Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/144



No. 18, Lirer Swabian Chronicle, about 1484. Graf von dem Rotenfan fights for the honour of Queen Kathay. Note the pole-axes without protective rondels to the hafts

William, Earl of Douglas, in Scotland, under the auspices of King James II of Scotland. While he was in Bruges, he fought and vanquished at the Court of Duke Philip a young English squire of the Court of Henry VI, of England, one Thomas Qué, who hastened from England to accept the challenges which Jacques de Lalain had issued in London, but which Henry VI refused to permit any of his Court to take up. The pole-axe remained in popular knightly use in such combats well into the early years of the XVIth century. King Henry VIII was skilled in its use—in all probability it was one of the weapons he employed when armed in the wonderfully complete suit which is represented in the frontispiece to Vol. I. Hall narrates that "The King (in October 1510) not minded to see young gentlemen inexpert in martial feats, caused a place to be prepared within the park (at Greenwich) for the queen and ladies to stand and see the fight with battle-axes that should be done there where the king himself armed, fought with one Gyot, a gentleman of Almayne, a tall man and a good man of arms." Very few XVth century pole arms with any form of elaborate enrichment are to-day extant. Of those known to the present writer no more elaborate example can be seen than that in the Musée d'Artillerie of Paris, K 84 (Fig. 896), which in the past, for some unknown reason, was said to have been