of which formed holders, such as are found for pencils in a pair of compasses, into which were inserted the ends of slow matches for firing a cannon, the remainder of the matches being wound round the haft socket. Before the invention of the linstock, which dates from about the middle of the XVIth century, the gunner had to throw aside his match to seize his halberd if suddenly attacked. We illustrate a linstock from the collection of the Duc de Dino, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (Fig. 1423).
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Fig. 1423 Linstock head
Italian, late XVIth century. Ex Dino Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York
The pike in its various forms was essentially the infantry weapon from quite the middle of the XVth century until the accession of George I. It is mentioned as early as 1466 in the "Ordinances" made by the "Erle of Worcester commanded to bee observed in all manner of Justes of Peaces Royall." In the early Carolean days an adaptation of the "Morrice" or "Moorish" long pike of the first part of the XVIth century can be noticed. In the middle of the XVIIth century one reads of the pike being sixteen feet in length, with heads of the best steel and a stave of ash, reinforced with bands of iron within four feet of the head, the better to resist a sword cut. Towards the third quarter of the XVIIth century pikes occasionally reached the extraordinary length of twenty feet, suddenly to diminish again with the end of the century into nothing more serviceable than the spontoon of the sergeant, which was carried as late as Waterloo. Meyrick quotes a late XIVth century document in which the name spontoon is mentioned: "Lanceam, scutum et spatem, sive spontonem . . ."; but we do not know what the spontoon of that early date was like.
The javelin of the latter part of the XVIth and of the early years of the XVIIth centuries can hardly be regarded as a weapon employed in actual warfare: its use was relegated to ceremonial and sporting purposes. "Javelin men" formed the escort of a sheriff of a county in those days, just as halberdiers form his escort now. In the famous 1547 inventory of the royal stores and habiliments of war in the arsenals and palaces throughout the kingdom, to which we have so often alluded, we find the following mention of javelins: "Item, ten javelins with brode heddes partely guilte, with longe brassell staves, garnisshed with vellet [velvet] and tassels of silke. Javelyns with staves trymed
