CHAPTER XXII
HORSE ARMOUR, THE BIT, SADDLE, AND SPUR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE XIVth CENTURY TO THE END OF THE XVIIth CENTURY
We gave an illustration of the war horse of the end of the XIIIth
century in Vol. i, Figs. 141 and 142, where, though encumbered
with trappings as we see it in an illumination from a manuscript,
the horse is still represented as unarmoured. There exists, however,
documentary evidence of a much earlier date than that
attributed to the manuscript in question, which asserts that already the horse
was furnished with protective harness. To revert to a time as far back even
as the second half of the XIIth century, the chronicler Wace ventures to
suggest that William Fitz-Osbert at Hastings rode a steed protected by
armour:
Vint Willame li filz Osber
Son cheval tot covert de fer.
(Roman de Rou, line 12,627.)
But Hewitt gives it as his opinion, an opinion in which the present writer concurs, that it was Wace's necessity of finding a rhyme to "Osber," rather than any intention of describing a usage of the period, that prompted him to produce this iron horse at so early a date. Certainly it was not the practice to protect the horse by any sort of armour until the second half of the XIIIth century; even then the caparison, or, as we find it mentioned, the couverture, was of a gamboised or quilted nature and of chain mail. To refer once more to the extinct Painted Chamber of Westminster, we can give illustrations of knights whose chargers are fully equipped with mail, reaching almost to the fetlocks (Figs. 948 and 949); this would probably be of the large linked make similar to that example described and illustrated on page 174 of Vol. ii (Fig. 514). A horse so caparisoned in XIIIth century Italy would be known as Cattaffratto. In the early XIIIth century struggle between the Milanese and the Imperialists, we learn from Matthew Paris that Milan with its dependencies raised an army of six thousand men at arms, Cum equis ferro coopertis; while sixty-six years later we find an ordinance of
