A mail shirt of nearly equal importance to the Sinigaglia example is now in the collection of the late Mr. Rutherford Stuyvesant, U.S.A. This hauberk, which was obtained from the collection of the Baron de Cosson, and which dates from about 1400 (Fig. 518), presents a vandyked border at the base of the shirt similar to that just described, but has no edging of brass. The sleeves reach to the wrists. In many respects this shirt closely resembles a fine early XVth century hauberk in the Musée d'Artillerie of Paris, G 211 (Fig. 519), except that the latter is without the standing collar. Another very heavy mail shirt of about this period is in our own collection (Fig. 520). It weighs over 33 lb., and is indeed as heavy as any we know of. The texture of the mail links at the sides beneath the arms is of a stronger nature than that of the remainder of the shirt, suggesting that a plastron of plate was utilized in protecting the more vulnerable regions above the chest and abdomen, where in this case the mail is weakest. The rings of the stronger part average half an inch in diameter (Fig. 521). From the very corroded condition of the surface of the links it appears that this hauberk must have been buried in the ground for a long period, a circumstance which lends some weight to the tradition that it was found while excavations were being carried out on the site of an old house in the Whitechapel Road.
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Fig. 517. From the effigy of Sir Edmund de Thorpe
About 1418. Ashwelthorpe Church, Norfolk. After Stothard
We can mention many hauberks to which we can assign a date within the early years of the XVth century:—for instance, an example in the United Service Museum, Whitehall; part of a hauberk which, together with an armorial badge of the O'Neills, now in the collection of Mr. Starkie Gardiner, was found in Phœnix Park, Dublin; the fine mail shirt in the Wallace Collection, No. 335 in the catalogue; and a variety of hauberks with and without sleeves that are to be seen in the Tower of London Armoury. In the Museum of Artillery, Woolwich, is a sleeveless coat of mail edged with brass rings which the late Mr. Burges considered might date as early as the latter part of the XIVth century.
The present writer must confess that he always looks with suspicion on extant examples of mail leggings or chausses when they are supposed to be of very early date; for on careful examination they have generally the
