Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/392

 298 KNIGHTLY EFFIGIES AT SANDWICH AND ASH. construction of the armour. In the twelfth century, how- ever, we find the Emperor Henry V. clothing a body of his troops in an impenetrable scale-armour of horn (das Horn- schuppenwamms). "So trug im Jahre 1115 eine Scliaar im Heere Heinrichs V. undurchdringliche Harnische von Horn." (Raumer's Hohenstauf. — in Yon Leber's Wien's Kaiserliches Zeughaus, p. 507.) And in the poem of " Wigalois," written about 1212, we have a most curious description of this horn-mail worn over the hauberk, and richly adorned with gold and precious stones : " Ein brunne het er an geleit Uber eineii wizzen halsperch. Daz was heidenischez werch Von breiten hlechen hurnin ; Mit golde waren geleit dar in Rubin, und manee edel stein Der glast da wider einander schein SaiRre und berillen. -" It has been usual to describe the seal of William Rufus as exhibiting scale armour ; and in the new Foedera these scales have been rendered in the most emphatic manner. The armour on the seal itself is distinctly of rings, and probably is meant to represent the perfect fabric of chain- mail so familiar to us throughout the succeeding centuries. Many seals of this time are in the same predicament. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the scale defences are of occasional appearance, and the Cotton MS., Claudius, D. II., at fol. 30, furnishes us with a curious example of this period, a soldier armed with a " tunicle of scale," which extends from his shoulders to his waist, lying loosely over him like a modern cape or tippet. In the knightly harness of this time scale-work appears to have been used for parts only of the defences ; as the gloves, the sleeves, the sabatyns, or the skirt of the cuirass. Drawings, indeed, occur in wdiich scale-like forms cover the whole person, as in the Louterell Psalter, but it is not imlikely that this is only a conventional mode of depicting chain-mail. The three examples subjoined are from monu- mental brasses ; in each case the knightly panoply has no other portion of scale than what is here exhibited. The gauntlets are from the effigy of a De Buslingthorpe, at Buslingthorpe, Lincolnshire, c. 1280 (Waller, Pt. 10). The vambrace of ridged scale, overlaid by a loose sleeve of i