This is a story about a battle you have heard of… but it isn’t that battle…

The chief protagonist of which is Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, but not that Marshal Earl of Pembroke…

It was fought as part of a baronial rebellion aimed at controlling a king… but it isn’t that rebellion. 

The battle of Monmouth, fought a trebuchet stone’s throw from my office, on the feast of St Catherine (the 25th of November) in 1233, suffers from being overshadowed on all fronts.

It shares a name with a much more famous (and for many more significant) battle fought in America in 1778. The chief protagonist - Richard Marshal -  has always been overshadowed by his much more famous father, William - ‘England’s greatest knight’ (at least according to his biographer), and the cause of the battle, a struggle between established ‘English’ barons and ‘parvenu foreign favourites’, is very much in the shadow of a conflict fought over the same matters about twenty years later, led by another figure almost as famous as Richard’s father, and far more famous than Richard himself; ‘the father of English Parliaments’ Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester.

The battle of Monmouth was fought as part of the so-called ‘Marshal’s War’. This conflict, which lasted barely a year between 1233 and 1234, came about as a result of two major trends of medieval history: the internecine politics of the royal court and the obligation of a lord to support his vassals.

King John is not a good king, even by medieval standards. He was vicious and cruel, petty and duplicitous. Yes, he had been dealt a bad hand by his brother Richard, but he still mismanaged the realm badly enough to result in the rebellion of his barons and an invasion by the French heir, invited by those barons to be the new English king.

In 1215, he was forced to put his seal to Magna Carta - the Great Charter - a rather rambling document that sought to limit the king’s authority and provide protection to the barons’ rights, privileges, and power. It was repudiated almost immediately by John, with the backing of the Pope, causing a renewal of hostilities that saw the baronial rebels invite Louis, the son of the King of France, to take the throne.

John died in 1217, and those who had remained loyal to John saw to it that his ten-year-old son, Henry III, was crowned king.

The leading figure amongst these loyalists was William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. He was very much an elder statesman. Aged 70 when John died, he had served each of the Plantagenet kings in turn, having made his name on the tournament circuit and battlefield. Henry’s royal council named him as the boy-king’s protector and regent, and William took the field again, defeating Louis’s army at Lincoln (leading a charge of knights down its steep streets). With the destruction of a fleet of French reinforcement at the Battle of Sandwich, the war was brought to a close.

William served as regent for the next two years, but in 1219, he lay dying. On his deathbed, he appointed Papal Legate Pandulf Veraccio as regent, by-passing both Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, the king’s Justiciar, and Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, the king’s guardian.

The pretext for this was that John had agreed to England becoming a Papal fief and that, therefore, Veraccio was acting in the name of England’s overlord, but the truth was that William Marshal didn’t really trust either the Earl or the Bishop to serve the boy-king’s best interests.

Both de Burgh and des Roches had held the position of Chief Justiciar at different points during John’s reign. John played them off against each other, building the enmity between them. Whilst alive, Marshal had managed to keep the peace between them, but with him gone, the only thing that they agreed on was that the papal legate should go. By applying pressure on the Pope, they finally achieved this in 1221, having Veraccio recalled to Rome.

With the Legate’s departure, the two men turned on each other, each trying to direct the Great Council of the nobility to back them.

Hubert de Burgh, as Justiciar and regent, held the whip hand. des Roches, despite bveing a foreigner, worked with those barons unhappy with Hubert’s strengthening royal government and yearning the independence they had achieved under Magna Carta.

In 1232, des Roches succeeded in having de Burgh arrested and imprisoned in Devizes Castle on charges of embezzlement and misconduct. Men in de Burgh's affinity found themselves out of favour at court. One of these was Richard Siward.

The Adventures of Richard Siward

We know very little of Richard Siward’s origins other than that he appears during the end of John’s reign as one of the household knights of William de Forze, Count of Aumarle - a baron in Yorkshire loyal to John. He then joined the household of William Marshal the Younger. The move was a natural one, as William had been fostered by Aumarle. Siward may have served as an experienced companion, much as William Marshal’s father had served Henry the Young King.

Richard served Marshal through the First Barons' War against the baronial rebels and their French allies, appearing at the battle of Sandwich. Following this, he went on to be a presence in the Marches, fighting against Llywelyn Fawr, the King of Gwynedd, and receiving wardship of William Marshal’s fourth son, Walter, and possession of Goodrich Castle.

The Marshal connection paid dividends, and in 1229 Siward was married to the widow of the Earl of Warwick, Philippa Basset. Whilst Richard did not gain the earldom itself (Philippa’s cousin, Gilbert, had secured wardship of those lands), it did provide enough lands and infliunce for Siward to be considered a baron in his own right.

He did not forget his family and lordly ties, however. When Hubert de Burgh was arrested and imprisoned, one of Peter des Roches’ entourage - Peter de Maulay - demanded the restitution of the manor of Upavon in Wiltshire, which he had lost ten years previously during a rebellion against Henry III, and which had been granted to Basset. Basset contested this, but Henry III took the part of the complainant and des Roches, and Basset was attainted as a traitor and went on the run, with Siward following him.

They headed back to the Marches and must have appealed to Richard Marshal for aid, presumably calling upon the ties of lordship that they had had with him.

(* With all the Peters, Henrys, and Richards, it is easy to become confused. The truth is there seems to have been a distinct lack of Christian names and imagination in thirteenth-century Europe.)

The Marshal War.

Richard had only just become Earl of Pembroke. On his mother’s death in 1220, he had inherited the Marshal lands in Normandy and was a liegeman of the King of France. On the death of his brother in 1231, however, he foresook both to take up the family mantle and the title.

Though he had no personal history with Basset and Siward, he clearly felt that he had a duty to them as his brother’s men and sheltered the outcasts.

Richard resisted the king’s demands to surrender the two men, but the king (and Peter des Roches) was unwilling to force the issue with the powerful marcher lord. Instead, they used negotiations and threats to put increasing pressure on the earl. In August 1233, Marshal refused to come to meet the King in Gloucester to arrange a truce between them, and royal bailiffs forced him to surrender the castle at Usk, which he did.In September, Siward and Basset launched a raid that crossed southern England. Out of Chepstow, the Marshal's stronghold, they raced through the Cotswolds, into Oxfordshire and Berkshire, grabbing the Bishop of Winchester’s personal baggage train, and dropping down into Kent before crossing all the way back across the country to return to the March.

This audacious assault caused absolute panic, and Siward capitalised on this a month later when he rode into Devizes. Here, they rescued de Burgh (who had managed to escape the castle but traded it for the equally confining sanctuary of Devizes church).*

Richard Marshal was not idle. He had clearly used the phony war of August to make plans, coming into an alliance with his old enemy Llywelyn Fawr. Llewellyn had his own personal arguments with Peter des Roches.

At the same time as Siward launched his rescue mission, Richard Marshal led his own lightning campaign, seizing the castles of Cardiff and Newport before moving up the Usk Valley to besiege and take Usk itself, then moving on Abergavenny and Grosmont. The king, who had advanced from Gloucester to Abergavenny, was unwilling to risk an encounter and retired back towards Gloucester.

Richard was free to continue his march and advanced on Monmouth with a view to besieging the castle.

(* The raid of Richard Siward would make an excellent Écorcheurs! mini-campaign.)

The Battle of Monmouth

The castle was being held by Baldwin Count of Guines, another of the Poitevin adherents of Peter des Roches, who was acting as castellan whilst its lord, John of Monmouth, was absent.

He spotted Marshal’s scouting party. The rest of the fight is well described by the chonricler Roger of Wendover, a monk of St Alban’s:

‘ … and understanding that the Marshal was there with only a few followers to examine the castle, he [Baldwin] sallied out with a thousand brave and well-equipped soldiers and pursued him at full speed, designing to make him and his followers prisoners and bring them into town. 

The earl Marshal’s companions however, when they saw the impetuous advance of the enemy, advised him to consult their safety by flight, saying that it would be rash for such a few of them to engage with such a number of the enemy; to which the Marshal replied that he had never yet turned his back on his enemies in battle and declared that he would not do so now and exhorted them to defend themselves bravely and to not die unavenged. The troops from the castle then rushed fiercely on them and attacked them with their lances.’

"Baldwin and twelve of his stoutest and best armed soldiers made an attack on the Marshal in person, and tried to carry him off prisoner to the castle, but he...kept them at a distance, brandishing his sword right and left, and struck down whoever came within reach, either killing them or stunning them by the force of his blows, and although engaged single-handed against twelve enemies, defended himself for a length of time. His enemies at length, not daring to approach him, killed the horse he rode with their lances; but the Marshal, who was well practised in the French way of fighting, seized one of the knights who was attacking him by the feet, and dragged him to the ground, and then quickly mounting his adversary's horse, he renewed the battle...

Baldwin, ashamed that the Marshal defended himself single-handedly against so many foes, made a desperate attack on him, and seizing his helmet, tore it from his head with such violence that blood gushed from his nostrils and his mouth. He then seized the marshal’s bridle and tried to drag him to the castle, with others pushing him from behind. The Marshal, sweeping his sword behind him, struck two of his enemies to the earth, stunned, but could not free himself from their grasp. 

At this juncture... a crossbowman amongst the Marshal's company, seeing his lord in danger, discharged an arrow from his bow, which, striking Baldwin, who was dragging the Marshal away, in the breast, entered his body, notwithstanding his armour, and he fell to the earth, believing himself mortally wounded. On seeing this, his comrade left the Marshal and went to raise Baldwin from the ground, thinking him dead.

Whilst these events were passing, news had been carried to the Marshal's army of the danger he was in, on which they marched with all haste to his assistance, and soon put his enemies to flight. A bridge in the neighbourhood of the castle, over which the fugitives hoped to make their escape, was found to be broken, on which great numbers of them threw themselves into the river and were drowned with their horses and arms; others, having no means of escape, were slain by their pursuers, and some were made prisoners, and few of those who had sallied out from the castle returned safe."

It’s a great account, full of chivalric derring-do, brave speeches and actions, and the villain of the piece, the foreigner Baldwin of Guines, being overcome and carried from the field.

We should always be careful with medieval accounts of battle. Roger of Wendover, cloistered in his abbey of St Albans in the south-east of England, was not an eyewitness to the fight. Instead, he was reliant on hearing the story of the battle second- or even third-hand. For inspiration (and because their noble audience expected it), authors would use the chivalric tales of Arthur and Roland, or draw on classical or biblical tales as exemplars. All too often, the accounts are as much about what the author and his audience felt should have happened as what actually did happen.

However, much of Wendover’s description of the battle has a ring of truth about it.

Whilst the rebels' killing of Richard’s horse was a desperate ploy and one that was generally frowned upon., it was not unheard of. Richard’s father , the great William Marshal, once unhorsed Richard the Lionheart in this manner, during a skirmish outside Le Mans in 1189. Richard had been ambushed and was unarmoured. The future king challenged William that, because of this, he couldn’t strike him personally:

‘God’s legs, Marshal! Do not kill me that would be a wicked thing to do, since you find me here completely unarmed.’ The Marshal replied: ‘Indeed I won’t. Let the devil kill you! I shall not be the one to do it.’ This said, he struck the Count’s horse a blow with his lance, and the horse died instantly; it’s never took another step forward. It died, and the count fell to the ground. It was a fine blow, which came at an opportune moment for those riding ahead.’

Back at Monmouth, Richard’s response was to unhorse one of his opponent’s by grabbing their foot and hauling them out of the saddle. It is difficult to know what to make of Wendover’s reference to it being part of the ‘the French way of fighting’. The ploy itself could have come straight for the tournament field, and, given that tournaments were far more popular and frequent in France than they were England at this time, maybe it is a reference to the tricks and tactics employed in that particular form of fighting. Given that Richard had not long come over from France it is possible that Wendover was alluding to his foreignness, but it would be an odd time in the story tom make much of it. Besides, Baldwin and many of his men were, themselves, equally French. Perhaps Wendover was merely trying to show that Richard was a great warrior, every bit the equal of his father.

Richard’s father's favoured tactic at tournament was a little different. His biography suggests that he captured his opponents by grabbing their reins before putting them in a headlock and tearing off their helmets, forcing their surrender. This was, of course, the very tactic Baldwin used against Richard, using such force that ‘blood gushed from his nostrils’.

When Wendover’s (arguably more famous) continuator and editor, Matthew Paris came to refresh the story, he chose to make it appear even more like a tournament encounter. His sketch of the battle has Richard Marshal unhorsing Baldwin with a lance-thrust, rather than the latter being struck by a crossbow quarrel, forcing him to flee the field fearing he had been mortally wounded.

Baldwin, in spite of his fears, was not to die on the field. Wendover tells us that of the 1000 knights in his force, fifteen men were captured by Marshal and led off as prisoners, whilst an unnumbered host lay dead on the field, Welsh, Poitevins ‘and other foreigners’. Of the Marshal's force, only three were led off captive, including one Thomas Siward - presumably a relative of Richard.

The Aftermath

In spite of his victory over Baldwin, Richard chose not to besiege Monmouth’s castle. instead he, Llewellyn, Basset, and Siward continued to launch raids and ambushes against the king’s troops, offering no quarter so that the whole region was tainted by the ‘numbers of dead foreigners who lay about on the road and other places’.

At the start of 1234 Richard went to his lands in Ireland. There he found his brother had brokered a truce with the king’s men in Leinster. Richard undid that, attacking the king’s Irish Justiciar, and spreading fear and chaos in much the same way that he and Siward had in England. In April he was cut off from his men and wounded fatally at the Battle of the Curragh, dying on April 15th, leaving his brother Gilbert to come to terms with the king and save the family’s fortunes.

Siward and Basset fared better. They made further raids through 1234, including one that came within four miles of capturing the king, securing their reputation. 

WIth the death of Richard Marshal, these two notorious outlaws came to terms with Henry and, as the pendulum of courtly politics swung back in favour of Hubert de Burgh and away from Peter des Roches, both Siward and Basset were to find employment at the royal court. Siward was to serve the king in campaigns in Brittany, and was given the honour of bearing the golden sceptre at the coronation of Henry’s wife, Queen Eleanor. He spent a little time in the court of Alexander II of Scotland, before being granted lordship of Gower and Glamorgan, and gaining a lordship for himself at Tal y Fan near Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan. His possession of this was disputed by the Earl of Gloucester, and the case was still before the king’s justices when Siward suffered a stroke and died in the winter of 1248.

It was not long after the Marshal’s rebellion that Henry III became free of the influence of both des Roches, who died in 1238, and de Burgh, who died in 1248. He could, however, not remove himself from the perception of being subject to foreign influence, and twenty years later would face rebellion once again, on a much grander scale, led by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.

I was reading something about medieval landscapes recently, for the course I teach on castles, and came across a description of medieval ridge-and-furrow ploughland that completely changed my mental picture of the battlefield of Agincourt, and the terrain that hampered the French knights advancing against Henry’s lines.

Medieval Ploughing and its impact on the landscape.

Most arable land was split into a series of strips, each cultivated by a separate family. Whilst exact dimensions could vary, they tended to be a ‘furlong’ in length - the distance a team of oxen could plough without being rested, or about 200 metres (650 feet) - and between four-and-a-half and twenty metres (between fifteen and sixty-five feet) wide. The strips connect often at odd angles, workgin wiht the natural topography to minimise the need to plough uphill, to maximise the amount of land put to the plough, and to distinguish one man’s strip from another.

The ploughing of these strips was done with a plough that had ploughshare (the blade) and mould-board (the piece of a plough that turns the soil). These were fixed, turning the soil over to the right of the plough as it moved through the earth. As the plough was drawn up a field strip, lifted and turned around the short ‘headland’ and back down the other side of the strip, the earth would bank up toward the centre of the strip to form a ridge, with a consequent furrow, or depression, being created between the strips. As the teams of oxen started to be turned as they reached the headland, the plough would twist, creating a distinctive reverse s-shape.

Over time the ploughing of the strip in the same direction season after season caused the ridge to build higher and higher. This was beneficial to drainage as the furrows would collect moisture (and were often planted with beans, or barley and oats, crops which benefit from wetter soil). The difference in height could be extreme, especially in heavier soils where drainage was more important. A difference of a metre (three to four feet) was common, whilst in some the top of the ridge might lie some two metres (six feet) above the base of the furrow. The fact that medieval ridge and furrow can still be seen in some modern pastures to this day, albeit a shadow of their former selves at barely a half-metre (two feet), is an indicator of just how deep these features once were.

The ploughed field of Agincourt.

We know, from contemporary accounts, that the fields around Tramencourt and Agincourt, over which the French army advanced had recently been ploughed, and were sodden from recent heavy rains. Walsingham’s chronicle notes that the fields were newly sown with wheat, and were rough and muddy, exhausting the French marching across it, whilst the author of the contemporary French chronicle the ‘Histoire de Charles VI’ records that the ground ‘had been newly worked over, and that torrents of rain had flooded and converted into a quagmire’. Pierre Cochon, another French chronicler, says that the ground ‘was so soft that the men-at-arms sank into it by at least a foot’.

Most historians mention this as a factor in the French defeat. The boggy ground - a heavy, sticky clay - made it hard for men in full plate to advance and to fight, and those who stumbled and fell might well find themselves unable to gain purchase to stand in the morass of churned up mud. However I suspect that, like me, most of them have had an image of a modern field in mind, with ridges of broken turf capable of turning an ankle or tripping one up; difficult and tiring to walk over, for sure, but by no means impassible. Certainly most illustrations of the battle, or depictions in film, represent it as such.

A medieval ploughed field would, I suggest, have been much, much worse.

Rather than just crossing ground cut up by the action of the plough, the French troops were also advancing across a landscape that was also corrugated by well-established ridges and furrows. If the battle-lines ran parallel to the course of the plough, they would have had to clamber up and down banks a metre to two metres high, dropping down the other side, and repeating that perhaps as little as every five or six metres. The banks would have been steep and slimy with plough-churned mud, whilst the bottom of each furrow would have been a ditch of mud and rainwater. If the battle-line ran perpendicular to the ridge and furrow, so that the men-at-arms advanced up their length, it would have been little better, some wading through the sodden furrows whilst others tried to keep their footing on the steep and slippery banks of the ridge.

The landscape of Agincourt might have been more reminiscent of the Somme battlefields of the First World War rather than the green open fields over which we tend to picture medieval armies fighting.

Further Reading

• S. R. Eyre, ‘The Curving Plough-Strip and its Historcial Implications.’ The Agricultural History Review, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1955), pp. 80-94 https://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/03n2a2.pdf (accessed 21/4/24)

• Imogen Clarkson Wright, ‘What is Medieval Ridge and Furrow?’ https://ruralhistoria.com/2023/10/15/medieval-ridge-and-furrow/ (accessed 21/4/24)

• Anne Curry, The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations. (Woodbridge, 2000)

• Oliver Rackham, The Illustrated History of the Countryside. (London, 2003)

A little one-handed bec de faucon for a captain….

Leafing throught the newly-published second volume of Ralph Moffat’s excellent Medieval Arms and Armour: A Sourcebook*, I came across the above entry in an inventory of the Château of Blois made in March 1434.

It intrigued me, and got me thinking about the use of weapons as emblems of command, and the different types that have been used.

• Volume Two will be out soon (I got an advanced copy). Volume One is available here, and I heartily recommend them both for your bookshelves. The quote comes from Document 89, page 143 (Blois, Bibliothéque Abbé Grégoire, Collection Joursanvault, Role CXIV Inventory of the Château of Blois, 31 March 1434).

Swords.

We’re very used to thinking of swords as emblems of rank and authority today, in no small part because in most modern militaries officers still have a sword as part of their dress uniform.

To a certain extent this was true in the middle ages as well. I have written previously about the use of ‘bearing swords’ as symbols of devolved royal power and noble status, including the sword of the Constable of France, who was the senior comander of French royal armies through most of the medieval period.

However, swords as symbols of military rank were not so common. The problem was that most warriors in the high and late middle ages, and almost all of those who might be sufficiently socially elite to have command, would have carried a sword into battle as a matter of course. When everyone was waving a sword around how would the commander’s sword be distinguished?

It is no surprise then, that other emblems of command would come into use.

The Baculum, and Mace.

One of the most famous occurences of a weapon used as an emblem of command appears in the Bayeux Tapestry. On three ocassions Norman commanders are shown carrying clubs of knotted wood into battle. Often the focus is on Odo Bishop of Bayeux, who is twice depicted with club in hand. The traditional interpretation is that he is shown carrying it because as a churchman he was forbidden to shed blood and therefore used a club instead of a sword.

Now this is nonsense. Besides the fact that if you hit someone hard enough with a wooden club you are going to draw blood just as readily as if you had whacked them with a sword, it seems obvious that the intention of the restriction is that men of the Church should not participate in violence at all. Secondly, bishops were landholders, and as such had duties as both secular and ecclesiastical lords. Thirdly, plenty of bishops were prepared to ignore the restriction and take an active part in battle. To take just one example, Philip of Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais was such a regular warrior (participating actively in the Third Crusade and the battle of Bouvines) that the chronicler and illustrator Matthew Paris chose to depict him in a full knight’s helm with his mitre serving as a crest, rather than as a prelate.

Finally, the baculum also appears in the hands of William of Normandy, the future William the Conqueror, and he is neither a churchman nor under any ban on the shedding of blood.

The baculum is one form of a long-standing emblem of command - the baton. They are in use today as the token of a senior general (it was claimed that every one of Napoleon’s soldiers held a figurative Marshal’s baton in their knapsack, a metaphor for the ability of ordinary soldiers to be promoted on merit). The same symbol - sometimes referred to as a wand of command was being used in the middle ages. When Thomas Erpingham gave the order for the English archers to loose their first volley at Agincourt, we are told he did so by throwing his baton into the air.

The orgins are obscure, but I would suggest they lie with the Romans and the vine stick that was one of the emblems of rank carried by centurions, used for corporal punishment.

A variant on the baculum is the mace. Again, the orgins are ancient. In western Europe they are found being paraded ahead of the monarch as part of the regalia (or those delegated royal powers, such as the mayors of certain cities). In Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine the buława a ball-headed ornamental mace, was the mark of the hetman, the highest military commander, equivalent to a medieval western Euroepan constable or marshal, whilst Ottoman officers had similar tokens in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Partisans and Halberds

By the late sixteenth century there was increasing emphasis on the command structures within infantry units, and the officers of these sported particular weapons as their symbols of command.

For officers, the weapon of choice became the partisan; some eight- to ten-feet in length, with a spear-like head. For the sergeants the weapon was the halberd, similar in length but dominated by an axeblade.

Such weapons had developed in the high and later middle ages from agricultural tools. They were popular amongst urban militias and, perhaps most famously, the fifteenth-century Swiss that were so successful against the Duchy of BUrgundy’s troops. By the end of the period they had taken on something of a ceremonial aspect, being the weapons chosen for the personal bodyguards of kings and nobles. The weapons for these troops were often highly decorated, their blades inscribed with the arms of the nobleman, or other decorative elements

Whilst they might be effective weapons, they were also very useful for helping to dress the lines of troops and to level the muskets of the men for more effective volleys, being used much like a builder’s line. Some ceased to be practrical weapons, their heads becoming increasingly decorative. The extreme of this was the production of ‘leading staffs’, which looked like a partisan but whose head was merely a heavily decorated finial rather than a practical spearpoint.

Why a Bec du Faulcon?

So, why should the bec de faulcon beocme the preserve of a captain?

I suspect that it came about in much the same way as the use of halberds and partisans for sergeants and officers in the early modern period. The weapon was developed as an effective tool against plate armour, designed specifically to cave in, distort, or even pierce the plates. However, it cannot simply have been its practicality that led to its adoption as a symbol of rank.

Like the polearms of the early modern period, the bec de faulcon seems to have a connection with rank and position, perhaps drawing on the use of the baculum or mace as an emblem of command. It would be an obvious weapon, distinct from the swords and maces carried by mounted gendarmes, or the lances or polearms used by them on foot. It would also have been different from the wands carried by more senior commanders. Its form would have leant itself to embellishment and decoration, allowing it (again like the partisan) to become an object of high status and display.

As always, there is more to be found here, and it may be that a close reading of the documents connected with the establishment of the French (ro indeed Burgundian) Compagnies d’Ordnnance would shed more light on whether this was a universal symbol, expected of all captains, or merely an assumption on the part of the scribe compiling the inventory.

Whichever is the case, the petit bec de faulcon a une main pour vng capp[itai]ne is a nice example of how weapons are often more than simple tools for killing.

I have had more occasions to don harness this summer than ever before.

Every time I put it on I learn something new, and I thought that it would be good to reflect on and share a few of these insights

1: A trained squire is worth your armour’s weight in gold.

Having a squire who knows what they are doing is important for several reasons.*

Firstly, it speeds the process up. An inexperienced squire has to be shown which piece goes next, which straps go where, and how to get the fit right. Secondly, it is important that they know how the armour is supposed to go together, and how it is supposed to fit. A harness is a system, in which all of the pieces work together to provide the maximum of protection for the minimum of encumbrance. For that to work pieces have to be placed carefully and adjusted so that they can work efficiently. If a point is tied slightly too loosely on the cuisse, or the back of the vambrace is closed over the front rather than the other way around, or if the great helm isn’t quite positioned correctly on the bascinet, then things can start to rub, or lock up, or leave you unable to see. Sometimes the difference is minute, imperceptible at the time the armour is put on, but after half an hour, it can become annoyingly, even painfully obvious. Thirdly, your squire needs to be physically robust. While armour should not be heavy to wear, the weight being transferred around the core muscles rather than hanging from your shoulders, it still has weight, and that has to be held and manipulated by your squire as they work to get you strapped in. I wonder at the popular image of the squire as a young boy, maybe only 10 years old, and how they were expected to manage to offer up a ten-kilogram (twenty-pound) pair of plates to the chest of their knight and then pull the straps tight.

* This is not to denigrate the efforts of Liz, Will, Sam, Brandon, Mark, and Nick - all of whom have served admirably as my squires on different occasions.

2: Resist the urge to help your squire.

I feel terribly guilty standing there issuing instructions to my squire about which bit of armour goes on next, and tend to end up ‘helping’ by trying to do bits myself. I have learnt that this can be terribly counter-productive, as my fidgeting and fiddling can actually get in the way whilst the poor squire is trying to fit a piece or adjust a strap.

It is far better to accept your role as a knight with servants, stand there passively, and let them get on with their job.

3: Armour has to fit, and it can be very unforgiving.

One of the most frequent jokes about having the armour is that I now have to watch what I eat, otherwise I won’t be able to fit in the armour. There is truth in this, and the arming coat (the jacket that sits under the armour and has the mail sleeves and points for the arms) is of necessity very tight and corsetting, leaving little room for a winter of pies and hearty stews.

Equally, however, too much exercise can also be a problem. The arm and leg harness are both close fitting, and extra muscle on the bicep, tricpe or thigh will all cause fitting problems. When it comes to the greaves - the one bit of my harness that is ‘free floating’ (that is to say it doesn’t attach to anything but hugs my calves) - the problem has been quite the opposite, and having slimmed down they now have a tendency to drop a little, and rest (and rub) on my instep. Hopefully, the new mail chausses that arrived recently will fill the gap.

4: The retention chains work…. after a fashion.

One of the elements of my harness that receives the most interest are the retention chains. Like the piece of string between a pair of child’s mittens, they were added to mid-fourteenth century harness to attach sword, dagger, and great helm to the pair of plates, so that if dropped they could be retrieved.

I have been playing with them, and have realised that whilst the one for the great helm is great, in that it doesn't just hand as dead weight, pull on my neck or unbalance me when it is slung on my back, retrieving it myself is tricky. I am almost certain that one would need a squire to come and place the helm back on your head.

The chains for the dagger and the sword do not make it difficult to use either when attached (providing you use the two furthest to the right), so you needn’t detach the chains before drawing and swinging the sword. However, the chains can get tangled, and they offer an excellent way for an opponent to grab you and pull you off balance.

I am going to do a bit more experimentation with these, and will write something a little more considered as to their use in the future.

5: Wearing armour makes you centre of attention.

I have long argued that putting on armour has a psychological impact on both the wearer and those that saw him. This is certainly true today, where strolling through a crowd in full harness causes people to step aside, and turns heads. Of course, part of this is novelty value, but the harness also has a visual impact.

Donning armor definitely changes the way you stand. The corseting effect of the arming coat and the pair of plates encourages you to draw yourself up, whilst the arm harness definitely broadens your chest by drawing your shoulders back. Adding the bascinet again encourages you to lift your head, whilst the strap that locks the great helm to the pair of plates forces your head up. You also feel bigger and more powerful. And, of course, the great helm makes a six-foot chap closer to seven.

6: Wearing a helmet can make life interesting.

Two more aspects of wearing the helms I have learnt this summer is that whilst you are bare-headed the heat build-up from wearing armour can escape around your neck, but as soon as the padded ventail and bascinet go on then suddenly that heat can’t escape and it starts to get warm. It’s like wrapping your head in a duvet.

Secondly, the visor of the bascinet, or the great helm, makes it much, much more difficult to communicate. Again, this is something that I have been arguing for some time, but this summer I have realised just how much less you can hear, the limitations on your field of vision,. Whilst the latter is less bad than you might think (especially with the bascinet where you can move your head) the impact on your ability to communicate, to hear but also to be heard is quite high. Several times I had to be reminded to raise my voice when wearing the great help m so that my audience could hear what I was saying, and I was finding it very difficult to hear the comments and questions of people a little distant from me, muffled as they were by the padded lining to the bascinet. At one point whilst wearing the bascinet I had a host of parents asking if their child could be photographed with me, but I had absolutely no idea how many there were and couldn’t see a single one!

I can quite see why a commander might raise his visor, or (in later armour) remove the bevor that protected his chin, in order to allow greater airflow or simply to be able to shout a command. or have a better sense of what was going on around him, and how that might lead to getting an arrow in the face (as happened to the future Henry V at Shrewsbury in 1403 or to Clifford at Towton in 1461).

All of these insights are just scratching the surface. At the moment I have done little more than run around in the armour, or move between guard positions with the sword. How the armour (and my body inside it) behaves when trying to hit (and avoid being hit) by a live opponent I have yet to experience.

I also need to add a shield, surcoat (technically a cyclas), and a crest to the great helm, all of which are likely to have an impact on maneuverability and appearance.

There is still so much more to learn.

Swords of Offering, of Justice, and of State

So what are the five swords that feature in the king’s inauguration as monarch, and where do they come from?

The newest of the bunch is the so-called ‘Sword of Offering’. This was made for the coronation of George IV in 1821, to his own design.

It is this sword that is blessed by the Archbishop and presented to the monarch with the injunction that they use it to protect the good and punish evil’, the invocation that lies at the heart of the use of swords in the medieval inaugurations of kings, first recorded in England at the coronation of Richard I in 1189.

Originally the sword was the monarch’s own, and its offering to the altar was a personal pledge. George’s sword was also meant to be retained by the monarch (unlike the others in the ceremony, which were returned to the Tower as part of the regalia) but, after being reused in Edward VII’s coronation of 1902, it too was incorporated into the Crown jewels.

The next two swords - the ‘Sword of Temporal Justice’ and the ‘Sword of Spiritual Justice’. These were made for the coronation of Charles I in 1626, and represent the monarch as the defender of his realm (the temporal sphere) and of the Faith (the spiritual). The concept derives from a medieval Christian doctrine that the Church possessed two metaphorical swords - one of Temporal Justice and one of Spiritual Justice - with which it protected the faithful from physical and spiritual harm. The former duty, the Church devolved onto monarchs and princes, whilst the latter it retained itself. In medieval inaugurations, the presentation of a sword to the monarch by the officiating bishop represented this transfer of responsibility.

When Henry VIII split from Rome and declared himself head of the church in England, he took on responsibility for spiritual justice too, and with it the second sword.

The Sword of State, which was made in 1678, is a more general symbol of the king’s authority. It is the sword that is carried before the monarch on state occasions, such as the opening of Parliament., traditionally by the Gentleman Usher to the Sword of State, but for this coronation by Penny Mordaunt, Lord President of the Privy Council. Similar Swords of State can be seen preceding the mayors of many English towns. Again, the carriage of these is medieval in origin, and originally represented a loaning of authority, this time from the monarch to the mayor.

The Sword of Mercy - Curtana - An Arthurian Heritage?

The fifth sword to have a place in the coronation is, in many ways the most interesting, and the one with the strongest links back to the medieval past. The ‘Sword of Mercy’ is also the only one of the swords to have a proper name - Curtana or ‘short’.

The current sword is not much older than any of the others, again having been forged for the coronation of Charles I. Its most notable feature is that it lacks a tip, the end of the sword being squared off. It seems that it is this feature that resulted in the sword being related to mercy; without its tip, modern commentators say, the sword cannot be used to thrust and is therefore somehow representative of the sparing of life. Its ability to cut is ignored (the sword is not blunt, nor is there anything to suggest that the previous versions were either). Another, more likely reason for the connection is that the sword is very similar to the swords used by early modern executioners in western and central Europe, as their blades uniformly have the same blunted profile, a clear mark that the weapon’s sole purpose was decapitation.

The name Curtana, however, links the sword to an older tradition of English royal coronations. Courte was the sword of the Arthurian hero Tristan. This Cornish hero travelled to Ireland and slew the Irish giant and champion Morholt, who had been extorting taxes from the Cornish people. When he did so a fragment of his sword was broken off in the giant’s skull, leaving a notch in the blade. In a later romance, Tristan’s sword passes to a new warrior, Ogier the Dane, a contemporary of the great French hero Roland, and a knight of Charlemagne. Ogier fins the sword a little long and heavy, and has the blade cut down, after which he finds it is now too short, and so he names the sword ‘Courte’, which over time is rendered as Courtain, or Curtana.

The first historical figure to receive Courte was King John, who was given the sword by his father Henry II when he knighted him and invested him with the lordships of both Ireland and Cornwall. The symbolism of granting him Tristan’s sword is clear. Henry’s gift links John with the Cornishman Tristan’s subjugation of the Irish, reinforcing the links between Cornwall and England and the suzerainty of the English Crown over the native Irish kings.

Curtana appears next in the marriage of John’s son, Henry III, to Eleanor of Provence in 1236. The chronicler Matthew Paris writes that John of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon and Chester ‘carried the sword of St Edward, which was called “Curtein,” before the king, as a sign that he [John of Scotland] was Earl of the Palace, and had by right the power of restraining the king if he should commit an error.’ Apart from the link to Edward the Confessor, a unique departure probably reflecting Henry’s dedication to the saintly king, Matthew’s account is interesting in that it suggests the sword borne before the monarch, far from being a symbol of his power, was actually a symbol of the limits of royal power.

Five Swords where one would suffice?

One of the striking things about all five of the swords in use in the modern coronation is that they share, more or less, the same functions: they are all reflections of the monarch’s judicial, and martial, authority, and the responsibility they have to protect their subjects. In this regard, the Sword of Offering and the Sword of State serve to duplicate the Swords of Temporal and Spiritual Justice, as they represent the same authority of the Crown. They just do so in separate and distinct parts of the rite.

Indeed, in medieval inaugurations, one sword might be passed back and forth between the monarch and the presiding bishop, in a sort of sword-y hokey-cokey, as the sword’s symbolism shifted with each new phase of the ritual: first belted around his waist as a symbol of his martial authority, then taken back, placed on the altar, passed to him again, unsheathed, as a symbol of his bearing the Church’s temporal authority, returned again before being passed to a swordbearer who would precede the newly anointed monarch away from the church, carrying the sword, point uppermost, as a Sword of State.

The inclusion of the five different swords in the forthcoming coronation, like all of the regalia to be used, is a reflection of the complex symbolism of coronations, medieval and modern, and of the monarch as a man and an institution.

Selected readings:

• Robert W. Jones, A Cultural History of the Medieval Sword: Power, Piety, and Play. (Woodbridge, 2023)

• Lieutenant Colonel (Retd) Edward Barrett MBE, Ceremonial Swords of Britain: State and Civic Swords. (Cheltenham, 2017)

• Johanna Dale, Inauguration Rituals and Liturgical Kingship in the Long Twelfth Century. (York, 2019)

• J. Le Goff, ‘A Coronation Program for the Age of Saint Louis: The Ordo of 1256’ in Coronations: Medieval and Early Modern Monarchic Ritual, ed. János M. Bak (Berkeley, CA, 1990)

• David Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000-1300. (London, 1992)

Having released the completed* version of my big-battle wargames rules ‘Blood and Horse Droppings’, here are my thoughts on how to stage Agincourt as a wargame, and how to do so using the rules.

(* Not that a ruleset is ever ‘complete’ - I am certain to be tempted to fiddle with them over time.)

Why Agincourt?

To a certain extent, the desire to recreate Agincourt on the tabletop is an obvious one. Of the Hundred Years War battles it is, for an anglophone audience, the most iconic. Thanks to Shakespeare and centuries of myth-making (which started more or less on Henry’s return from the campaign) it has become one of the enduring tales of English victory against overwhelming odds, and of the triumph of the common archer over the noble knight.

The myth of Agincourt should make it a rubbish battle to play out on the tabletop. Either the odds are so overwhelming that no balanced ruleset will give the English a chance to defeat the French knightly juggernaut, or the English archers are inevitably going to mow down the French before they have a chance to come to blows with their English opponents.

In fact, Agincourt was a close fight, and if structured right offers both players a good chance of victory, and one that is not wholly based on pure chance.

So, here’s my take on how to do Agincourt on the tabletop, using ‘A Hundred Years of Blood and Horse Droppings’.

The Battlefield/Tabletop

Assuming you have the wargamer’s standard 6’ by 4’ table, and 28mm figures, the battle is fought along the length of it, with the English wards deployed in a line, one foot in from one narrow end. The French Companies are deployed at the other narrow end (we’ll talk about exactly how below).

The intervening table space should be open and flat. The woods of Agincourt and Tramencourt, are represented on either flank by areas of woodland 18” long, and 12” or so wide at the English table edge, tapering away towards the French, forming the classic funnel that was so important a part of the battle. This will count as ROUGH and OBSCURING terrain, as per the rules.

To reflect the difficulties the French faced traversing the muddied ploughland, between eight or so areas of ‘ROUGH terrain’ (perhaps represented by offcuts of ridged brown doormats, or simply pieces of brown paper), each about 12”x8”, should be laid out randomly across the centre of the table between the English and French armies.

The Forces

The English

This is a relatively easy army to put together. By 1415 royal armies were entirely raised by indenture, contracts that specified exactly the troops required of the nobleman made up of companies of men-at-arms and archers. In my opinion, these component troop types would have continued to fight as a single company in close cooperation, rather than the archers being stripped out and placed under the command of men they did not know (and potentially could not understand), So, in ‘Blood and Horse Droppings’ these formations are represented by the ‘Herce Company’, named after Froissart’s famous (and obscure) description of English battlefield deployment looking like a herce (or harrow|).

As per the rules, the commanders of each ward, and other named notable captains, are an integral part of one of these Companies. The Captains’ Cards for the named figures are to be found as a link on the website. Those companies without a named captain will use a d6 Quality Dice.

All Companies should have a casualty rating of 5.

Van Ward

Duke of York (Herce Company)

Duke of Gloucester (Herce Company)

Herce Company

Main Ward

Henry V (Herce Company) Sir Thomas Erpingham (Herce Company)

Herce Company

Rear Ward

Lord Camoys (Herce C|ompany)

Herce Company

Herce Company

English Deployment

This is pretty straightforward. The three wards are placed side by side across the table, up to 12" from the table edge. In front of them, across the whole front, place stakes, each section the same width as a Company and a couple of inches deep. These count as LINEAR and FORTIFIED terrain (in other words they will halt movement, and may cause disorder to cross, and negate the Bonus an attacking Company would receive for charging or following up against a Company immediately behind them).

The only special rule that you will not find in the rules, is to reflect Sir Thomas Erpingham’s command of the archers. According to sources he rode in front of the army and gave the order for the first flight of arrows, calling ‘Now strike!’ and throwing his baton into the air. To represent this, the first shot of each English Company, no matter to which ward they belong, may automatically benefit from the ‘arrowstorm’ rule, without having to pass the usual Universal Test.

The French

The French force is slightly more diverse, with a mixture of mounted men-at-arms, dismounted men-at-arms, and then what the sources refer to as gens de trait, crossbows, archers, and spearmen from the various urban militias and professional companies (who, unlike the English, were raised and fought separately from the men-at-arms).

I would suggest the following combination:

• Two mounted men-at-arms companies, the right flank company under Clignet, Admiral of France

• Eight (dismounted) men-at-arms companies, including the French captains D’Albret, Boucicaut, d’Alençcon, and Bourbon

• two crossbow companies, two bow companies, and two spear companies. The crossbows may have pavises (giving them extra defence against archery).

The Captains’ Cards for the named figures are to be found as a link on the website. Those companies without a named captain will use a d6 as a Quality Dice.

All Companies should have a casualty rating of 5.

Options for French Deployment

One of the reasons given for the defeat of the French army at Agincourt was their deployment. With the French nobles all clamouring for the honour of being in the vanguard, and of being amongst the first to engage the English, the cavalry, main and rear wards were left without any obvious leadership, and the gens de trait - the crossbows and archers - were left at the rear of the army, unable to participate.

For that reason, I would suggest that the French player should be allowed to choose between two possible deployments. They might decide to attack as the French did historically, and see whether the bravado and brute strength of the French men-at-arms can win through. If this is the option chosen then the crossbow, bow, and spear companies should be placed in the rear ward, with the mounted men-at-arms and the named captains and their companies in the van, and other men-at-arms companies making up the main ward.

Alternatively, they can follow a plan closer to that drawn up by Marshal Boucicault and Charles d’Albret, the week before the battle. This would see two companies of mounted men-at-arms, the companies of crossbows, and bows, alongside the men-at-arms companies of Boucicaut and d’Albret forming the van ward, with main and rear wards behind, comprising the remaining companies of dismounted men-at-arms and spears, with the other named commanders evenly distributed in each ward.

Whatever deployment option is used, the French army’s rear ward should sit against the table edge, with the main ward 8” in front of them, and the van 8” in front of the main.

The French attack on the Baggage

Arguably, from a wargaming perspective, the attack by a group of local knights on the English encampment had little importance. It may have encouraged Henry in his decision to order the execution of prisoners, and they may have stolen some jewels, crowns, and Excalibur (I’ve written about this incident here) but otherwise, they had no significant impact on the outcome of the battle.

Their appearance, however, will put extra pressure on the English player and, should things be going very badly for the French, help to even the odds.

To represent this attack, you can add a single Company of Serjans/Hobelars to the French force, with a strength of 3, to represent the local men-at-arms. They will appear on a successful Universal Test (taken using the senior French noble’s Quality Dice) on either the None or Vespers turn.

A Different Kind of Game

The third option for the French deployment changes the game somewhat. Here the players all take the part of the French, in a competitive game to win as much glory as possible. The French Companies are divided evenly among the players, with each getting a mix of mounted men-at-arms, dismounted men-at-arms, crossbows, bows, and spears. They are deployed side by side, and can put their Companies in whatever order they choose., with their rear ward on the table edge, and no more than 8” between it and their main, ward and no more than 8” between the main ward and their van).

The French players’ objective then becomes less about defeating the English, and more about acquiring as much personal glory as possible. They gain points for such achievements as:

• having the first Company to engage the English in melee

• being the first noble to personally take part in combat

• fighting a melee against one of the English commanders (ranked 3 down to 1 for Henry, York, and then Camoys and the others)

• Capturing one of the English Captains (ranked as above)

• sacking the English baggage (with the option of extra points for finding ‘Excalibur’)

If you want to add an element of self-preservation, then halve the points if their captain doesn’t make it out of the battle alive.

The English forces can easily be run by the players collaboratively, so long as no one is forced to roll dice against themselves. (and even that needn’t be a problem, as any solo gamer can tell you). When a French player gets into melee, simply have one of the other players select the English tactical choice, and make any necessary Universal Tests.

Final Thoughts

I hope that this scenario will give an interesting, challenging, and fulfilling game. That is a big ask for any medieval wargame, and certainly for Agincourt in particular.

As always, the scenario is a suggestion, and players should choose to change things as they see fit. Add more captains (the French army was chock-full of noblemen, and the English had more experienced captains than those I have included here). If you feel that the English actually deployed blocks or wings of archers, separate from their men-at-arms then feel free to field the English as separate companies of men-at-arms and bows. It will certainly provide a different challenge to command, with more thought being needed to the sight-lines of the archers, and to how you will move your men-at-arms through the archers at the crucial moment.

Players should be able to do their own research and make their own choices to reflect how they read the battle. In the end, our understanding of medieval battles, and how they were fought, is patchy at best. Wargaming can offer us a different way of understanding what went on, even when we are really just playing with toy soldiers!

Or

‘Four Academics’

A Pastiche of Monty Python's Flying Circus’ Four Yorkshiremen sketch.

Inspired by Twitter, and presented with tongue firmly in cheek.

Four academics, dressed in ‘smart casual’, sit around a low coffee table. There is a buzz of conversation in the air around them.

FIRST ACADEMIC: Aye, very passable, that, very passable panel.

SECOND ACADEMIC: Nothing like a good conference panel, eh, Josiah?

THIRD ACADEMIC: You're right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH ACADEMIC: Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here enjoying a conference panel, eh?

FIRST ACADEMIC: In them days we was glad to have the price of a colloquium.

SECOND ACADEMIC: A one-day colloquium.

FOURTH ACADEMIC: Without lunch.

THIRD ACADEMIC: Or biscuits for us coffee break.

FIRST ACADEMIC: Or a coffee break.

FOURTH ACADEMIC: Oh, we never had coffee breaks. We used to have to bring coffee in from t’ Starbucks, and drink it during presentations.

SECOND ACADEMIC: The best we could manage was half a bottle of stale mineral water.

THIRD ACADEMIC: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST ACADEMIC: Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Funding doesn't buy you a submission to an Open Access Journal, son".

FOURTH ACADEMIC: Aye, 'e was right.

FIRST ACADEMIC: Aye, 'e was.

FOURTH ACADEMIC: I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to work in this tiny senior common room with no heating.

SECOND ACADEMIC: Senior Common Room! You were lucky to get a senior common room! We used to work in one cubicle, all twenty-six of us post-docs, no desk, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling through into t’ archaeology labs.

THIRD ACADEMIC: Eh, you were lucky to have a cubicle! We used to have to work in t' corridor!

FIRST ACADEMIC: Oh, we used to dream of workin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to work on a pile o’ journals in t’ campus library. We got woke up every morning by having a load of soddin’ beanbags dropped on us heads! Common Room? Huh.

FOURTH ACADEMIC: Well, when I say 'Senior Common Room' it was only a desk in the coffee shop, but it was a Senior Common Room to us.

SECOND ACADEMIC: We were evicted from our coffee shop; we 'ad to go and work on a satellite campus thirty mile out of town, wi’ the bloody Department for Strategic Business and Optometry Studies.

THIRD ACADEMIC: You were lucky to have a satellite campus! There were a hundred and fifty of us working remotely from us homes.

FIRST ACADEMIC: On departmental laptops?

THIRD ACADEMIC: Aye.

FIRST ACADEMIC: You were lucky. Two hundred of us shared wifi, lecturing via Skype on a reconditioned iPhone 6. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, grade thirty first-year papers, give the department’s survey course lectures for fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home we’d write two book reviews for TMR.

SECOND ACADEMIC: Luxury. We used to have to get to us cubicle at six o'clock in the morning, grade sixty first-year papers, lecture for twenty hour a day for tuppence a month, come home, and then write two REF-able articles before we ‘ad us tea!

THIRD ACADEMIC: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to refill the library vending machines at twelve o'clock at night, and grade eighty first-year papers. We ‘ad to sit on a departmental working party on curriculum development, give twenty-four hours of lectures a day in t’ department for sixpence every four years, and when we got home we’d write four REF-able papers before tea, and a revised monograph after.

FOURTH ACADEMIC: <Rubbing hands> Right.

I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, grade one-’undred  an’ twenty first-year papers, chair the departmental working party on curriculum development, give twenty-nine hours of lectures a day for t’ department, and pay t’ university for permission to use me own notes. And when I got home, reviewer two would tear up us manuscript in front of us, while I spent fourteen hours on Twitter, tickin’ off with some tenured professor for beating down on post-grads.

FIRST ACADEMIC: And you try and tell the young post-docs of today that ... they won't believe you.

ALL: They won't!

Here is the three-minute piece-to-camera I sent as an audition. It’s a bit rough, I speak too fast, but there you are; it’s worth every penny you’ve paid for it.

The one I did for the game was shot, much more professionally, in a field in South Wales.

If there is interest, I’ll follow this up with another blog post about medieval armies on the march. I might also (although I am still a bit unsure about this) start putting together more videos….

With Euro 2020 grinding on, I was minded to share a very tenuous link between football/soccer and knighthood.

There is a tendency to talk about knights as if they were all exactly the same. We routinely read that knights would be trained from the age of 6, be wearing armour by the time that they were 12, and taking the field at 16. We’ll be told that their raison d’etre was war, that they trained regularly, owned horse, armour and weapons, always ready to ride off in support of their lord.

Certain knights are held up as being the exemplars of their class. We are presented with William Marshall, the knight who rose from nothing to become the friend of princes, and regent of England. Wielding lance and sword with great success on the tournament ground and battlefield, he was still fighting in his 70s. Then there’s John II le Maingre, Marshal Boucicaut. He is the knight that would daily run a mile, could somersault, vault onto horseback, climb the underside of a ladder hand-over-hand, and brace himself between two walls and shimmy up between them, all whilst wearing his armour.*

Even if we accept that men like Boucicaut and Marshall actually lived up to their hype (and we should remember that each of these men’s reputations is based on biographies written to set them up as the greatest knight of their age), the fact is that they were not typical of every knight in Europe, and that there were plenty who fell well short of these standards.

The Analogy.

So, here’s the analogy. I suggest that we should think of those who acted as knights as being very much like those who play football/soccer (or indeed any other professional sport - heck, Wimbledon is on; think of them as tennis players).

You have those for whom the game is everything. They are talented, committed and feted across the world for their skills. These are your top-flight professional, premier league footballers. Those who get selected to play for their country. They are sponsored by the wealthiest, train and play almost continuously, and are the men who others seek to emulate. This is where one places the likes of William Marshal and Boucicaut. But, like the international and premier league players, these knights were the minority.

Below our premier league players, we have those for whom the sport is still their career, and who train and play solidly, but who never have the skill or the good fortune to become as successful, as famous or as wealthy. There are plenty of knights like this, the miles strenuus, for whom military service in a royal or baronial familia provided their meat and drink, and whose place of work was at tournament or the battlefield.

Below them again, there is a vast spectrum of players for whom the game is not their profession. This includes the semi-professional, who runs a job alongside their soccer, all the way down to the those who like a Saturday-afternoon kick-about, or are part of a five-a-side team. This is the sort of player for whom soccer is important, but cannot be the priority. The sort of person who’ll come out for training if the weather is good, or their office job doesn’t keep them at their desk until late. The bulk of football is played by this sort of amateur.

Knighthood is the same. There were plenty within the chivalric class whose priority was not combat, but the management of estates, or as an officer within the domestic household of a lord or prince, or even, in the late middle ages, trade or the courts. This didn’t mean that they were not prepared to take the field as men-at-arms, indeed their rank and their gender might make them feel it was required of them. But their first battle might be the first time they’d actually worn armour.

This is why we get the likes of Bonfils of Manganelli, who hired a suit of armour for the sum of seventeen solidi, from Antenoux Pecora, a fellow citizen of Gaeta near Rome, when the former headed across the sea in 1248.** A man who had to hire armour for a campaign would not seem to readily match the template created by William Marshal.

Of course, the vast majority of people connected with football are not players at all, but fans. There are thirteen times as many fans as there are players of the sport.*** Here the analogy breaks down. No matter how ‘A Knight’s Tale’ might picture it, knightly combat had nowhere near the popular appeal of football/soccer.

That, however, is a topic for another blog post.

* Lest we assume that this is all so much rubbish, Daniel Jaquet has proven that it can be done in his fifteenth-century harness.

** ‘Bonfils Manganelli: Hiring of a Suit of Armor, 1248’. The Medieval Sourcebook (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/1248suitarmr.asp, accessed 2/7/21).

*** A rough calculation based solely on the figures on this site. If they are wrong, well… I am a historian of medieval warfare, not a sociologist specialising in sport.

Every knight needs a sword and, with my splendid harness finished, I needed a sword that was every bit its equal in status, quality and accuracy.

It was time to go back to the books, do some more research, make some hard choices, and elicit the help of a rather talented friend.

The Right Sword for the Right Time.

The sword obviously had to match with the date and geographical origin of my harness. Just as with the armour, sword styles changed over the centuries (indeed across the decades) and, whilst there were pan-European fashions that transcended borders, there were also regional variations that meant that a German knight would wear a sword that was subtly different from that of an English knight, or a knight from France.

The easiest option to ensure that the sword matched the harness would have been to go back to the effigy. No matter what uncertainties there might be about the dating of the effigy (although there were relatively few with the one at Clehonger) the sword carved with the harness on the figure should be a good solid match.

The problem is that the Clehonger effigy has a sword that is almost unique. Even for a longsword (that is to say a sword designed to be wielded with either one or two hands), it is long, reaching from below the effigy’s foot (its tip sitting in the mouth of the hound at Sir Henry’s feet) to the centre of his chest. It also has a very unusual pommel type. A trefoil shape, reminiscent of the swords of the early medieval period, rather than the far more common circular pommel of Sir Henry’s own time.

It is always tricky when doing a recreation for the purposes of living history to find a balance between depicting the extraordinary/unique - which is always different and exciting for the public and the reenactor - and providing examples of the norm. This was the case here. The sword on Sir Henry’s effigy is a rare example of its form, and this in itself would be an excellent talking point. However, without having a context for why the sword depicted should be unusual it becomes very difficult to then provide an explanation to the public without falling back on the standard, wholly valid but ultimately unsatisfying historians answer of ‘we don’t know’.

A Great Exemplar of its Type.

I decided that the better choice was to go for the sort of sword that would most commonly be found hanging from the belt of a knight wearing my style and date of harness. It would also need to be ornamented to match the opulence of the armour. Something for a mid-ranking nobleman of good family, but not one of the great barons.

It was time to turn to that bible of the student of medieval swords, Ewart Oakeshott’s Records of the Medieval Sword. Oakeshott had been a collector of medieval swords for most of his life and, through decades of researching and handling, had developed a typology that has become the standard for describing weapons amongst scholars of the subject.

Oakeshott's typology provides a means by which the three main elements of a sword - the blade, the pommel, and the cross (often referred to as the quillons, which is a later term) - can be dated. His access to and knowledge of original swords, whether in his own collection or through the contacts he had among fellow private collectors and museum curators, was unsurpassed. In short, if you are looking for details of a sword of a particular date, Oakeshott’s work is your first, and often last, port of call.

A Sword to Tell a Story.

So, I wanted a mid-fourteenth century blade, cross and pommel. That narrowed things down. Oakeshott has five blade forms for the mid-fourteenth century - Types XIV to XVIII, but at least two of these are for longsword rather than the arming sword form that I was after. The pommel and cross were less easy to pin down as the forms of these remain in use over centuries. However, for the mid-fourteenth century arming sword, a circular pommel was most likely and, given what my thoughts were on decoration, the most appropriate. The cross would be similarly straight forward, but delicately shaped.

The sword was not going to be a plain one. Whilst knights undoubtedly had workaday swords they were never ones to skimp on decoration. Besides, being honest, this was probably my only opportunity to have a truly historical knightly sword.* It needed to be special.

As well as being a vanity project (who doesn’t want a beautiful sword?) the sword was also going to be an educational tool. I wanted it to have elements that would allow me to talk to the public about the sword as a symbol as well as a weapon. The connection between the sword and knighthood is an obvious one, but it also provided an opportunity to start a discussion of the knight and religion (something that is so often missing from medieval re-enactment). An engraved blade would be the obvious approach. There are plenty of examples of swords with inscriptions down the length of the blade, the majority of which are invocations of God, Christ, or the saints. However, by 1350 - the date of my harness - such inscriptions are increasingly rare, whether because such sentiment was going out of fashion, or because the newer styles of sword blade tended to have a profile that did not leave a flat area on which to place an inscription.**

The alternative was for the inscription to be on the pommel or cross of the sword. Again, there were examples of swords with religious invocations on either surface. However, I had other plans for the decoration on the pommel.

The third option for connecting the sword with the religiosity of knighthood was the addition of a relic within it. This practice was an old one. In the twelfth-century epic The Song of Roland, Roland’s sword Durendal is studded with them, including a tooth of St Peter, some of St Baasi’s blood, a lock of St |Denis’ hair and a piece of the Virgin mary’s clothing; a veritable arsenal of sacred protection!

I wasn’t about to go that far, but a fair number of fourteenth-century pommels had an inset capable of holding a small relic, and one sword, in particular, appeared to have the relic still in place.

A Sword Fit for a King.

Okay, truth be told I had had this sword in mind from the very first. In Oakeshott's Records, it gets its own appendix, as its history and provenance have been somewhat problematic. Reputed to have belonged to Edward III, the weapon is now in a private collection. (This is why I don’t have any pictures, as there are none in the public domain, however, you can see some here.)

It is a superb piece, even when seen through the black and white photos of Oakeshott’s book. All of its elements -the blade, the cross and the pommel - date to the mid-fourteenth century; bang on for my interpretation. It has a diamond-section blade, 86 centimetres long (a Type XVIIIa if you follow Oakeshott’s typologies). The blade had been struck with the badge of the Order of the Garter and a Portcullis, with a little bell or flower bud maker’s mark. Oakeshott, who had the opportunity to closely inspect the blade, said that it had clear signs of wear, shining and ‘severe combat’, with a patination that suggested it had been well cared for, cleaned and maintained for a good while before an equally long period of neglect.

The pommel (Type K) and cross (Type 6) were both contemporary with the blade (this is not always the case. A blade sometimes would be re-hilted with a new pommel and cross to bring it up to the latest fashion). They were made of iron covered in a layer of gold foil. On one side of the pommel was inset an enamel plate displaying the English royal arms as adopted by Edward in 1340, with the leopards of England and the fleur de lys of France quartered. On the other side was a hollow in which lay a piece of cloth behind a disc of polished chalcedony. The cloth was undoubtedly a relic, perhaps a fragment of Christ’s shroud (or the shroud of Edward the Confessor as one commentator confidently announced), or the Virgin’s Raiment. The grip, of adder skin, showed signs of wear where a hand had repeatedly held it. This really was a sword fit for a king, but it was also, in Oakeshott’s view, a functional and effective sword for combat.

A Not So Pale Imitation

My sword isn’t that fancy but it has the same dimensions and weight, around three and a half pounds. This makes it on the heavy side for a single-handed sword, but the pommel balances it beautifully. It is a sword that is quick to cut or to thrust, and manageable in one hand.

The pommel is of brass rather than of gilded iron and retains the hollow containing a relic, in this case for my own history in re-enactment: a cross cut from the guidon that I marched under when I was in command of Wardlaw’s Dragoons, the Sealed Knot regiment I joined at 16, at the beginning of a journey which led to the armour and this sword. It seemed a fitting conceit.

On the other face, I couldn’t very well have the arms of a king. I didn’t want to be tied to the Pembridge effigy too closely (there might be times when being Pembridge doesn’t make sense at the venue I am in), so a heraldic design of any kind was too limiting. Instead, I decided on something a bit different, and that contrasted with the piety of the relic. Drawing on the Thrope falchion held at Norwich Cathedral, which has a similar date to Edward’s sword, the other side of the pommel features a babewyn, one of those cartoonish characters which medieval illustrators used to fill the margins of their works, and which spread into architecture and metalwork too. There is something very satisfying and medieval in reproducing this piece of whimsy in a weapon made for combat.

The space around both insets was filled with a floral motif, and the edge of the pommel with a geometric pattern, both drawn from another contemporary sword, the so-called Battle Abbey Sword.

I am very fortunate in having a re-enactment friend who is also a very fine bladesmith, and he agreed to take on the project. I know he was nervous (the blade was hand-forged, entailing hours of hard work with a hammer, and it could all be undone by the blade warping during the tempering process). The decoration, from the heat-blued cross to the reproduction of the babewyn, was all done by hand, with consummate attention to detail. With its ox-blood red grip and scabbard (the latter decorated with more handmade brasswork) the finished project is sublime, the work of a true craftsman, and every bit the sword I would have wanted.

Does your Sword have a Name?

You might expect that having waxed lyrical about its beauty, and given how important an element in my interpretation it is, that the sword must have a name. After all, don’t all swords? The fact is that by the fourteenth century the naming of swords has long gone out of practice. It is very much a thing of the early medieval period, when the culture of swords was different, and swords in the sagas could have an agency and destiny all of their own. This was echoed in the epics and romances (so the swords of Arthur and his knights, or Roland and his companions can all receive names) but there is no evidence for the naming of swords in real life.

So, there you have it. This sword is mine. There are not, in fact, many like it, but this one is indeed mine.

* Yes, I have other swords (rather a lot, actually) but they are all blunted for reenactment use, or with blades designed to flex when used in HEMA sparring. That’s quite different from a sharp accurate replica of a medieval weapon.

** There’s an awful lot to be said about inscribed blades and the relationship with religious practice and the rituals of knighthood. It’s something that is going to be a chapter in my forthcoming book on the high medieval sword.

Further Reading

• Ewart Oakeshott, Records of the Medieval Sword (Woodbridge, 1991).

• C. Segebade, ‘Edward’s Sword? A Non-Destructive Test of a Medieval King’s Sword.’ AIP Conference Proceedings Vol. 1525, Iss. 1 (2013). p.417.

I haven’t added anything to this blog for a few months now, and you might be wondering why.

Well, you probably aren’t wondering at all, in fact, you’ve probably forgotten that the blog exists, but there we go!

So, why haven’t I been adding content?

Well, the first reason is that I am not a natural blogger. It is not a writing format that comes easily to me. I am pretty poor at putting content together. I have lots of stuff to share: about my armour, about Goodrich Castle where I am a guide, about medieval swords (on which topic I have been writing for quite a while now), and about medieval warfare in general. What I have not been able to do is quite work out how to convert those ideas into attractive and interesting blog posts that I feel that you will want to read.

Secondly, things have been a bit tough personally, which has taken mental energy and a major shift in priorities. I am pleased to say that I feel in a better and more positive place than I have been for quite some time, and am more focused and productive in my work and hobby outputs too.

This brings me to the third reason why I haven’t posted much. I have been working on other stuff.

The sword book

I still haven’t found a decent title for it yet (all suggestions would be gratefully received).

This is the next academic book, a socio-cultural history of the sword in the high middle ages, and it is moving steadily towards completion. There has been a lot more to consider and cover than I initially thought (which always seems to be the case with my academic projects!) However, I now have all but one chapter and a conclusion written, which needs to be followed by a good run through to make sure that the over-arching themes do indeed arch over the whole work, and that I have all the references filled in, t’s crossed and i’s dotted.

The deadline for submission is August, and I am confident that it will be in on time, with publication in late summer 2022 at the earliest.

Conference Papers

I have a few of these coming up in the not-too-distant future, and two that are confirmed.

I am speaking online at the International Medieval Congress in July, one of three papers in Session 1520 at 9 am (UK time) on Thursday, July 8th. I shall be talking about the less-than-mystical swords of the high middle ages, alongside papers by Jacob Deacon on a fifteenth-century fencing master of London, and Rob Runacres who is querying whether the Bolognese tradition of swordsmanship was truly distinctive.

In November I should be travelling again, speaking about using swords as symbols of authority, at a conference in Bern, Switzerland on martial culture in medieval towns. (There’s a conference page on the project website, but the details are still forthcoming).

Teaching Online

Since Advanced Studies in England (my day job) sent its Spring 2019 students back home, about a year ago), I have been regularly teaching online. I completed my tutorial on castles, taught another on the cultural history of the British Army, and have run classes on chivalry, castles, and tournaments as part of ASE’s new continuing education programme. I am currently putting together another five-week class on the Agincourt campaign.

This has been a new departure for the organisation, offering five-week online classes to alums of the ASE programme, and their friends and family. As well as teaching my own courses I have been coordinating the whole thing, which has been a really interesting new challenge, and a very rewarding one, as the alums have really taken to it. The vibe between the tutors and the students is really positive and all are clearly loving the courses, whether they be exploring medieval history, Jane Austen, detective fiction, creative writing or Harry Potter!

Castles Tours

Over last summer and into the autumn, before Lockdown closed it to the public, I was regularly at Goodrich Castle, offering guided tours as a volunteer for English Heritage. With the easing of restrictions coming up I am very much looking forward to getting back there and sharing my love of this beautiful site, and its fascinating history. It is also possible that I might be able to get back into my harness, with some impromptu demonstrations of the arming of the knight…

In October this year, I will be leading my first touring holiday, for Promenades Travel, around the ‘Wye Valley castles of the Marcher Earls’. This is five days of castles, including the great stone edifices of Goodrich, Chepstow and Raglan, the beautiful late medieval hall at Tretower, and the smaller, but no less impressive, fortresses of Skenfrith, Grosmont, Whitecastle and Longtown.

Wargames

Not something I have made much mention of on this site, but still very much a part of my love of medieval military history, is wargaming. Effectively playing with toy soldiers (‘little tin men’ as my wife refers to them), it has been likened to a mash-up of chess and model railways.

I have been working on a set of rules to fight the battles of the Wars of the Roses, using my research and understanding of the history of medieval warfare to inform the rules, and have reached the point where I am keen to share them. I have decided the best way to do this is to add to the website, and so writing about wargaming will become another of the things that I do on this site.

More to Come

So, as you can see, whilst I haven’t had much to say here, that hasn’t meant that I have not been busy.

As all of these projects move forward I will endeavour to keep you up to date here, adding content that will hopefully pique your interest and encourage you to sign up for a conference, pick up one of my books, or come and visit me at Goodrich!

I’ve wanted a suit of armour since I was a little boy. When I got the chance I chose something quite unlike the traditional image of the medieval knight.

So how did I go about selecting this unusual harness?

Picking a date.

The first thing to be done was to pick a date. and this was determined by the group I was joining. Whilst I would have been quite happy in the late fifteenth century, with a group representing one of the households of the Wars of the Roses, I had always had a particular liking for the mid-fourteenth and early fifteenth century - the period of the Hundred Years War.

Having looked at a lot of medieval reenactment societies and living history groups I had lit upon the Free Company of Aquitaine, a small group of individuals who shoot the heavy-weight medieval warbows. Their kit looked right, their attitude to living history and displays all fitted with how I looked at reenactment and living history after twenty-five years in the hobby. Best of all, they were open to having a new member, someone who was never likely to draw a hundred-pound draw-weight warbow, and who would be a ‘clankie’ (as those medieval reenactors with full armour tend to be called) in their ranks.

Two members were also thinking about getting their own armours from the period. One had been collecting pieces for an armour from the 1360s and 1370s - the period of the ‘Free Companies’, when independent companies of soldiers ravaged central and southern France and joined the wars between the Italian city-states. The other was looking at a full harness for an English man-at-arms on the field of Agincourt in 1415. Although only thirty years apart the changes in armour technology and fashion were great, and this could be reflected in the group’s public displays.

This helped narrow my options. I decided that I would provide an example of a man-at-arms from the earlier battles of the Hundred Years War, wearing a harness from the time of Crécy or Poitiers. It would be every bit as different from the armour of the others and would serve to show the dramatic changes over the whole period.

Finding an example.

The next step was to find an original source for the harness that I wanted. Unlike the fifteenth century, there are no complete armours left for the 1350s. For a sense of what was being worn by knights at the time one must turn to the artistic representations. This generally means the funeral effigies under which the knightly class chose to be buried, or the illuminations in period manuscripts depicting battle. They are not without their problems, especially their dating. Funeral monuments often lack any inscription as to who the individual buried beneath is meant to be. Time has almost inevitably robbed them of their painted heraldry (although some will have it carved into shield or surcoat, but that is less common than you might assume). Even if the family is known (because they are the local lords connected with the parish for example) that may not narrow down which individual the effigy belongs to. Heraldry passes down from father to son, after all, and so it can be hard to tell which generation lies beneath.

Where an effigy can be tied to a particular individual, there is a question as to what period in their life the armour come from. Are they being depicted in their youth, when they were an active knight? Is it armour contemporary to the date of their death, which might be thirty or forty years since they were actively engaged on the battlefield? Might the style post-date their death by years or even decades because the family never quite got around to having the effigy made, as was the case for one of the Paston family?

Artwork is no better, indeed it can be worse. Artists routinely depicted the individuals of the past in the dress and armour of their own day. So, we find depictions of knights at Poitiers in the armour of the fifteenth century, or biblical and classical heroes in the armour of the medieval present. It is also clear in some cases that the illustrator wasn’t being particularly careful to ensure the accuracy of their illustrations.

However, artwork and effigies remain our best resource, and so I turned to two rather excellent repositories of images - Effigies & Brasses and Armour in Art - both of which catalogue armour in a range of visual sources, looking for an effigy of English origin dating to around 1350. One in particular struck me: The effigy in Clehonger Church, just south of Hereford, said to belong to ‘an unknown Pembrugge’, but which the church identifies as Sir Richard Pembridge, father of the famous Sir Richard Pembridge, Knight of the Garter, whose tomb is in Hereford cathedral.

I will admit that it was the pen and ink drawing, with its austere and haunting face, that drew me to it, as well as the line of the helm he wore. The low-crowned bascinet with its prominent ridge and widow's peak was quite distinctive. So too were his gauntlets, rather different from the hourglass form that was to be prevalent ten years later. What we had here was an armour in transition, with both the bascinet and gauntlets being forms that were in use for a short period before a more recognisable and long-lived form replaced it.

Added to this his heraldry was very clearly carved onto his shield, and was a little different from the geometric pattern of the son's heraldry (this intrigued me, and led me to do some digging, but I’ll share that in another blog post).

Locality was also a factor. The effigy was close enough for a trip to the church itself, where lots and lots of pictures were taken, from as many angles as possible in order to give the armourer who was going to have to make the thing as good a sense of the armour's form and details of its embellishments as possible.

Finding an Armourer.

So, having identified the armour I wanted to recreate the question was who was going to make it for me? Fortunately, we live in remarkable times, with a number of excellent armourers capable of producing authentically made and accurate reproduction pieces. It was a case of reaching out to a few and finding someone interested in the project, with space in their order book, and at price to suit my pocket.

Eventually I had a chat with Kevin Legg of Plessis Armouries. I’d seen his work before, and had been impressed. He was excited by the idea of doing something a little out of the norm and a full harness in one go, rather than a piece at a time, as many other reenactors do.

We met and chatted over the details of the project, the timeline, and other elements. We also talked about Kevin’s attitude toward accuracy and the process of armour making; his desire to do things as they had been done originally and to recreate the forms of the armour by close comparison with those few surviving elements and the images very much accorded with my own sense of how to approach the historical past.

Filling in the gaps

Whilst the effigy had plenty of detail in it, there were some really obvious gaps. The most obvious one was to determine what lay beneath his surcoat (actually, a cyclas, being shorter at the front than at the back). This is a common problem with effigies from the late twelfth through to the fifteenth century, where the knight’s torso is routinely covered in cloth - another vehicle for heraldic display, that probably has its origins in the desire to show off during the tournament (there’s another topic for a future blog post).

It is worse in the period I had chosen, as the developments in armour technology were so rapid that in the space of about forty years knights went from wearing mail shirts, through various forms of ‘pairs of plates’ - in which steel plates were rivetted to a cloth or leather garment - to solid breastplates. How was I to determine what was right for my chosen subject?

The answer was to go back to the effigies and to the visual sources, looking for hints as to what might have lain beneath the heraldic finery. Could we catch a glimpse of a breastplate beneath the surcoat? Was there an image in a romance of the knight donning his armour?

We also turned to the documentary courses. These are scant and often lack the kind of detailed description needed, but recent study of the Privy Wardrobe accounts of the Tower - where military equipment was purchased, stored and distributed - gave some more insights about what was available at the date I had chosen. It was Thom Richardson’s work that showed us that mail sleeves (as opposed to whole shirts) were being made and used at this early date. This meant that the mail could be stitched to the arming coat (that is the undergarment to which the arm harness would be attached) in sections, obviating the need for mail over the torso, which would be more than adequately protected by plate armour, thus reducing weight (and cost!)

Several English effigies about this time exhibited a peculiarity; two or more chains fixed to their chests. This oddity was supported by a number of European manuscripts of similar date, and surviving fragments of a pair of plates in the Bavarian army museum. These chains would be attached to sword, dagger, and great helm, to stop them being lost in battle, or whilst riding, much like the string on a pair of children’s mittens! The recreation would not only make for an interesting talking point (and has certainly become the question the public are afraid to ask!) but also serve as a test of the system’s practicality.

The chains also connected with another extra element to the harness. In this period the low-crowned bascinet was often worn in conjunction with a great helm, and the pictorial evidence showed that one of the functions of the chains was to attach to a great helm that it could be slung over the knight’s shoulders when not being worn.

The selection of an exemplar for the great helm was an easy one. A fine and well-preserved example belonging to the younger Richard Pembridge had survived and was in Glasgow's Kelvingrove museum. It had hung above the knight’s tomb in Hereford cathedral until the mid-nineteenth century, when the notable antiquarian of arms and armour Sir Samuel Meyrick had acquired it for his collection. It is one of a number of similar helms of that period and so was an obvious choice, being both of the right date and connected to the family.

When the great helm was not being worn the bascinet would have been fitted with a visor. The effigy didn’t depict this, but then very few effigies do. Visors were attached to their hinges with pins and so could be taken off completely. For the maker of the effigy the visor over the face would hide the visage of the knight, rendering him a faceless warrior rather than a human being (there is more to say on this topic too!) but if depicted raised, would require a very thin piece of stone to be carved, something far too easy to damage either in the carving, instalment, or subsequently. However, images and examples of visors at this early period do survive. For inspiration we went to the brass of Sir Hugh Hastings (another Garter Knight and contemporary of the elder Pembridge), where several figures sport the early low-crowned bascinets with visors quite different from the cone-shaped ‘pig- face’ or ‘hounskull’ design we are used to seeing.

Fitting

The first stage was to have an arming coat made. This had to come first because the armour would have to fit tightly over the top, and so measurements would have to be taken with me wearing it. I turned to the talented seamstress Lady Malina (who is, unfortunately, no longer making medieval clothes!) as she had done a wonderful job with my civilian clothing. There then followed an afternoon of measuring, and having my calves cast in plaster (the authentic approach to getting a perfect fit for greaves). At this point I realised that I could not put on extra weight, but also had an excuse not to go the gym, lest I bulk up too much (well, that was going to be my excuse, and I stand by it!)

Kevin worked apace. I got regular updates. His skill and talent showed when we met up for a fitting, with only minor adjustments needed!

Ongoing project

I have the completed harness, and have done my demonstration about arming the knight over two seasons now. But the project is not finished. There are some extra pieces still to come. I need to commission a pair of spurs (the rowels on the Clehonger effigy are enticingly ornate). I am currently (and rather sporadically) working on a shield, historically made and using period pigments to paint it. There is evidence on the effigy of aiglettes, little wooden shields fixed to the shoulders. These are very unusual for a harness of this period and I really want to add them as another talking point about the significance of heraldic display on the battlefield. They too will be painted with the peculiar version of the Pembridge arms, and the cyclas - that flowing surcoat - needs to be made with the same device.

Finally, the great helm, which already adds a good eight inches to my six-foot height, really needs a crest to finish off the look. This could take a wide variety of forms, but the Pembridge effigy in Hereford shows a foot-high arrangement of feathers like a nineteen-fifties beehive hairdo. And who am I to go against the historical evidence?!

A Case of mistaken identity.

“Excuse me, young man; where do you keep your sugar?”

It’s happening again. The lady had the air of a certain type of Bathonian.  Monied. Proprietorial. Used to having her commands obeyed.

The use of the phrase ‘young man’ (this story happened some years ago, but I was still well beyond the point at which I looked like that would be an obvious and appropriate form of address) would have been bad enough. What made it worse was that I didn’t work in the coffee shop. I was on my lunch break, buying a coffee and a pastry in much the same way as she was. True enough, I was in uniform; but it was not the same as that of the coffee shop staff. Theirs’ comprised an imperial purple polo-shirt, the company logo over their heart and the company’s name across the back, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. I, by contrast, was in a bright blue, long-sleeved and collared shirt, my organisation’s logo, about a centimetre across, embroidered at the top corner of the breast pocket. I also wore a tie, in a not-quite-clashing darker blue (the rich blue tones we wore had led us to be termed ‘smurfs’ – a name we had taken upon ourselves with a mix of gallows humour and perverse pride).

This was not the first time this had happened, either. Fast food outlets, supermarkets, stationary suppliers: I would routinely get asked for a particular item’s whereabouts, or to fetch something – at least the woman who accosted me in WH Smith’s to ask whether we stocked ‘Quilt Now’ had the excuse that we wore a similar blue. In this case one would have thought there was little room for error. This lady’s brand awareness was non-existent, but the truth is that we are accustomed to recognising certain types of clothing as denoting a certain social and cultural type. Corporate clothing is an inherent part of the visual fabric of our culture and we respond instinctively to it.

It occurred to me, as I reflected on this latest of incidents (as a medieval historian, I am prone to this kind of geeky passing thought) that medieval society was similarly attuned to the wearing of corporate dress. Throughout the middle ages it was far more common for people to wear the uniform of their employee.

Singing for your supper, medieval style…

The medieval term for such uniform is ‘livery’, which derives from the French livrer "to dispense, or hand over”, a cognate to the English word ‘deliver’. Livery is actually quite a broad term, encompassing anything that a master might give his servant, including food, lodging, arms, even land. Equally the service in return for which the livery was given could vary considerably too. As well as household servants (very much akin to the ‘liveried servants’ of Jane Austen’s upper-class households), men could receive livery for service such as soldiering, or legal representation. Roland le Petour was obliged to perform at the court of the English king Henry II every Christmas, providing “Unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum” - one jump, one whistle, and one fart. As his name suggests (le Petour translates as ‘the Farter’) he was one of a number of professional farters, a real thing in the middle ages (despite what people might say, you didn’t have to make your own entertainment in those days, although the X-Factor it clearly wasn’t).

Anyway, what we are interested in here should more properly be called ‘livery of robes’. (Actually, what you are all now interested in is Roland’s party piece. It’s not going to be on YouTube, but go off and Google it. I can wait). These were gifts, normally of cloth rather than completed garments; it was down to the receiving individual to have the cloth made up into suits of clothes. The gifts were at least annual, and bi-annual for the more important within the household, the cloth being given so that the new clothes could be worn at the two great Church feasts of Christmas and Pentecost.

The outlay for the lord could be considerable as their households were extensive. As an example, Edward III’s accounts for 1360 records the liveries made for the royal household in preparation for the Christmas celebrations. Everyone from the King, Queen, princes and princesses, honoured guests (the king of France and several of his noblemen were staying at court, having been captured at Poitiers), household servants (the valets and squires and night watchmen, the sailors and bargemen, as well as the king’s priest and clerks, the falconers and those who worked in the stables etc.), all received cloth. Those slightly further afield: the Master and students at King’s College, Cambridge for example, or the pensioned injured veterans of royal service, received material too. In all, maybe three hundred people were supplied with clothing, cloth and furs to be worn in celebration of Christmas. Their status within the great machine of the household was marked by the quantity and quality of the cloth. The more important one’s social position the greater amount of cloth one was given, allowing one to have made more voluminous (and thereby impressive) clothes. Similarly, the more expensive and exotic the fur supplied for lining the garment (often only to edge the garment, as a mark of status, rather than to fully line it for warmth) then the higher the individual’s status was: ermine for the royals, squirrel, rabbit and lamb for those further down the order, and none at all for the lowest.

It was not just the royal household that did this. It was an integral part of being a lord or a knight that one had servants (indeed the keeping of at least one domestic servant was common, and a sign of respectability, amongst even the middle classes until the Second World War), and such servants should be supplied with livery. Outside of the aristocracy, liveries were also worn within the towns. The guilds – associations set up to protect and regulate a particular trade - provided livery to their members (who are still known today as ‘liverymen’). With the rise of the merchant and professional middle class in the thirteenth century, non-nobles were also clothing their servants in livery. Other forms of dress also occurred: priests, monks and friars in clerical vestments and habits, scholars, lawyers and clerks in their gowns and robes, of which academics still wear the vestiges today at graduation (or at dinner and during exams if you are an Oxford or Cambridge student, but, as we all know the Oxbridge Colleges are centuries behind the rest of the world… and proud of it). On the darker side particular communities could be marked out by having clothing prescribed for them. The medieval Jewish community, for example, was often required to wear a badge (a yellow circle in France, Spain and Italy, one in the shape of the tablets of law in England, whilst in Germany a special, pointed hat was mandated), whilst prostitutes in some Italian cities were required to wear distinctive items of clothing to differentiate them from “decent” women.

Clothes maketh the man?

Hierarchy is marked in clothing today as it was in the middle ages. Those in positions of management will rarely be seen in corporate livery. Instead they wear their own clothes. If one is being cynical the reason for this is that they are not ‘servants’ as such (in that they are not providing the direct service). If they do have to deal with the public the wearing of ‘normal’ clothing makes them an individual - a real human being - rather than a functionary of the organisation, a cog in the machine as it were. If formally attired in business suit and tie there is an air of gravitas that will receive respect. Just as with a medieval lord (who would never wear livery) it is how management marks themselves as distinct from the lower level staff.

That is not to say that they are wholly unmarked. Managers are, after all, employees of the company, and as such count as retainers themselves. In a similar fashion, within medieval society lords who retained servants might well be retained themselves within a network of patron and client relationships running right up to the king. Such noblemen could not be expected to wear servants’ livery every day (although, as we have seen they might wear the ‘corporate colour’ for the festivities of Easter or Pentecost) instead they marked their allegiance using badges and collars.

The badge could vary hugely in style and form. Simple cloth ones might be handed out in their thousands. This is what Richard III did at his coronation, presumably so that the well-wishers lining the streets would all show their loyalty for him by pinning his white boar badge to their clothes. others might be made of cheap cast pewter. More limited would be gilt badges for close retainers, and, for the most noble of adherents, there were remarkable high-status jewellery, like the three-dimensional gold and enamelled swan known as the Dunstable Jewel.

Badges were not unique to an individual. Unlike heraldry - where each coat of arms was (in theory) distinct from every other - different nobles might select a very similar, or the same, badge. Badges could also be linked to a title rather than a family name. The bear and ragged staff of the Earls of Warwick were used by the Beauchamp, Neville and Dudley holders of the title; each noble adopting it on their accession to the Earldom (taking up the franchise, if you will).

A livery collar is effectively a chain made up of badges. The most famous of the middle ages was the collar of Esses - a series of interlinked letter S with a pendant badge (which varied depending on which monarch had given the collar. For example, it was a swan for Henry IV, V and VI but the Tudor Rose for the Henry VII, Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth). There is, a modern exemplar - the security card lanyard. Unlike the livery collar these are, of course, practical items. They are supposed to keep an ID card on display, or stop one losing one’s keys or access cards. Increasingly, however, they have become an integral part of corporate livery; printed with the company's name or logo. In the same manner as uniform, but in a more subtle way, they display the wearer’s membership of the corporation. In a broader sense they are indicative of the wearer’s status. Like the livery collar, they are a more subtle symbol of the wearer’s affinity with the giver. That an access card or security pass is normally hanging from the end of it, reinforces this message of status; like the chains of office of royal officials in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the wearing of a lanyard announces that you have access to areas unavailable to others.

The function of this livery - whether badge or clothing - was much the same as with the corporate clothing with which I began this piece. Although one of the aims was to ensure that one’s dependents were properly clothed (for some servants the livery was the only clothing they had to wear) and formed part of their wages (interestingly, this is something that clothing company Monsoon was recently been brought up on by the government – giving discounts for staff to buy clothes from the store to wear at work – in order to showcase the company’s product, but then off-setting that discount against their wages), the primary aim was to display to the world that these were your people, working for you. It was a reflection of your importance and status. There’s a proprietorial aspect to the issuing and wearing of livery - the wearer is to some extent the giver’s property (badges were used on things as well as people - think the McDonald's logo on the wall, on the windows, on the cups and boxes and napkins and...well…. everything including the staff’s shirts and hats and name tags). 

It's not pure self-aggrandisement. The person who is wearing your livery is representing you, acting in your name. They are easier to hold to account for their behaviour (one of the most frequent arguments for maintaining school uniform).

All of this makes, livery sound very one-sided and authoritarian - the giver of the livery gains status in the eyes of the world, and has power over the wearer of the livery, marking them as his property. This is often how we see it today. Just as the lady in the coffee shop had with me, we are conditioned to dismiss the individual within the corporate uniform as a mere functionary, a low-level wage-slave. However, those wearing livery gained from it too. 

On a very basic level, they got clothes - not something to be sniffed at in the middle ages. Unlike the modern corporate uniform, the livery was for many the only set of clothes they owned. Beyond this, being retained was also a big deal. In medieval society there was a quid pro quo to being a retained servant. You gave your loyalty and labour and in return you received the support and protection of those to whom you were indented. It made you part of something bigger. A master-less man (or, even worse, a master-less woman) was not a modern stick-it-to-the-man independent, free thinking aspirational figure. A master-less man, one without connections, was at best vulnerable, and at worse marked you as a vagrant and a trouble-maker to be hounded out of town. Being retained (which is not the same as being ‘unfree’ - a serf or slave) provided legal protections and political clout.

This reciprocal relationship between patron and client (a reference to classical Rome, but apt here) could cause problems. In England in the fourteenth century lords were providing livery to men of low social standing, not as retainers or household servants, but in order that they should pursue the noble's private quarrels. These men were going on to commit acts of extortion, robbery and kidnap, protected from prosecution by the patronage of the magnate whose badge they wore. When Parliament decided to do something about the problem they chose not to condemn or punish the behaviour of the nobles, nor to restrict the right and ability of nobles to retain men, but on their right to issue the badge, as if restricting the latter would automatically curtail the abuses of the former.

Was medieval man more attuned to the liveries that they saw around them? 

I suspect they were. I think it meant more. Today people wear companies’ liveries all the time, even when they aren’t employed by them. They display maker’s marks - Nike, Adidas, Louis Vuitton - as markers of personal status and conspicuous consumption. People wear sweatshirts proclaiming Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard Universities, even though they are neither students nor alumni. We are surrounded by the badges of companies on clothes, on billboards, television, and phones. I wonder if we are all like the lady in the coffee shop, blinded by it all, unable to see the nuance inherent in the display.

Was there ever a medieval equivalent to my coffee shop woman (obviously not in a coffee shop; they hadn’t been invented yet)?

I don’t know. If there was, I am sure that the response to a misidentification could be something more ‘medieval’ than my own. I was in livery. Even at lunch I was representing my organisation. As a result, I was polite. I turned to the lady, and, with a disarming smile, said, “actually I’m sorry to say that I don’t work here, but the sugar is just there by your left hand”. 

Selected readings:

• Robert W. Jones, 'A silver boar on Bosworth Field: the significance of the livery badge on the medieval battlefield.' Coat of Arms, (3rd ser.) 11 (2015), part 1: no. 229.

• Sara Jablon, ‘Badge of dishonor: Jewish Badges in medieval Europe.’ International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education Volume 8 (2015) - Issue 1.

• Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince. (Woodbridge, 1980)

• Nigel Saul, ‘The Commons and the Abolition of Badges.’ Parliamentary History, Vol. 9, (1990).

• Matthew Ward, The Livery Collar in Late Medieval England and Wales: Politics, Identity and Affinity (Woodbridge, 2016)

For a modern audience Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) is a figure of female power, a mystic inspired by divine voices, leading French knights to victory over the English, beneath a sacred banner.

At her side was a sword, miraculously recovered from beneath the altar of the chapel of Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, twenty miles south of Tours in central France: the very sword that Charles Martel, grandfather of Charlemagne, the great defender of France against Islam and founder of the French royal line, had carried at the battle of Tours in 732 and gifted to the chapel in gratitude for his great victory.

This myth however is just that, a myth. First given prominence by the seventeenth-century French poet Jean Chapelain in his poem La Pucelle, ou la France Delivrée (‘The Maid or France Delivered’), it is part of the tradition that grew up after Joan’s execution that saw her as a great national heroine.

According to Chapelain, Charles Martel had buried the sword behind the altar in order that it should be there for Joan to find and carry in her own victories against a foreign invader. Other myths arose suggesting an even more ancient original owner, Alexander the Great.

Ascribing swords a pedigree in this manner may seem very medieval, but it is predominantly a feature of the early medieval period (generally accepted as lying between the fifth and eleventh centuries), and particularly of the Norse sagas, in which swords have names and powers, and histories that are longer than those of the sagas’ heroes. By the high middle ages (from the eleventh century to the fourteenth), the sword had lost some of this mystique, but for Joan’s contemporaries it was still an important symbol.

A Gift from God?

Whilst the French royal chronicler Jean Chartier did not connect the sword with Charles Martel, he was in no doubt as to its importance. In his account of Charles VII’s reign, written less than 30 years after Joan’s execution in 1431, he has La Pucelle tell the king to send to the church of Saint Catherine for a sword, lying amongst many scraps of metal, its blade decorated with five crosses. Divine revelation had told her it would be there and that by means of the sword she would expel the enemies of France and lead the king to be anointed and crowned in the city of Reims.

For Chartier, Joan’s victories came from her possession of the sword. The final proof of this came after the battle of Patay (fought in June 1429) when Joan broke the sword whilst using it to beat some of her soldiers whom she found sleeping with prostitutes. Although the king ordered its repair, the sword could not be mended - a clear sign of the sword’s divine provenance. Chartier concludes his story of Joan with the words ‘and it is well known that after this sword was broken, Joan did not prosper in arms for the profit of the King or otherwise, as she had done before’.

There is much in Chartier’s account that smacks of chivalric romance. The sword waiting for its rightful wielder has echoes of Excalibur or the Sword in the Stone (they were not always the same sword - but that is a matter for another post), whilst the breaking of the sword is reminiscent of the ‘dolorous stroke’ in Le Queste del Sant Graal (‘The Quest for the Holy Grail’). In this version of the tale, the Fisher King receives a wound from a sword, which breaks because the blow is unrighteous, and as a consequence his realm is laid waste. The trope was a central theme in John Boorman’s Arthurian epic Excalibur, with the line ‘The king without a sword! The land without a king!’ It was also used by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings. Narsil, the sword of Elendil, High King of Gondor, was broken when the king was killed by Sauron, to be re-forged centuries later as Andúril for Aragorn, Elendil’s heir and the returning king of Gondor.

For Chartier Joan’s sword was both proof of the divine origin of her mission and a conduit for the divine providence that gave her victory. This divine origin was to be a key matter at her trial.

The sword in Joan’s own words

Contrary to Chartier’s account, Joan made no mention of the sword being the source of her victory. Indeed, during her trial she was at great pains to avoid suggesting it. When her accusers asked her whether the hope of victory was founded more in her standard or in herself she replied that victory ‘was founded in the Lord and no one else’. On the subject of her sword she said merely that she had sent to the church of Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois to ask if she might have a sword, the blade decorated with five crosses, that her voices had told her was buried within the church. Such a sword, covered in rust, had been discovered behind the altar. She said that when the priests had rubbed the blade the rust had come off easily, and they had given her the sword along with a scabbard of crimson velvet. The men of Tours, the town in which she was residing at the time, gave her another scabbard decorated in gold leaf, but she had a third one made, of sturdy leather. She had carried the sword from that time until the siege of Paris, but preferred her standard four times as much as her sword and always carried the latter into battle, in order to avoid killing anyone. After departing Lagny she carried a sword won in battle from a Burgundian knight; a war sword, ‘good for giving hard clouts and strong blows’.

Her inquisitors were not as interested in the miraculous discovery of the sword as they were in what she had done with it once she had it. Had she made any benediction over the sword or had it blessed? No, she had not, and would not have known how to do so. Had she placed the sword on an altar? No, as far as she knew it had not been placed on an altar in order that it should be more fortunate. Had she ever prayed for her sword to have better fortune? It was well known that she wished that her armour might be very fortunate. What was the meaning of the five crosses on the blade? She knew nothing of that.

For Joan, despite its miraculous discovery, the sword seems to have been no more than a tool, carried because she had adopted the garb and role of a man and a man-at-arms.

A magical blade?

The questions of her captors suggest that they thought the weapon to be something quite different. The blessing of swords was a common practice; indeed one of the earliest of Church benedictions was for the blessing of weapons. Swords were routinely placed on altars during coronations and the dubbing of knights. This represented the transfer of temporal authority from God, through the Church to the monarch or knight. And what warrior wouldn’t pray for his sword to be fortunate in battle? Nor were decorations on sword blades rare. Most makers would strike a mark somewhere to ‘sign’ their workmanship, and there are a large number of swords surviving from across the middle ages that bear a series of letters and symbols, whose meaning is obscure but seem to be abbreviated requests for divine and aid and protection in battle. Surely the five crosses on the blade of Joan’s sword were another version of this common practice.

For the authorities trying Joan the issue wasn’t that the sword might have been blessed, but that Joan might have done it herself. The use of charms and mystical invocations was widespread for a variety of purposes. They might serve to protect from illness or demonic possession, or to ensure the health of cattle or the richness of crops. They might even be used to protect the bearer from injury in combat. In 1355, Richard Shawell, acting as the professional champion for the Bishop of Salisbury in a trial by combat over the ownership of Sherborne Castle, was accused of illegally stuffiing his armour with charms.

The Church’s attitude towards these charms and amulets was ambivalent. They were a remnant of pagan belief, and of rural superstition, but at the same time their efficacy wasn’t to be doubted: a form of personal piety common throughout medieval society, and often produced by clergymen themselves. However, unless their production was carefully scrutinised, they could easily lead individuals into heterodoxy or even heresy, and conjure demons rather than act as prayers for the intercession of God. Most troubling was that the individual might come to consider that power came from the blessed object itself rather than the object acting as a focus for God’s power.

This is why the inquisitors at Joan’s trial asked their questions about whether she had placed the sword on an altar, or prayed for it to be more fortunate. They were looking for evidence that she had sought to bless the weapon herself. They wanted to know whether Joan, already guilty of ignoring the Church’s authority by not getting advice from her priest regarding the voices that spoke to her, was also guilty of idolatry: imbuing an inanimate object - her sword - with a power that was God’s alone.

A Sacred Standard?

If this was the direction of their questioning, Joan seems to have been wise to it. She was asked similar questions about her standard, made of white linen strewn with fleurs-de-lys, fringed in silk, and decorated with the image of two angels flanking God holding the world in his hands, and the names Jhesus Maria. Her inquisitors wanted to know whether her voices had told her that ‘she would secure victories by virtue of this standard’ and whether ‘the hope of victory was founded upon this standard or upon herself’, angling for a response that suggested that Joan believed the standard to have a power of its own. Joan’s response, that the hope of victory ‘was founded on the Lord and no one else’, was a neatly orthodox response.

The story of Joan is very much the story of the symbolism which surrounded her. As the young maid of a simple peasant family Joan’s sacred mission was easier to believe than if she had been a noblewoman, let alone a noble man. She was no threat to Charles, already beset by factions and rivals. In order that she should be able to lead men, however, she had to adopt the symbols of a military leader. Her standard and her sword, like the armour she wore into battle were the physical signs of that martial status, as harness, swords and standards were for all medieval military commanders. Their divine origins reflected that this status was not a normal one, but divinely ordained and supported. It was therefore natural for a medieval audience to weave a story tying the breakage and loss of this god-given sword to the collapse of Joan’s fortunes, and for her accusers to focus on these outward symbols as proof of her spiritual unorthodoxy. The more modern myth, making Joan only the latest bearer of a sword of ancient heroes, shifted the focus from the Maid as an agent of divine will to a national icon of resistance and freedom, more in keeping with the sense of nationhood of the post-medieval France.

Selected Readings:

• Primary source quotations come from Joan of Arc: La Pucelle, translated and annotated by Craig Taylor (Manchester, 2006)

• Kelly DeVries, Joan of Arc: Military Leader (Stroud, 2011)

• L. Marek, ‘The Blessing of Swords. A new look into inscriptions of the Benedictus – type’, Acta Militaria Mediaevalia, X (2014)

• Don Skemer, Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 2006)

• Bonnie Wheeler, ‘Joan of Arc’s Sword in the Stone’, Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc, ed. Bonnie Wheeler & Charles T. Wood (Abingdon, 2014)