has its grip fluted and its blade etched in chequered compartments (Fig. 819). There is also a dagger of exactly the same family in the Guildhall Museum, which was found at Brooks Wharf, Upper Thames Street. Two daggers of this type are recorded in the catalogue of the loan collection exhibited at the Ironmongers' Hall, London, in 1869. One is a finely enriched specimen, the grip inlaid with a chequer pattern of ebony and mother-of-pearl and the monogram W.R. on the ricasso of the blade. The other, a little more developed in the formation of its quillons and having a grip of yew tree, is especially interesting as having been found rolled up in some parchment deeds at the old Parliament House at Machynllaeth, county Montgomery, in which place Owen Glendower was solemnly inaugurated Prince of Wales in 1402. The present whereabouts of these two daggers we have been unable to discover.
In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a rather curious variant of the kidney dagger (Fig. 821). Here the hilt is composed entirely of iron, and the lobes above the quillons have practically disappeared; though the quillons have lengthened and droop over the top of the blade. It will be noted that they differ from one another in their formation. The dagger, which was recently acquired for the Museum, bears the date 1541. The hilt has a central channel running down either side etched and gilt. Etching and gilding are also found on the ricasso of its back-edged blade on which, despite the fact that the dagger was dug up in England, the following German inscription in Gothic lettering is still easily decipherable. On the one side is:—
EIN LINDE ANTWORDT STILLET DENN ZORRNN. ABER EIN
HARDT WORD RICHT GRIM ANN SALOMONN AM 15.
and on the other:
ES KUMDT ALLES VONN GOT GLUCK UNND UNGLUCK LEBEN
UNND TOD ARMUT UND REICHTUM ECC. AM 11 ANNO DO. 1541.
The first quotation is from Proverbs xv, 1, and the second from
Ecclesiasticus xi, 14.
It is interesting to note at how late a date the kidney dagger was in use. We have referred to the complete dagger and sheath, with a hilt of snake-*wood, formerly in our collection, but since lost sight of (ante page 40). This dagger bore the extraordinarily late date of 1616 on the ricasso of its slender blade. This inscribed date, however, is not the latest at which such a dagger is known to have been in use; for the dagger said to have been carried by
