A 13th-Century Knight's Kit

Hello. I felt that the following interview needed a bit of an introduction. I was very kindly invited by the Conquest Society to go to last year's Battle of Evesham re-enactment. And I went along and I borrowed some of their Authenti kits, slept in an Authenti tent, and ate some really rather nice Authenti food, and re-enacted the battle, twice. And all seemed well. I took loads of footage with my camera. I shot several interviews. I did a piece to camera about tents, I remember, and various other stuff. And it was all going to be great. And it was a very hot day. And I was very tired, making my way back to Evesham Railway Station at the end of the event. And when I got there, the announcement was that the train that I was to take was 17 minutes delayed. Never mind. I thought, it's a warm, pleasant day. I'll just sit here on this bench and wait. No! 17 minutes later, there was my train. Oh, I must have nodded off. Never mind. I got my stuff together, got everything. Yep, fine. Got on the train and away. And some while later, I thought to myself, I did put my camera bag in my rucksack, didn't I? Checked my rucksack. No. But I checked all around me when I got on the... Ah. Yeah. It seems that in those 17 minutes during which I nodded off, someone took the opportunity to half-inch my camera bag, and all that was in it. Including, rather crucially, all the footage I'd shot. And so there you go. It was all gone. All? Well, no. Not quite all. Because one of the Conquest people had shot the following footage on his mobile phone as a supplement to the main camera. And it seemed, frankly, just an act of rudeness not to try at least to salvage something from the wreck. Hence the following interview. So, the sound is not what it should have been. His ... mobile phone picked up all the sound from all the people around us in the camp. And so there's a lot of extraneous noise, which is why I've just spent two phenomenally tedious days subtitling the entire thing. And you'll notice at the end that it just sort of stops. There's no proper ending. I can assure you that I did round it off properly, and thanked my interviewee, I hope nicely. And we then took loads of close-ups of all the things that he'd been talking about. And, yep, they're all gone too. Well, here we have Will from the Conquest Society. And, what are you re-enacting, Will? So, this weekend we are re-enacting the Battle of Evesham at Evesham, it's still here, which was fought in 1265 as the conclusion to the Second Barons' War. So, the First Barons' War is bad for John and the Sheriff of Nottingham and all that good stuff. But it hasn't really been resolved. After 50 years of not working out properly, it hasn't been resolved. It simmers over into just over a year-long armed revolt, led by Simon de Montfort, who's the Earl of Leicester. I see. And would you call this transitional period kit? So, the male armour, like this, and like you're wearing, has been around for many centuries, and at this point in time the metallurgy isn't quite up to making big plates like you see in shiny plate armour later on, but you can make little plates. And so, you start having people dressing, the male becomes more affordable, more people are wearing it, the weapons evolve to deal with that, and also the armour evolves to deal with the weapons, back and forth between, depending on which part of Europe you're in, about 1240 at the earliest, through to 1330, where the transition sort of aims for the cutting edge, and going to after that is plate armour. OK, so one part of the transition is that some people are still using kite shields, big long things like this, that we're familiar from the Bayeux Tapestry, and other people have gone over to heaters. Yes, so gradually the shields are, as more people wear more armour, particularly on their legs, like I am, is the need for a long shield to cover your entire front becomes less prominent, so you don't need it to cover your legs, you can cover it in metal, so you can have a shorter shield. So you've got chausses, I believe they're called, heavy male stockings. Chausses is the old French for stocking, so these are all the way down to my toes, and they're tied onto one of many belts under here, and then they're laced up at the back to keep them tight, that's over a leather hose and a woolen hose, And what do these do for your running speed? These don't particularly slow me down, if I'm honest. Remember that the knights of old would be training since they were children, and it would be tailored even better than I've had a crack at these, to fit them like a second skin. And you see there's a strap there, there's another one underneath this next piece, under the knee, so they're all lacing at the back, and the straps at the knee and the ankle, it's spreading the weight out. So each of these legs, each of the male stockings weigh about a stone each. Yikes. And you've got cloth padding over the male. So similar to the cloth padded gambeson, which is very standard for a while at this point, but extra external padded armour, so I've got these, they're called cuisse, they tie onto different parts of lots of belts, over my thighs and knees with a small steel kneecap here. So like I said, you can't make big plates yet, that aren't incredibly heavy or brittle, but you can make little ones. And your knee is very important for your mobility, if you lose your ability, you die. OK, and you're wearing lots of plates about the size of a postcard on your chest as well. So, again, you can't do the big plates just yet, but you can see where the roots are, so these are little squares of small steel plates, historically probably would have been more close to raw iron, and they are riveted to, in this case, wool, but you can also have leather in some instances. There's your heavy poncho thing, there's plates on the back, goes on my head and wraps round, and that's over a full shirt of mail, there's the start of something more. The most important part is your torso, as well as your head, I guess. So this is not brigandine, but it is an ancestral brigandine. So the transition in the next century is the same idea, it's just the scales get smaller, more of them, and the metallurgy improves as well. So it's not a hard and fast, this is a credit plate, this is a brigandine, it's sort of a woolly transition from one to the other. Right, but with a brigandine you wouldn't necessarily feel the need for a full layer of mail underneath. You would not wear a forebook of mail under a brigandine because you're just wasting your time. Because the brigandine usually would cover, this covers down to my belly, but it's got quite a big hole at the top and the bottom, so the brigandine's a little bit more form-fitting and bigger, so the mail becomes less, you wouldn't need to wear it under the plates. I've got a kettle hat, which is this broad-brimmed thing, which I've been wearing with a doughnut in it for comfort and better fit, and that's a very common helmet in this period, and it's really good for arrows falling downwards. This is one of several styles depicted in, it's called a Michalsky Bible, or Morgan in English, it's an illustrated Old Testament Bible. It's dated somewhere between, it's most consensus around 1250, 1260-ish, and it demonstrates hats like that, beak cleavers like this. Oh yes, I have a Morgan Bible falchion, so that would have had sharper spikes there. We tend not to sharpen them because it's a lot of paperwork when it goes into something. So this is the cutting edge here, and they are shown used double-handed. So there are bigger ones and smaller ones. This is a single-handed length one with a double-handed grip, so if you need to finish someone, then you use two hands, but for the most part you'll probably use just one. You can see a lot of the single-handed ones have an umbrella handle, but both are equally applicable. And what do you have on your shoulders here? So these are, the pronunciation varies, it's Ayette, A-I-L-E-T-T-E-S. Some people claim it's the predecessor to things like the Spalder for shoulder defence. Almost none, to my knowledge, have survived as archaeological examples because they were made, from what we do know, probably of wood or canvas or parchment or leather painted. My ones I've made out of a piece of pine wrapped in canvas and then painted, which is as likely, as far as we can tell, to anyone else's interpretation. As to whether or not they are protective is debated. As to whether or not they were in England by 1265 is not concrete. 1280s, more likely. But they offer no particular, I can't imagine offering much more protection than what I was wearing otherwise, whether it's a piece of parchment or wood. Well some of them are pictured as a fair bit larger than that. Some of them are quite large in historical artwork. Mainly what they appear to be for is the early development of heraldry from very, very basic things. So it's starting to become a little bit more formalised by the mid to late 13th century. And then in the 14th century it just goes bananas. But yeah, so these show me as, same as on here, there's three chevrons on gold. This is the de Cleyre family, who are the earls of Hereford and Gloucester. They're one of the wealthiest families in Britain at this point. The three points of blue label on top indicate I am Thomas de Cleyre, who is the second brother. The eldest is Gilbert de Cleyre, who in the Second Baron's War, he's a rebel to start with. He joins the Montfort. And then de Montfort, he falls out with de Montfort because he has lots of lands, Hereford and Gloucestershire, near Wales. De Montfort leaves a lot of Welsh troops and grants them bounties. And bounties upset Gilbert because of his new expense. And a few other slights and centralisation of power and stuff. Or he decides to jump ship. Thomas de Cleyre is the childhood best friend of Prince Edward Longshanks. So they grew up together, of course, nobles. You don't grow up in your own house. You grow up at a friend's house. So very close to the prince. So what kind of swords are people using in this period? So this type is one of my swords. There's a chap called Ewart Oakshot, who in the 1980s... Famous typology. Famous typology of different pommel styles, sub-blade styles, crossguard styles. But the blade on this type is referred to as Oakshot Type 14. So it's very wide at the base. And it tapers more so than most swords of the previous centuries. To a relatively sharp point. And it has this top third, has this diamond back ridge. So the idea is you're moving the weight of the sword towards... Instead of being relatively blade heavy to chop things in previous centuries. You can't chop through. This will take a while. But there's still plenty of people who are squishy. So you need a bit of both. So it's a single-handed sword. I can feel it's not great for chopping. It's OK for chopping and it's better at dealing with thrusting. The Type 15 looks a bit like this, but it's the ridge the entire length. So through the 14th century there's more and more plates. And then big plates appear. The cut becomes less and less important. And you get to do half-swording and all that stuff later on. This is the first transitional one. The problem with it being a hybrid is it's trying to do two things. And it's not as good at doing either of them. When you get to the early 14th century and the big plate armour from the 1330s-ish. This dies out in popularity very quickly. Because it's not good enough at the thrusting. It's not worth bothering anymore. And they all evolve to be the more stabby ridgeback type. The same school of thought of the make it bigger, hit them harder is this. So it's adapted very slightly so that we don't genuinely kill each other. So this is a Uart Oakshot Type 13. Where the blade is quite wide. And it stays nearly parallel its entire length. And then squares off a bit. This is fairly rubbish at thrusting. That's pretty choppy. It can still, if you try hard enough, it'll still work. But you can imagine from the blade form it's much blade heavier. Yeah. Now I could do, yes, I could do a lot more chopping damage with that. But one thing I find odd about it is the length of the grip. Because this is like a bastard sword. So this particular one is one of those, of course you try and fit everything into boxes. Like Oakshot and everyone else tries to do. It doesn't necessarily work for all of them. This sword is loosely based off of one found in a house in Linz in Austria. Right. It was a medieval house that was in record known to have been built by about 1280. At least 1280 is the earliest mention. And it was found in a scabbard behind a wall panel, still intact. So as to the length of the grip, it might be a little bit longer than a historical example. Yes, it's almost long sword length. Part of that is the accommodation for our own safety. Doing this is not really night, we're just dressing up. We wear safety gloves so we can go to work on Monday. So part of that is accommodation for the glove. But longer grips and shorter grips do exist. There's a whole range of different blade grip lengths depending on the sword. Okay. But that's the same score as the cleaver, just more expensive. If you wax them hard enough, they'll fall over. Yes, even if it doesn't do any cutting, it's still a great big iron bar. Probably still not going to cut through the plate, but you'll probably knock them off their feet. Now you're also keeping a secret. I am. It will take a little while to get to it. But I have sort of a brim from here. It's like an upside down soup bowl. Yes. It's made out of two pieces of iron forged together into a little dome with a chin strap on it. And that's hidden under here. There's a solid iron hemisphere under there. Yes, now it always strikes me as sensible to have mail over the top of plate. So that if I come in with a spear point or whatever and I hit, assuming I don't hit absolutely perfectly on, if I'm just a little bit off, I'm going to grip the mail, because the mail is grippy, but the secret is slippy. And so I think you get a little bit of movement, a bit like the skin on your scalp relative to your skull. Possibly. I am quite tightly laced in though. I noticed that. You're very tightly laced. The amount of give is minimal. I guess there are depictions of both, of having a secret helmet over a mail coif and a secret helmet under a mail coif. You see a lot of depictions of people who look to be just in a coif. They have slightly bulbous heads. It's because there's a little... The Morgan vibe is full of them. Yeah, the Morgan vibe is full of them. There is a great helm lurking somewhere, which goes over the top of this. And so you'd wear that on horseback. A lot of people like to wear the great helms because they look impressive and shiny, which they do. A lot of people like to wear them, but on foot combat they are an absolute liability. Because all you need to do in a great helm is, if you're on a horse, you need to see the point of the lance 10-12 feet away as you drive it into some unforgiving blow. On foot, you need to see everything. So in my particular example, I don't like wearing it because I don't tend to drive. I can see nothing below nose height within about 15 feet. But then if you have this secret helm underneath, then this is fine. I can still fight and see and be protected from this, but I can see more importantly. One idea that someone put to me was that if you are going to wear a great helm over the top of your secret coif, then maybe it's good to put your secret over your coif, so that the secret locks in nicely to the top of the great helm. Possibly. I mean, this is only my personal experience. I used to have a secret helm that wasn't supplied with an atom tail, placed directly onto it, and I found that it never quite fit right. But then it would depend on the helmet. Lindybeige!