn our attention. We have already spoken of its possible construction in earlier times; let us now examine its features as they appear in the XIVth and XVth centuries. In its complete form during the XIVth, XVth, and XVIth centuries the lance or spear consisted of four distinct parts—the "shaft," "truncheon," or "staff"; the head or "socket"; the "vamplate," and the "grate" or "graper": all these terms we will explain by turns as we come to them. In the XIVth century the war lance was much the same as that which is used to-day in Oriental countries, though of considerably stouter construction. The "shaft" or "truncheon," differing in this respect from that of the succeeding century, had no swell in front of the place where it was grasped, but maintained an even diameter of about two inches for its entire length. There was no grip, which we can accurately so describe, for the hand, but we find this spot termed by XIIIth century writers, arestil, arestuel, or arescuel; Froissart in the following century calls it the hanste, although this term is also used as an equivalent to "truncheon" in its limited sense. In earlier times the shafts were made of ash; but towards the close of the XIVth century cypress wood seems to have been occasionally employed in their manufacture, for Chaucer says:

His spere was of fin cypres, That bodeth werre, and nothing pees, The hed ful sharpe y-grounde.

The head of the war lance or spear, termed in XIVth century English the "socket" from its resemblance to a plough-share, was generally leaf-*shaped, though varieties of forms have come under our notice. As in the