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Fig. 515. Piece of chain mail
With curiously widened ends to the ends of the rings; these are not riveted but overlap XIVth (?) century. From the foundation of a house pulled down during the Aldwych improvements. London Museum. (Actual size of rings)
formerly in the Meyrick and Noël Paton Collections, and now in the Royal Scottish Museum (Fig. 516). It is certainly the finest with which we are acquainted. Its condition leaves nothing to be desired, its manufacture is of the highest order, and its shape of exceptional grace. To assign it to a particular nationality is difficult, and we must leave its origin to conjecture; though the late Mr. Burges held that this is one of the few coats of mail which has any decided history. The history, however, that Sir Samuel Meyrick gives of it in his "Critical Inquiry" takes it back but a comparatively few generations. Sir Samuel stated that "it had been purchased by a Jew from an ancient family at Sinigaglia, near Bologna, in whose possession it had been beyond their records." He also goes on to relate that "the Jew bought it by the ounce and paid for it forty guineas." The hauberk is of the simplest construction, with no slits and no reinforcements. There are, however, two gussets in the lower part in order to make it widen satisfactorily over the hips. The sleeves are ten inches long from the armpits. The size of the rings, which appear to have been made originally of wire of circular section,
