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IV.—The Hauberk of Chain Mail, and its Conventional Representations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

J.G. Waller
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Extract

The subject I now bring before you is by no means a new one; so it is not my intention to go too much over ground already occupied. But the numerous conventional forms by which chain mail has been represented have led to many errors of interpretation, and especially in the articles by Sir Samuel Meyrick in Archaeologia, which are still quoted as authorities, so that I have long felt it was required for that accuracy which is now looked for in all antiquarian studies, that the subject should be revived and discussed. I have had the matter before me for half a century, so cannot therefore be accused of too much hurry in inflicting upon you that which might be thought unnecessary. I should have hesitated in my early days to oppose myself to so high an authority as Meyrick, whose learning and research had done so much to place the history of armour on a firmer basis than it ever had been before, but it was not until I had studied monumental effigies, brasses, and medieval manuscripts that I felt there was considerable doubt as to many of his conclusions. Yet it must here be noted that he himself frequently expresses the same doubts. I think it due to him to mention this, especially as having been personally acquainted with him and enjoyed his hospitality, when I am now about to assail his arguments in the articles referred to, even to removing the terms given from the history of armour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , 1904 , pp. 57 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1904

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References

page 57 note a Vol. xix.

page 60 note a Archaeologia, xix. 335–352Google Scholar.

page 62 note a See Florio's New World of Words, sub voce maglia. Also Cotgrave's French-English Dictionary, 1650, sub voce maille. Even mesh must be put down as derivative from macula.

page 62 note b Our Fellow, Mr. W. Paley Bail don, has sent me an interesting note from an agreement made between Henry le Buteler and Bonur of Oxford that the latter shall deliver “imam lorioam de Chaumbelye et unum haubergellum de groso macello.” Exchequer of the Jews, Plea Roll, 56–57, Henry III. m. 2. “Grosso macello ” = great mesh, meaning of large rings, and thus a looser hauberk.

page 62 note c Plates IX. and X.

page 63 note a Both these are engraved in Hollis's Monumental Effigier.

page 63 note b Pp. 238–248.

page 64 note a Mr. W. H. St. John Hope has reminded me that an effigy in Pickering Church, Yorkshire, also exhibits the two forms of mail.

page 64 note b Mr. Hope suggests that this “double-ringed ” mail, as he calls it, was actually formed by coiling the wire twice before riveting.

page 65 note a Vol. i.

page 66 note a This illustration has been borrowed by Meyrick, with certain modifications of his own, from an engraving in de Montfaucon's, B.Les Monuments de la Monarchie française (Paris, 1729)Google Scholar, vol. i. pl. xxxii. fig. 2.

page 66 note b Boeheim gives another illustration of a leathern panoply. See p. 141 of Waffenkunde.

page 67 note a See Archaeological Journal, vii. 360–369Google Scholar.

page 68 note a When Meyrick used this term he was referring to his “single mail.” By getting rid of the one we dispose of the other, and cannot admit the application of either.

page 68 note b Catalogue of Ancient Helmets and Examples of Mail, 115.

page 69 note a Since writing the above, Lord Dillon has kindly directed my attention to another species of convention of this kind of mail differing from the well-known examples which I have described. It occurs in a manuscript of the Æneid, in the Royal Library at Berlin, by one Henry von Beldecke, wherein Turnus is in the costume of a medieval knight of about the end of the twelfth century. The alternate rows of bands and rings show the latter in the simplest form, without any attempt to suggest interlacing, the artist evidently not considering this of much importance. A similar convention appears also in a French manuscript in the Vatican of the thirteenth century, depicting a conflict oi warriors in the presence of ladies, who make a remarkable exhibition of their persons. It is engraved in Agin court's Histoire de l'Art, but it would be idle to argue that it represented construction, when it is simply the readiest mode which suggested itself to the designer, and does not deviate more from the truth than other conventions which I have represented and referred to.

Fig. 5. Conventional representation (enlarged) of mail in a MS. in the Royal Library, Berlin.

page 71 note a This really seems to Tie the same as the broign trellis, which I have shown to be nothing more than the interlaced chain mail.

page 71 note b Rev. Henry Lansdell, D.D., author of Chinese Central Asia, etc.

page 71 note c See Smith's, C. R.Collectanea Antiqua, vol. ii. pl. xxxv. p. 147Google Scholar.

page 72 note a Engraved in Surrey Archaeological Collections, vii. 184Google Scholar.

page 72 note b Engraved in J. G., and L. A. B., Waller's Series of Monumental Brasses from the thirteenth, to the sixteenth century.Google Scholar

page 72 note c Ibid.

page 72 note d Archæological Journal, iv. 267Google Scholar.

page 74 note a Engraved in J. G., L. A. B., Waller's Series of Monumental Brasses.Google Scholar