Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/255

We will now discuss a more highly developed type of gauntlet, although not of the fingered order, a gauntlet such as we see on the brass of Richard Dixton in Cirencester Church, Gloucestershire, which may be dated at about 1430 (Fig. 571), and on the effigy of John Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1434. The short bell-shaped cuff, characteristic of the earlier types, is now drawn out to a greater length and is pointed, its bell-like formation being at the same time far less exaggerated. Instead of each finger being separately protected, a single plate is now hinged to the main, or metacarpal, plate, broad enough to cover all the fingers; and to this again is attached in a similar manner another plate, which formed an effective protection to the ends of the fingers even when the hand was bent in grasping a weapon. The gauntlet has now become of so advanced a type that during the progress of the XVth and succeeding centuries, indeed until its final disuse, its general construction remained unaltered. Actual gauntlets of the kind just described are in existence, but to none of these would it be safe to assign a date earlier than the middle of the XVth century.

Fig. 572. From the effigy of John Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1434

Arundel Church. After Stothard

(a) Front view; (b) Profile view, showing the fluting over the metacarpal plate

The superb suit in the Royal Armoury, Vienna, made by Tommaso da Missaglia between 1450 and 1460 for Frederick Count Palatine of the Rhine (vol. i, Fig. 212), is furnished with these simple mitten gauntlets which, though eminently protective, are severely plain if compared with the gracefully fluted and elegantly finished hand defences of the latter years of the century. Sir Edward Barry can show a pair of gauntlets of this type, small in proportion though probably of rather later date (Fig. 573).

The next type of gauntlet, a type no further advanced as regards pro-