with bare arms; others again are distinguished by wearing spurs or by riding bareheaded.
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Fig. 46. From the Bayeux needlework
This might be a quilted defensive garment of the brigandine type
In the Cotton MS. Nero C. iv, which, as we have already stated, may be assigned to the last years of the XIth or early years of the XIIth century, we note a figure taken from a group entitled "Massacre of the Innocents" (Fig. 47). Here the hauberk is of different form from those depicted on the Bayeux needlework; it is not slit up at the front and back, but at the sides. Through the right-hand opening issues the sword scabbard, the top of which passes through a special aperture in the waist of the hauberk. A warrior wearing such a hauberk would find it impossible to straddle a horse, so we must take it that it was intended solely for use on foot. It will also be noticed that the sleeves of this hauberk reach almost to the wrist. The long pleated tunic beneath shows no signs of the gambeson.
Up to this point we have barely mentioned what is called scale armour. We have spoken of it as the leather byrnie of the Anglo-Saxons. But scale armour has been known in all ages and by every nation. In the Bayeux needlework we see the figure of Guy, Count of Ponthieu (Fig. 48), in a very clearly delineated hauberk of this fashion, the scales of which, from their magnitude, we should imagine to be of leather rather than of metal. It will be noticed that it is a sleeveless hauberk, for doubtless scales of such size would restrict the free swing of the arms. The scale tunic was the most popular defence of the soldiery, even after Saxon times, owing to the simplicity with which the scales, of iron, copper, horn, bone, or even of horse's hoof, could be cut out and sewn on to a foundation of leather or cloth. These scales were of all shapes; some with the edges rounded and placed to overlap like tiles; often in groups of two; while in other instances each plate was rectangular, a fashion which, when displayed as we see it on one of the warriors of the close of the XIth century, drawn in Herr Hefner-Alteneck's Trachten, part i, Plate XII, gives a very excellent illustration of what Sir Samuel Meyrick will call "tegulated " armour. We have not reproduced this plate, for we confess to a feeling of uneasiness in doing so as not having seen the original; for judged by certain of its details, as for instance its completely "tegulated"
