Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/125

 into account the fact that the lance is an actual battle weapon, must be regarded as short, ten to fourteen feet being the more ordinary measurement. In Petit Jehan de Saintré, a romance written in 1459 by Antoine de la Sale, we read (chap. xxxv): "Le roy incontinent fist mesurer leurs lances, qui devoient estre de la pioincte jusques à l'arrest de xiij piés de long."

Late XVth century. Wallace Collection

As early as 1252 (Matthew Paris, under that year) we have evidence that it was customary to blunt the war spear-head for the purposes of the joust; but accidents still occurring despite this precaution we find that before the close of the century some bright brain evolved what is best known to English students as the "coronel," "cornel," "crownal," or "crownackle," so called from its likeness, fancied or real, to a coronet. This head was fashioned of a robust socket furnished with three or more short arms which splayed outward around its edges, an arrangement which offered the maximum of bite upon helm or shield, with the minimum of penetrative power. This head was termed in France roche, rochet, or roquet, and the lance so furnished, lance enroche or lance courtoise. Another variety of this head was known as boëte, in which the three arms sprang not from the socket direct but from a block (boëte). Inventories and records of the XVth and XVIth centuries supply us with the names of many different varieties of heads for the joust and the tourney; mornes, mornettes, virales, diamants, fers de lances pur gect, "socket-heads," "heads for the bar," "tournay heads," "heads for casting spears," and many more are to be met with. We illustrate two examples of the "coronel" now in the Imperial Armoury, Vienna, that can be assigned to the end of the XVth or commencement of the XVIth century (Fig. 865, a, b). In the second half of the XVth century the tilting