Philip the Fair stipulating that every holder of an estate of 500 livres rental should provide for the defence of the realm: Un gentilhomme bien armé et monté à cheval de cinquante livres tournois et couvert de couvertures de fer, ou de couverture pourpointé.
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Fig. 948. From the Painted Chamber, Palace of Westminster
Early XIIIth century
It would seem that about this period the defence known in later times as the chanfron, the plate protection for the horse's head, made its appearance; though it is to be noted that the duplication on the horse's head of the crest appearing on the helm was made at a much earlier date. The seal of Patrick Dunbar, tenth Earl of March, 1292, illustrated in Henry Laing's "Ancient Scottish Seals," page 54 (Fig. 950), affords a good example of a knight and steed decorated with the same crest. It is, however, in the list of provisions for the famous Windsor Tournament of 1278 that we find the earliest records of the copita or chanfron of cuir bouilli fashioned to the form of the horse's head:
"D Eodem [Miloñ le Cuireur̃.] xxxviij.
copita cor̃ de similitud' capit̃ equoz
p'c̄ pec̄ ij, s."
It is remarkable that though contemporary
accounts make mention of armaments
for the horse, these are seldom
depicted in the miniatures and sculptures
of the time. The chanfron is so old an
accoutrement as to have been in use among
the ancient Greeks; and though an example
of this kind is totally outside the scope of the present work, we cannot
refrain from giving an illustration of a splendid, though very small, Celtic
specimen in bronze found at Torrs, Kirkcudbrightshire, now in the National
Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (Fig. 951). The appearance of the
leather chanfron of the early years of the XIVth century, possibly and probably,
was not unlike one of the head defences used to-day in cavalry
regiments for purposes of sabre practice. Just as the form of the horse's
head is seen in one of these roughly suggested in tough leather and metal,
so must the copita requisitioned for the Windsor Tournament of 1278, have
