XVth and XVIth centuries. It may, of course, have varied very considerably in the size of its links; we see several sizes of rings illustrated in the Bayeux roll, but we think they all represent mail of the same construction, of the same make as the ring-byrnie of the Anglo-Saxon.
Two instances of mail differently pictured, but necessarily of the same kind, we can here illustrate. First in the Bayeux roll, in the eighth representation of the Conqueror (Fig. 43), where he is standing unmounted. The mail of his hauberk is here represented by a cross hatching, into the trellis of which are inserted the usual circles. This is on his body and right leg; but the part of the hauberk that falls over his left leg shows a different treatment, circles alone without the cross hatching. Therefore, unless his hauberk had a longitudinal half of one kind of mail and another half of a different kind, which of course is entirely improbable, we have proof positive of two conventional fashions of representing the same mail shirt upon one figure.
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Fig. 43. William the Conqueror
His eighth representation on the Bayeux needlework; showing the conventional rendering of chain mail in two ways upon the same hauberk.—Note the clear outline of his sword hilt.
For a second instance of this looseness of drawing, we have but to look at the illustration (Fig. 44) chosen from the Cotton MS. Nero, C. 4, about 1125. We see in the upper portion of the page David and Goliath. On the left of the picture David has driven the stone from his sling into the fore-*head of Goliath; on the right of the picture David, after the death of his opponent, hands Goliath's hauberk of mail to Saul. As it stands to reason that the hauberk worn by Goliath must be the same as the one offered by David to Saul, and as the former has only just killed the giant, it is instructive to see that the same shirt of mail, illustrated twice in the same picture, is represented after two distinct conventions: worn on the giant it is represented by a series of small S-shaped markings; stripped from his body and held in the hand of Saul, it is shown with small circles evenly placed over the whole shirt.
These two illustrations are here described at some length; for the lesson
