MEDIÆVAL BOWMEN.
The archers of England were so famous during the Middle Ages that we feel special interest in knowing something about them. As early as the Conquest we find the Norman archers giving the invader a great advantage over the Saxons, who had not cultivated this arm with success. Their equipment and appearance may be seen in the Bayeux tapestry; most of them are evidently unarmed, but some are in armour like that of the men-at-arms. Usually the quiver hangs at the side; yet occasionally at the back, so that the arrows are drawn out over the shoulder; both fashions continued in later times. In one case, at least, an archer, in pursuit of the flying Saxons, is seen on horseback; but it may be doubted whether at this period, as was the case subsequently, some of the archers were mounted, or whether an archer has leaped upon a riderless horse to pursue the routed enemy. The bow was of the simplest construction, not so long as it afterwards became; the arrows were barbed and feathered. Each archer—in later times, at least—commonly carried two dozen arrows “under his belt.” He also frequently bore a stake sharpened at both ends, so that in the field, when the front ranks fixed their stakes in the ground with their points sloping outward, and the rear rank fixed theirs in the intermediate spaces, they formed acheval de friseagainst cavalry, and, with the flanks properly cared for, they could hold their ground even against the steel-clad chivalry. Latterly also the archers were sometimes protected by a great movable shield; this they fixed upright by a rest, and behind it were sheltered from the adverse bowmen. The archer also carried a sword, so that he coulddefend himself, if attacked, hand to hand; or act on the offensive with the main body of foot when his artillery was expended. By the twelfth century there are stories on record which show that the English bowmen had acquired such skill as to make their weapon a very formidable one. Richard of Devizes tells us that at the siege of Messina the Sicilians were obliged to leave their walls unmanned, “because no one could look abroad but he would have an arrow in his eye before he could shut it.”
In the thirteenth century the archer became more and more important. He always began the battle at a distance, as the artillery do in modern warfare, before the main bodies came up to actual hand-to-hand fighting. We find in this century a regular use of mounted corps of bowmen and cross-bowmen; and the knights did not scorn to practise the use of this weapon, and occasionally to resort to it on a special occasion in the field. Some of the bowmen continue to be found, in the MS. illustrations, more or less fully armed, but the majority seem to have worn only a helmet of iron, and perhaps half armour of leather, or often nothing more than a woollen jerkin.
The cross-bow, or arbalest, does not appear to have been used in war until the close of the twelfth century. It was not equal to the long-bow in strong and skilful hands, because a powerful and skilful bowman, while he could probably send his shaft with as much force as a cross-bow, could shoot half-a-dozen arrows while the cross-bow was being wound up to discharge a second bolt; but still, once introduced, the mechanical advantage which the cross-bow gave to men of ordinary strength and of inferior skill caused it to keep its ground, until the invention of fire-arms gradually superseded both long-bow and arbalest. The bow of the cross-bow seems to have been usually of steel; some of them were strung by putting the foot into a loop at the end of the stock, and pulling the cord up to its notch by main force: an illustration of this early form appears in the arbalester shooting from the battlement of the castle in the early fourteenth-century illumination on p. 381, and another at p. 382; but the more powerful bows required some mechanical assistance to bring the string to its place. In a picture in the National Gallery of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, by Antonio Pollajuolo, of Florence,A.D.1475, an arbalesterhas a cord attached to his belt, and a pulley running on it, with a hook to catch the bow-string, so that, putting his foot into the loop at the end of the stock, looping the end of the cord on to a hook at its butt, and catching the bow-string by the pulley, he could, by straightening himself, apply the whole force of his body to the stringing of his weapon. More frequently, however, a little winch was used, by which the string was wound into its place with little expenditure of strength. One of the men in the cut on the next page is thus stringing his bow, and it is seen again in the cut on p. 449. The arrow shot by the cross-bow was called a bolt or quarrel; it was shorter and stouter than an ordinary arrow, with a heavier head. The arbalester seems to have carried fifty bolts into the field with him; the store of bolts was carried by waggons which followed the army.
We have already said that there were, from the thirteenth century, bodies of mounted arbalesters. But the far larger proportion of archers, of both arms, were footmen, who were usually placed in front of the array to commence the engagement.
The arbalest, however, was more used on the Continent than in England; and hence the long-bow came to be especially considered the national arm of the English, while the Genoese became famous as arbalesters. The superior rapidity of fire gave the English archer the same advantage over his foemen that the needle-gun gave to the Prussians in the late war.
Later on, in the fourteenth century, the battle seems to have been usually begun by the great machines for throwing stones and darts which then played the part of modern cannon, while the bowmen were placed on the flanks. Frequently, also, archers were intermixed with the horsemen, so that a body of spearmen with archers among them would play the part which a body of dragoons did in more modern warfare, throwing the opposing ranks into confusion with missiles, before charging upon them hand to hand.
In the fourteenth century the bow had attained the climax of its reputation as a weapon, and in the French wars many a battle was decided by the strength and skill and sturdy courage of the English bowmen. Edward III. conferred honour on the craft by raising a corps of archersof the King’s Guard, consisting of 120 men, the most expert who could be found in the kingdom. About the same period the French kings enrolled from their allies of Scotland the corps of Scottish Archers of the Guard, who were afterwards so famous.
We have already given a good illustration of the long-bowman from the Royal MS. 14, E. IV., a folio volume illustrated with very fine pictures executed for our King Edward IV. From the same MS. we now take an illustration of the cross-bow. The accompanying cut is part of a larger picture which represents several interesting points in a siege. On the right is a town surrounded by a moat; the approach to the bridge over the moat is defended by an outwork, and the arbalesters in the cut are skirmishing with some bowmen on the battlements and angle-turrets of this outwork. On the left of the picture are the besiegers. They have erected a wooden castle with towers, surrounded by a timber breast-work. In front of this breast-work is an elaborate cannon of the type of that represented in the cut on page 392. At a little distance is a battery of one cannon elevated on a wooden platform, and screened by a breast-work of basket-work, which was a very usual way of concealing cannon down to the time of Henry VIII.
Bowmen and Arbalesters.
The man on the right of the cut wears a visored helmet, but it has noamail; his body is protected by a skirt of mail, which appears at the shoulders and hips, and at the openings of his blue surcoat; the legs are in brown hose, and the feet in brown shoes. The centre figure has a helmet and camail, sleeves of mail, and iron breastplate of overlapping plates; the upper plate and the skirt are of red spotted with gold; his hose and shoes are of dark grey. The third man has a helmet with camail, and the body protected by mail, which shows under the arm, but he has also shoulder-pieces and elbow-pieces of plate; his surcoat is yellow, and his hose red. The artist has here admirably illustrated the use of the crossbow. In one case we see the archer stringing it by help of a little winch; in the next he is taking a bolt out of the quiver at his side with which to load his weapon; in the third we have the attitude in which it was discharged.
Arbalesters.
The illustration above, from a fourteenth-century MS. (Cott. Julius, E. IV.f. 219), represents a siege. A walled town is on the right, and in front of the wall, acting on the part of the town, are the cross-bowmen in the cut, protected by great shields which are kept upright by a rest. The men seem to be preparing to fire, and the uniformity of their attitude, compared with the studied variety of attitude of groups of bowmen in other illustrations, suggests that they are preparing to fire a volley. On the left of the picture is sketched a group of tents representing the camp of the besiegers, and in front of the camp is a palisade which screens a cannon of considerable length. The whole picture is only sketched in with pen and ink.
The woodcut here given (Royal 14, E. IV. f. xiv.) forms part of a large and very interesting picture. In the middle of the picture is a castle with a bridge, protected by an advanced tower, and a postern with a drawbridge drawn up. Archers, cross-bowmen, and men-at-arms man the battlements. In front is a group of men-at-arms and tents, with archers and cross-bowmen shooting up at the defenders. On the right is a group of men-at-arms who seem to be meditating an attack by surprise upon the postern. On the left, opposed to the principal gate, is the timber fort shown in the woodcut. Its construction, of great posts andthick slabs of timber strengthened with stays and cross-beams, is well indicated. There seem to be two separate works: one is a battery of two cannon, the cannon having wheeled carriages; the other is manned by archers. It is curious to see the mixture of arms—long-bow, cross-bow, portable fire-arm, and wheeled cannon, all used at the same time; indeed, it may be questioned whether the earlier fire-arms were very much superior in effect to the more ancient weapons which they supplanted. No doubt many an archer preferred the long-bow, with which he could shoot with truer aim than with a clumsy hand-gun; and perhaps a good catapult was only inferior to one of the early cannon in being a larger and heavier engine.
Timber Fort.
At fol. l v. of the same MS., a wooden tower and lofty breast-work have been thrown up in front of a town by the defenders as an additional protection to the usual stone tower which defends the approach to the bridge. The assailants are making an assault on this breast-work, and need ladders to scale it; so that it is evident the defenders stand on a raised platform behind their timber defence. See a similar work at f. xlviij., which is mounted with cannon.
The practice of archery by the commonalty of England was protected and encouraged by a long series of legislation. As early as Henry I. we find an enactment—which indicates that such accidents happened then as do unhappily in these days, when rifle-shooting is become a national practice—that if any one practising with arrows or with darts should by accident slay another, it was not to be punished as a crime. In the fourteenth century, when the archer had reached the height of his importance in the warfare of the time, many enactments were passed on the subject. Some were intended to encourage, and more than encourage, the practice by the commonalty of what had become the national arm. In 1363, and again in 1388, statutes were passed calling upon the people to leave their popular amusements of ball and coits and casting the stone and the like, on their festivals and Sundays, and to practise archery instead. “Servants and labourers shall have bows and arrows, and use the same the Sundays and holidays, and leave all playing at tennis or foot-ball, and other games called coits, dice, casting the stone, kailes, and other such inopportune games.”
In 1482 a statute says that the dearness of bows has driven the people to leave shooting, and practise unlawful games, though the king’s subjects are perfectly disposed to shoot; and it therefore regulates the price of bows. This crude legislation, of course, failed to remedy the evil, for if the bowyers could not sell them at a profit, they would cease to make them, or rather to import the wood of which they were made, since the best yew for bows came from abroad, English yew not supplying pieces sufficiently long without knots. Accordingly, in 1483, another statute required all merchants sending merchandise to England from any place from which bow-staves were usually exported, to send four bow-staves for every ton of merchandise, and two persons were appointed at each port to inspect the staves so sent, and mark and reject those which were not good and sufficient.
Still later the erection of butts was encouraged in every parish to prevent the accidents which the statute of Henry I. had directed justice to wink at; and traces of them still remain in the names of places, as in Newington Butts; and still more frequently in the names of fields, as the “butt-field.”
Our history of ancient artillery would be imperfect without a few words on the modern artillery of metal balls propelled from hollow tubes by the explosive force of gunpowder, which superseded the slings and bows and darts, the catapults and trebuchets and mangonels and battering-rams, which had been used from the beginning of warfare in the world, and also drove out of use the armour, whether of leather, bone, or steel, which failed to pay in security of person against shot and cannon-ball for its weight and encumbrance to the wearer. A good deal of curious inquiry has been bestowed upon the origin of this great agent in the revolution of modern warfare. The Chinese and Arabs are generally regarded as the first inventors of gunpowder; among Europeans its invention has been attributed to Marcus Graecus, Albertus Magnus, Barthold Schwaletz, and Roger Bacon.
The first written evidence relating to the existence of cannon is in the ordinances of Florence, in the year 1326, wherein authority is given to the Priors Gonfalionieri and twelve good men to appoint persons to superintend the manufacture of cannons and iron balls for the defence of the Commune Camp and territory of the Republic. J. Barbour, the poet,is usually quoted as an authority for the use of cannon “crakeys of war,” by Edward III., in his Scottish campaign, in the year 1327. But since Barbour was not born till about that year, and did not write till 1375, his authority was not contemporary and may be doubted, especially since there is strong negative evidence to the contrary:e.g.that all the army accounts of this campaign still remain, and no mention of guns or gunpowder is to be found in them. In 1338, however, there is unquestionable evidence that cannon of both iron and brass were employed on board English ships of war. In an inventory of things delivered that year by John Starling, formerly clerk of the king’s vessels, to Helmyng, keeper of the same, are noted “un canon de fer ov ii chambers, un autre de bras ove une chamber, iii canons de fer of v chambres, un handgonne,” &c. In explanation of the two and five chambers, it appears that these earliest cannon were breechloaders, and each cannon had several movable chambers to contain the charges. The same year, 1338, gives the first French document relating to cannon. It is doubly interesting; first because it relates to the provision made for an expedition against Southampton in that year, and secondly because it was a curious attempt to combine the cannon and the arbalest, in other words, to make use of the force of gunpowder for propelling the old short quarrel. It was an iron fire-arm provided with forty-eight bolts (carreaux) made of iron and feathered with brass. We learn that a tube received the arrow, which was wrapped round with leather at the butt to make it fit closely, and this tube fitted to a box, or chamber, which contained the charge and was kept in its place by a wedge.[397]In 1339 it is recorded that the English used cannon at the siege of Cambray. In 1346 experiments on improved cannon were made by Peter of Bruges, a famous maker, before the consuls of Tournay. At the siege of Calais, in 1347, the English built a castle of wood, and armed it with bombards. In the household expenses of Edward III., commencing 1344, are payments to “engyners lvii., artillers vi., gunners vi.,” who each received sixpence a day.
The date of the first appearance of cannon in the field is still disputed;some say they were used at Crecy in the year 1346. Certainly, in 1382, the men of Ghent carried guns into the field against the Brugeois; and at the combat of Pont-de-Comines, in the same year, we readbombardes portativeswere used.
Long-bow, Arquebus, Cannon, and Greek Fire.
We have already given several illustrations of cannon. Siege cannon for throwing heavy balls which did not need very great accuracy of aim, soon superseded entirely the more cumbrous military engines which were formerly used for the same purpose. But hand-guns were not at first so greatly superior to bows, and did not so rapidly come into exclusive use. And yet a good deal of inventive ingenuity was bestowed upon their improvement and development. The “Brown Bess” of our great continental war was a clumsy weapon after all, and it may fairly be doubted whether a regiment armed with it could have stood against a row of RobinHood’s men with their long-bows. It was really left to our day to produce a portable fire-arm which would fire as rapidly, as far, and with as accurate an aim as Robin Hood’s men could shoot their cloth-yard shafts six hundred years ago; and yet it is curious to find some of the most ingenious inventions of the present day anticipated long since: there are still preserved in the Tower armoury breech-loaders and revolving chambers and conical shot of the time of Henry VIII.
The woodcut on the preceding page, which is from the MS. Royal 14, E. IV., contains several figures taken from one of the large illuminations that adorn the MS.; it affords another curious illustration of the simultaneous use of various forms of projectiles. On the right side is an archer, with his sheaf at his belt and his sword by his side. On the left is a man-at-arms in a very picturesque suit of complete armour, firing a hand-gun of much more modern form than those in the former woodcut. A small wheeled cannon on the ground shows the contemporary form of that arm, while the pikes beside it help to illustrate the great variety of weapons in use. The cross-bowman here introduced is from the same illumination; he is winding up his weapon with a winch, like the cross-bowman on p. 442; his shield is slung at his back.
Cross-bow.
But we have specially to call attention to the two men who are throwing shells, which are probably charged with Greek fire. This invention, which inspired such terror in the Middle Ages, seems to have been discovered in the east of Europe, and to have been employed as early as the seventh century. We hear much of its use in the Crusades, by the Greeks, who early possessed the secret of its fabrication. They used it either by ejecting it through pipes to set fire to the shipping or military engines, or to annoy and kill the soldiers of the enemy; or they cast it to a distance by means of vessels charged with it affixed to javelins; or they hurled larger vessels by means of the great engines for casting stones; or they threw the fire by hand in a hand-to-hand conflict; or used hollow maces charged with it, which were broken over the person of the enemy, andthe liquid fire poured down, finding its way through the crevices of his armour. It was, no doubt, a terrible sight to see a man-at-arms or a ship wrapped in an instant in liquid flames; and what added to the terror it inspired was that the flames could not be extinguished by water or any other available appliance. On the introduction of the use of gunpowder in European warfare, Greek fire seems also to have been experimented upon, and we find several representations of its use in the MS. drawings where it is chiefly thrown by hand to set fire to shipping; in the present example, however, it is used in the field.
Battering-ram.
Lastly, in the above cut we give a representation of the battering-ram from an interesting work which illustrates all the usual military engines.[398]It contains curious contrivances for throwing up scaling-ladders and affixingthem to the battlements, from which the inventors of our fire-escapes may have borrowed suggestions; and others for bridging wide moats and rivers with light scaffolding, which could be handled and fixed as easily and quickly as the scaling-ladders. The drawing of the ram only indicates that the machine consists of a heavy square beam of timber, provided, probably, with a metal head, which is suspended by a rope from a tall frame, and worked by manual strength. The cut is especially interesting as an illustration of the style of armour of the latter part of the fifteenth century. It gives the back as well as the front of the figure, and also several varieties of helmet.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMOUR.
As the fifteenth century advanced the wars of the Roses gave urgent reason for attention to the subject of defensive armour; and we find, accordingly, that the fashions of armour underwent many modifications, in the attempt to give the wearer more perfect protection for life and limb. It would be tedious to enter into the minute details of these changes, and the exact date of their introduction; we must limit ourselves to a brief history of the general character of the new fashions. The horizontal bands of armour calledtaces, depending from the corslet, became gradually narrower; while the pieces which hung down in front of the thighs, calledtuilles, became proportionately larger. In the reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII. the knightly equipment reached its strangest forms. Besides the usual close-fitting pieces which protected the arms, the elbow-piece was enlarged into an enormous fan-like shape that not only protected the elbow itself, but overlapped the fore arm, and by its peculiar shape protected the upper arm up to the shoulder. The shoulder-pieces also were strengthened, sometimes by several super-imposed overlapping plates, sometimes by hammering it out into ridges, sometimes by the addition of apasse garde—a kind of high collar which protected the neck from a sweeping side blow. The breastplate is globular in shape, and often narrow at the waist; from it depend narrowtacesandtuilles, and under thetuilleswe often find a deep skirt of mail. When broad-toed shoes came into fashion, the iron shoes of the knight followed the fashion; and at the same time, in place of the old gauntlet in which the fingers were divided, and each finger protected byseveral small plates of metal, the leather glove was now furnished at the back of the hand with three or four broad over-lapping plates, like those of a lobster, each of which stretched across the whole hand. These alterations may have added to the strength of the armour, but it was at the cost of elegance of appearance. A suit of armour embossed with ornamental patterns, partially covered with a blue mantle, may be seen in the fifteenth-century Book of Hours, Harl. 5,328, f. 77.
In the time of Henry VIII., in place of thetacesandtuillesfor the defence of the body and thighs, a kind of skirt of steel, calledlamboys, was introduced, which was fluted and ribbed vertically, so as to give it very much the appearance of a short petticoat. Henry VIII. is represented in this costume in the equestrian figure on his great seal. And a suit of armour of this kind, a very magnificent one, which was presented to the king by the Emperor Maximilian on the occasion of his marriage to Katharine of Arragon, is preserved in the Tower armoury. A good sketch of a suit of this kind will be seen in one of the pikemen—the fifth from the right hand—in the nearest rank of the army in the engraving of King Henry VIII.’s army, which faces page 455. The armour of this reign was sometimes fashioned in exact imitation of the shape of the ordinary garments of a gentleman of the time, and engraved and inlaid in imitation of their woven or embroidered ornamentation.
In the tournament armour of the time the defences were most complete, but unwieldy and inelegant. The front of the saddle had a large piece of armour attached, which came up to protect the trunk, and was bent round to encase each thigh. A clearly drawn representation of this will be found in a tilting scene in the illumination on f. 15 v. of the MS. Add. 24,189, datecirca1400A.D.There are several examples of it in the Tower armoury. The shield was also elaborately shaped and curved, to form an outer armour for the defence of the whole of the left side. Instead of the shield there was sometimes an additional piece of armour, called thegrand garde, screwed to the breastplate, to protect the left side and shoulder; while the great spear had also a piece of armour affixed in front of the grasp, which not only protected the hand, but was made large enough to make a kind of shield for the right arm and breast. There wasalso sometimes a secondary defence affixed to the upper part of the breastplate, which stood out in front of the face. These defences for thigh and breast will be observed in the woodcut of the “playing at tournament,” on p. 408; and in the combat of the Earl of Warwick, p. 418, will be seen how thegrande gardeis combined with thevolantepiece which came in front of the face. Behind such defences the tilter must have been almost invulnerable. On the other hand, his defences were so unwieldy that he must have got into his saddle first, and then have been packed securely into his armour; and when there, he could do nothing but sit still and hold his spear in rest—it seems impossible for him even to have struck a single sword stroke. James I.’s remark on armour was especially true of such a suit: “It was an admirable invention which preserved a man from being injured, and made him incapable of injuring any one else.”
Combat on Foot.
There are several very good authorities for the military costume of the reign of Henry VIII. easily accessible to the student and artist. Theroll preserved in the College of Arms which represents the tournament held at Westminster,A.D.1510, in honour of the birth of the son of Henry and Katharine of Arragon, has been engraved in the “Vetusta Monumenta.” The painting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold at Hampton Court is another contemporary authority full of costumes of all kinds. The engravings of Hans Burgmaier, in theTriumphs of Maximilianand theWeise Königecontain numerous authorities very valuable for the clearness and artistic skill with which the armour is depicted. We have given an illustration, on the preceding page, reduced from one of the plates of the latter work, which represents a combat of two knights, on foot. The armour is partly covered by a surcoat; in the left-hand figure it will be seen that it is fluted. The shields will be noticed as illustrating one of the shapes then in use.
But our best illustration is from a contemporary drawing in the British Museum (Aug. III., f. 4), which represents Henry VIII.’s army, and gives us, on a small scale, and in very sketchy but intelligible style, a curious and valuable picture of the military equipment of the period. We have two armies drawn up in battle array, and the assault is just commenced. The nearer army has its main body of pikemen, who, we know from contemporary writers, formed the main strength of an army at this time, and for long after. In front of them are two lines of arquebusiers. Their front is protected by artillery, screened by greatmanteletsof timber. The opposing army has similarly its main body of pikemen, and its two lines of arquebusiers; the first line engaged in an assault upon the enemy’s artillery. On the left flank of its main body is the cavalry; and there seems to be a reserve of pikemen a little distance in the rear, behind a rising ground. Tents pitched about a village represent the head-quarters of the army, and baggage waggons on the left of the picture show that the artist has overlooked nothing. A fortress in the distance seems to be taking part in the engagement with its guns.
There are other similar pictures in the same volume, some of which supply details not here given, or not so clearly expressed. At folio 1 are two armies, each with a van of musketeers three deep, a main body of pikemen eleven deep, and a third line of musketeers three deep. Thecavalry are more distinctly shown than in the picture before us, as being men-at-arms in full armour, with lances. At folio 3 the drummers, fifers, and baggage and camp followers are shown.
In theWeise Könige,[399]on plate 44, is a representation of a camp surrounded by the baggage waggons; on plates 91 and 96 a square fort of timber in the field of battle; on plates 57, 84, &c., are cannons surrounded by mantelets, some of wicker probably filled with earth; on plate 60 is a good representation of a column of troops defiling out of the gate of a city.
The following account, from Grafton’s Chronicle, of the array in which Henry VIII. took the field when he marched to the siege of Boulogne, will illustrate the picture:—
“The xxj. day of July (1513), when all thinges by counsayle had bene ordered concernyng the order of battaile, the king passed out of the town of Calice in goodly array of battaile, and toke the field. And notwithstandyng that the forewarde and the rerewarde of the kinges great armye were before Tyrwin, as you have heard, yet the king of his own battaile made three battailes after the fassion of the warre. The Lord Lisle, marshall of the hoste, was captain of the foreward, and under him three thousand men; Sir Rychard Carew, with three hundred men, was the right-hand wing to the foreward; and the Lord Darcy, with three hundred men, was wing on the left hande; the scowrers and fore-ryders of this battaile were the Northumberland men on light geldings. The Erle of Essex was lieutenaunt-generall of the speres, and Sir John Pechy was vice-governour of the horsemen. Before the king went viij. hundred Almaynes, all in a plump by themselves. After them came the standard with the red dragon, next the banner of our ladie, and next after the banner of the Trinitie: under the same were all the kinges housholde servauntes. Then went the banner of the armes of Englande, borne by Sir Henry Guilforde, under which banner was the king himselfe, with divers noblemen and others, to the number of three thousand men. The Duke of Buckyngham, with sixe hundred men, was on the kinges lefthande, egall with the Almaynes; in like wise on the right hande was Sir Edward Pournynges, with other sixe hundred men egall with the Almaynes. The Lord of Burgoynie, with viij. hundred men, was wing on the right hande; Sir William Compton, with the retinue of the Bishop of Winchester, and Master Wolsey, the king’s almoner,[400]to the number of viij. hundred, was in manner of a rereward. Sir Anthony Oughtred and Sir John Nevell, with the kinges speres that followed, were foure hundred; and so the whole armie were xj. thousand and iij. hundred men. The Mayster of the Ordinaunce set forth the kinges artillerie, as fawcons,slinges, bombardes, cartes with powder, stones, bowes, arrowes, and suche other thinges necessary for the fielde; the whole number of the carriages were xiij. hundreth; the leaders and dryvers of the same were xix hundreth men; and all these were rekened in the battaile, but of good fightyng men there were not full ix. thousande. Thus in order of battayle the king rode to Sentreyla.”
Pikeman.
A little after we have a description of the king’s camp, which will illustrate the other pictures above noted.
“Thursedaie, the fourth daye of Auguste, the king, in good order of battaile, came before the city of Tyrwyn, and planted his siege in most warlike wise; his camp was environed with artillerie, as fawcons, serpentines, crakys, hagbushes, and tryed harowes, spien trestyles, and other warlike defence for the savegard of the campe. The king for himselfe had a house of timber, with a chimney of iron; and for his other lodgings he had great and goodlye tents of blewe waterworke, garnished with yellow and white, and divers romes within the same for all officers necessarie. On the top of the pavalions stoode the kinges bestes, holding fanes, as the lion, the dragon, the greyhound, the antelope, the Done Kowe.[401]Within, all the lodginge was paynted full of the sunnes rising: the lodginge was a hundred xxv. foote in length.”
At folio 5 of the MS. already referred to (Aug. III.) is a connected arrangement of numerous tents, as if to form some such royal quarters. But at folio 8 are two gorgeoussuitesof tents, which can hardly have been constructed for any other than a very great personage. Onesuiteis of red, watered, with gold ornamentation; the other is of green and white stripes (or rather gores), with a gilded cresting along the ridge, and red and blue fringe at the eaves.
Our next engravings are from coloured drawings at f. 9, in the same MS., and respectively represent very clearly the half-armour worn by the pikeman and the arquebusier, and the weapons from which they took their name.
In the reign of Elizabeth and James I. armour was probably very little worn; but every country knight and esquire possessed a suit of armour,which usually hung in his hall over his chair of state, surrounded by corslets and iron hats, pikes and halberts, cross-bows and long-bows, wherewith to arm his serving-men and tenants, if civil troubles or foreign invasion should call the fighting-men of the country into the field.[402]The knights and esquires of these times are also commonly represented in armour, kneeling at the prayer-desk, in their monumental effigies. Thefashion of the armour differs from that of preceding reigns. The elaborate ingenuities of the latter part of the fifteenth century have been dispensed with, and the extravagant caprices also by which the armour of Henry VIII.’s time imitated in steel the fashion of the ordinary costume of the day are equally abandoned. The armour is simply made to fit the breast, body, arms, and legs; the thighs being protected by a modification of thetuillesin the form of a succession of overlapping plates (tassetsorcuisses) which reach from the corslet to the knee.
Arquebusier.
The civil war of the Great Rebellion offers a tempting theme, but we must limit ourselves to the notice that few, except great noblemen when acting as military leaders, ever wore anything like a complete suit of armour. A beautiful suit, inlaid with gold, which belonged to Charles I., is in the Tower armoury. But knights are still sometimes represented in armour in their monumental effigies. A breast and back-plate over a leather coat, and a round iron cap, were commonly worn both by cavalry and infantry.
In the time of Charles II. and James II., and William and Mary, officers still wore breastplates, and military leaders were sometimes painted in full armour, though it may be doubted whether they ever actually wore it. As late as the present century, officers, in some regiments at least, wore a little steel gorget, rather as a distinction than a defence. But even yet our horse-guards remain with their breast and back-plates and helmets, and their thick leather boots, to show us how bright steel and scarlet, waving plumes and embroidered banners, trained chargers and gay trappings, give outward bravery and chivalric grace to the holiday aspect of the sanguinary trade of war.
THE MERCHANTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH COMMERCE.
In the remotest antiquity, before European civilisation dawned in Greece, Britain was already of some commercial importance. In those days, before the art of tempering iron was discovered, copper occupied the place which iron now fills. But an alloy of tin was requisite to give to copper the hardness and edge needed to fit it for useful tools for the artisan, for arrow and spear heads for the hunter, and for the warrior’s sword and shield; and there were only two places known in the world where this valuable metal could be obtained—Spain and Britain. For ages the Phœnician merchants and their Carthaginian colonists had a monopoly of this commerce, as they only had the secret of the whereabouts of the “Isles of Tin.” It is very difficult for us to realise to ourselves how heroic was the daring of those early adventurers. We, who have explored the whole earth, and by steam and telegraph brought every corner of it within such easy reach; we, to whom it is a very small matter to make a voyage with women and children to the other side of the world; we, who walk down to the pier to see the ships return from the under world, keeping their time as regularly as the Minster clock—we cannot comprehend what it was to them, to whom the tideless sunny Mediterranean was “The Great Sea,” about which they groped cautiously from one rocky headland toanother in fine weather, and laid up in harbour for the winter; to whom the Pillars of Hercules were the western boundary of the world, beyond which the weird ocean with its great tides and mountain-waves stretched without limit towards the sunset; we cannot comprehend the heroic daring of the men who, in those little ships, without compass, came from the easternmost shores of the Great Sea, ventured through its western portal into this outer waste, and steered boldly northwards towards the unknown regions of ice and darkness.
Our readers will remember that Strabo tells us how, when Rome became the rival of Carthage, the Romans tried to discover the route to these mysterious islands. He relates how the master of a Carthaginian vessel, finding himself pursued by one whom the Romans had appointed to watch him, purposely ran his vessel aground, and thus sacrificing ship and cargo to the preservation of the national secret, was repaid on his return out of the public treasury.
The trade, which included lead and hides as well as tin, when it left the hands of the Phœnicians, did not, however, fall into those of the Romans, but took quite a different channel. The Greek colony of Marseilles became then the emporium from which the world was supplied; but the scanty accounts we have received imply that it was not conveyed there direct on ship-board, but that the native ships and traders of the Gallic towns on the coasts of the Continent conveyed the British commerce across the Channel, and thence transported it overland to Marseilles.
The Britons, however, had ships, and it is interesting to know of what kind were the prototypes of the vast and magnificent vessels which in later days have composed the mercantile navy of Great Britain. They were a kind of large basket of wickerwork, in shape like a walnut shell, strengthened by ribs of wood, covered on the outside with hides.[403]Such constructions seem very frail, but they were capable of undertaking considerable voyages. Pliny quotes the old Greek historian Timæus as affirming that the Britons used to make their way to an island at the distance of sixdays’ sail in boats made of osiers and covered with skins. Solinus states that in his time the communication between Britain and Ireland was kept up on both sides by means of these vessels. Two passages in Adamson, quoted by Macpherson,[404]tell us that the people sailed in them from Ireland as far as Orkney, and on one occasion we hear of one of these frail vessels advancing as far into the Northern Ocean as fourteen days with full sail before a south wind. The common use of such vessels, and the fact of this intercommunication between England and Ireland and the islands farther north, seem to imply, at least, some coasting and inter-insular traffic: ships are the instruments either of war or commerce.
The invasion of Julius Cæsar opened up the island to the knowledge of the civilised world, and there are indications that in the interval of a hundred years between his brief campaign and the actual conquest under Claudius, a commerce sprang up between the south and south-east of Britain and the opposite coasts of the Continent. In this interval the first British coinage was struck, and London became the chief emporium of Britain. When the island became a province of the Roman empire, active commercial intercourse was carried on between it and the rest of the empire. Its chief production was corn, of which large quantities were exported, so that Britain was to the northern part of the empire what Sicily was to the southern. Besides, the island exported cattle, hides, and slaves; British hunting dogs were famous, and British oysters and pearls. The imports would include all the articles of convenience and luxury used by the civilised inhabitants. We do not know with certainty whether this foreign commerce was carried on by British vessels or not. History has only preserved the record of the military navy. But when we know that the British fleet, which had been raised to control the piratical enterprises of the Saxons and Northmen, was so powerful that its admiral, Carausius, was able to seize upon a share of the empire, and that his successor in command, Allectus, was able, though for a shorter period, to repeat the exploit, we may conclude that the natives of the island must have acquired considerable knowledge and experience of maritime affairs, and were verylikely to turn their acquirements in the direction of commerce. Many of the representations of Roman ships, to be found in works on Roman antiquities, would illustrate this part of the subject; we may content ourselves with referring the reader to a representation, in Witsen’s “Sheeps Bouw,” of a Roman ship being laden with merchandise: a half-naked porter is just putting on board a sack, probably of corn, which is being received by a man in Roman armour; it brings the salient features of the trade at once before our eyes.
The Saxon invasion overwhelmed the civilisation which was then widely spread over Britain; and of the history of the country for a long time after that great event we are profoundly ignorant.
It appears that the Saxons after their settlement in England completely neglected the sea, and it was not until the reign of Alfred, towards the end of the ninth century, that they again began to build ships, and not until some years later that foreign commerce was carried on in English vessels. In these later Saxon times, however, considerable intercourse took place with the Continent. There was a rage among Saxon men, and women too, for foreign pilgrimages; and thousands of persons were continually going and coming between England and the most famous shrines of Europe, especially those of Rome, the capital city of Western Christendom. Among these travellers were some whose object was traffic, probably in the portable articles of jewellery for which the Saxon goldsmiths were famous throughout Europe. It seems probable that some of these merchants were accustomed to adopt the pilgrims’ character and habit in order to avail themselves of the immunities and hospitalities accorded to them; and, perhaps, on the other hand, some of those whose first object was religion, carried a few articles for sale to eke out their expenses. This, probably, is the explanation of the earliest extant document bearing on Saxon commerce, which is a letter from the Emperor Charlemagne to Offa, King of the Mercians, in which he says: “Concerning the strangers, who, for the love of God and the salvation of their souls, wish to repair to the thresholds of the blessed Apostles, let them travel in peace without any trouble; nevertheless, if any are found among them not in the service of religion, but in the pursuit of gain, let them pay the established duties atthe proper places. We also will that merchants shall have lawful protection in our kingdom; and if they are in any place unjustly aggrieved, let them apply to us or our judges, and we shall take care that ample justice be done them.” The latter clause seems clearly to imply that English merchants in their acknowledged character were also to be found in the dominions of the great Emperor.
The next notice we find of Saxon foreign commerce is equally picturesque, and far more important. It is a law passed in the reign of King Athelstan, between 925 and 950, which enacts that every merchant who shall have made three voyages over the sea in a ship and cargo of his own should have the rank of a thane, or nobleman. It will throw light upon this law, if we mention that it stands side by side with another which gives equally generous recognition to success in agricultural pursuits: every one who had so prospered that he possessed five hides of land, a hall, and a church, was also to rank as a thane.
The law indicates the usual way in which foreign commerce was carried on by native merchants. The merchant owned his own ship, and laded it with his own cargo, and was his own captain, though he might, perhaps, employ some skilful mariner as his ship-master; and, no doubt, his crew was well armed for protection from pirates. In these days a ship is often chartered to carry a cargo to a particular port, and there the captain obtains another cargo, such as the market affords him, to some other port, and so he may wander over the world in the most unforeseen manner before he finds a profitable opportunity of returning to his starting-place. So, probably, in those times the spirited merchant would not merely oscillate between home and a given foreign point, but would carry on a traffic of an adventurous and hazardous but exciting kind, from one of the great European ports to another.
From a volume of Saxon dialogues in the British Museum (Tiberius, A. III.), apparently intended for a school-book, which gives information of various kinds in the form of question and answer, Mr. S. Turner quotes a passage that illustrates our subject in a very interesting way. The merchant is introduced as one of the characters, to give an account of his occupation and way of life. “I am useful,” he says, “to the king and toealdormen, and to the rich, and to all people. I ascend my ship with my merchandise, and sail over the sea-like places, and sell my things, and buy dear things which are not produced in this land, and I bring them to you here with great danger over the sea; and sometimes I suffer shipwreck with the loss of all my things, scarcely escaping myself.” The question, “What do you bring us?” demands an account of the imports, to which he answers, “Skins, silks, costly gems, and gold; various garments, pigment, wine, oil, ivory, and onchalcus (perhaps brass); copper, tin, silver, glass, and such like.” The author has omitted to make his merchant tell us what things he exported, but from other sources we gather that they were chiefly wool, slaves, probably some of the metals, viz., tin and lead, and the goldsmith’s work and embroidery for which the Saxons were then famous throughout Europe. The dialogue brings out the principle which lies at the bottom of commerce by the next question, “Will you sell your things here as you bought them there?” “I will not, because what would my labour profit me? I will sell them here, dearer than I bought them there, that I may get some profit to feed me, my wife, and children.” For the silks and ivory, our merchant would perhaps have to push his adventurous voyage as far as Marseilles or Italy. Corn, which used to be the chief export in British and Roman times, appears never to have been exported by the Saxons; they were a pastoral, rather than an agricultural, people. The traffic in slaves seems to have been regular and considerable. The reader will remember how the sight of a number of fair English children exposed for sale in the Roman market-place excited Gregory’s interest, and led ultimately to Augustine’s mission. The contemporary account of Wolfstan, Bishop of Worcester, at the time of the Conquest, speaks of similar scenes to be witnessed in Bristol, from which port slaves were exported to Ireland—probably to the Danes, who were then masters of the east coast. “You might have seen with sorrow long ranks of young people of both sexes, and of the greatest beauty, tied together with ropes, and daily exposed to sale: nor were these men ashamed—O horrid wickedness—to give up their nearest relations, nay their own children, to slavery.” The good bishop induced them to abandon the trade, “and set an example to all the rest of England to do the same.” Nevertheless, William ofMalmesbury, who wrote nearly a century later, says that the practice of selling even their nearest relations into slavery had not been altogether abandoned by the people of Northumberland in his own memory.
Already, on the death of Ethelbert, in 1016, the citizens of London had arrived at such importance, that, in conjunction with the nobles who were in the city, they chose a king for the whole English nation, viz., Edmund Ironside; and again on the death of Canute, in 1036, they took a considerable part in the election of Harold. At the battle of Hastings the burgesses of London formed Harold’s body-guard. A few years previously, Canute, on his pilgrimage to Rome, met the Emperor Conrade and other princes, from whom he obtained for all his subjects, whether merchants or pilgrims, exemption from the heavy tolls usually exacted on the journey to Rome.
During the peaceful reign of Edward the Confessor a much larger general intercourse seems to have sprung up with the Continent, and the commerce of England to have greatly increased. For this we have the testimony of William of Poictiers, William the Conqueror’s chaplain, who says, speaking of the time immediately preceding the Conquest, “The English merchants to the opulence of their country, rich in its own fertility, added still greater riches and more valuable treasures. The articles imported by them, notable both for their quantity and their quality, were to have been hoarded up for the gratification of their avarice, or to have been dissipated in the indulgence of their luxurious inclinations. But William seized them, and bestowed part on his victorious army, and part on the churches and monasteries, while to the Pope and the Church of Rome he sent an incredible mass of money in gold and silver, and many ornaments that would have been admired even in Constantinople.”
We are not able to give any authentic contemporary illustration of the shipping of this period. Those which are given by Strutt are not really representations of the ships of the period: Byzantine Art still exercised a powerful influence over Saxon Art, and the illuminators frequently gave traditional forms; and the ships introduced by Strutt, though executed by a Saxon artist, are probably copied from Byzantine authorities. The Bayeux tapestry is probably our earliest trustworthy authority for a British ship, and it gives a considerable number of illustrations of them, intendedto represent in one place the numerous fleet which William the Conqueror gathered for the transport of his army across the Channel; in another place the considerable fleet with which Harold hoped to bar the way. The one we have chosen is the duke’s own ship; it displays at its mast-head the banner which the Pope had blessed, and the trumpeter on the high poop is also an evidence that it is the commander’s ship. In the present case the trumpeter is known, from contemporary authority, to have been only wood gilded; but in many of the subsequent illustrations we shall also find a trumpeter, or usually two, who were part of the staff of the commander, and perhaps were employed in signalling to other ships of the fleet.
William the Conqueror’s Ship.
The Conquest checked this thriving commerce. William’s plunder of the Saxon merchants, which was probably not confined to London, musthave gone far to ruin those who were then engaged in it; the general depression of Saxon men for a long time after would prevent them or others from reviving it; and the Normans themselves were averse from mercantile pursuits. In the half-century after the Conquest we really know little or nothing of the history of commerce. The charters of the first Norman kings make no mention of it. Stephen’s troubled reign must have been very unfavourable to it. Still foreign merchants would seek a market where they could dispose of their goods, and the long and wise reign of Henry II. enabled English commerce, not only to recover, but to surpass its ancient prosperity. An interesting account of London, given by William FitzStephen, about 1174, in the introduction to a Life of à Becket, gives much information on our subject: he says that “no city in the world sent out its wealth and merchandise to so great a distance,” but he does not enumerate the exports. Among the articles brought to London by foreign merchants he mentions gold, spices, and frankincense from Arabia; precious stones from Egypt; purple cloths from Bagdad; furs and ermines from Norway and Russia; arms from Scythia; and wines from France. The citizens he describes as distinguished above all others in England for the elegance of their manners and dress, and the magnificence of their tables. There were in the city and suburbs thirteen large conventual establishments and 120 parish churches. He adds that the dealers in the various sorts of commodities, and the labourers and artizans of every kind, were to be found every day stationed in their several distinct places throughout the city, and that a market was held every Friday in Smithfield for the sale of horses, cows, hogs, &c.; the citizens were distinguished from those of other towns by the appellation of barons; and Malmesbury, an author of the same age, also tells us that from their superior opulence, and the greatness of the city, they were considered as ranking with the chief people or nobility of the kingdom.
The great charter of King John provided that all merchants should have protection in going out of England and in coming back to it, as well as while residing in the kingdom or travelling about in it, without any impositions or payments such as to cause the destruction of their trade. During the thirteenth century, it seems probable that much of the foreigncommerce of the country was carried on by foreign merchants, who imported chiefly articles of luxury, and carried back chiefly wool, hides, and leather, and the metals found in England. But there were various enactments to prevent foreign merchants from engaging in the domestic trade of the country. In the fourteenth century commerce received much attention from government, and many regulations were made in the endeavour to encourage it, or rather to secure as much of its profits as possible to English, and leave as little as possible to foreign, merchants. Our limits do not allow us to enter into details on the subject, and our plan aims only at giving broad outside views of the life of the merchants of the Middle Ages.
Let us introduce here an illustration of the ships in which the commerce was conducted. Perhaps the only illustration to be derived from the MS. illuminations of the thirteenth century is one in the Roll of St. Guthlac, which is early in the century, and gives a large and clear picture of St. Guthlac in a ship with a single mast and sail, steered by a paddle consisting of a pole with a short cross handle at the top, like the poles with which barges are still punted along, and expanding at bottom into a short spade-like blade. Some of the seals of this century also give rude representations of ships: one of H. de Neville gives a perfectly crescent-shaped hull with a single mast supported by two stays; that of Hugo de Burgh has a very high prow and stern, which reminds us of the build of modernprahus. Another, of the town of Monmouth, has a more artistic representation of a ship of similar shape, but the high prow and stern are both ornamented with animals’ heads, like the prow of William the Conqueror’s ship. The Psalter of Queen Mary, which is of early fourteenth-century date, gives an illustration of the building of Noah’s ark, which is a ship of the shape found in the Bayeux tapestry, with a sort of house within it. The illustration we give opposite from the Add. MS. 3,983, f. 6, was also executed early in the fourteenth century, and though rude it is valuable as one of the earliest examples of a ship with a rudder of the modern construction; it also clearly indicates the fact that these early vessels used oars as well as sails. The usual mode of steering previous to, and for some time subsequent to, this time was with a large broad oar at the ship’s counter,worked in a noose of rope (agummet) or through a hole in a piece of wood attached to the vessel’s side. The first mode will be found illustrated in the Add. MS. 24,189, at f. 30, and the second at f. 5 in the same MS. The men of this period were not insensible to the value of a means of propelling a vessel independently of the wind; and employed human muscle as their motive power. Some of the great trading cities of the Mediterranean used galleys worked by oars, not only for warfare, but for commercial purposes:e.g.in 1409A.D., King Henry granted to the merchants of Venice permission to bring their carracks, galleys, and other vessels, laden with merchandise, to pass over to Flanders, return and selltheir cargoes without impediment, and sail again with English merchandise and go back to their own country.
A Ship, Early Fourteenth Century.
A very curious and interesting MS. (Add. 27,695) recently acquired by the British Museum, which appears to be of Genoese Art, and of date aboutA.D.1420, enables us to give a valuable illustration of our subject. It occupies the whole page of the MS.; we have only given the lower half, of the sizeof the original. It appears to represent the siege of Tripoli. The city is in the upper part of the page; our cut represents the harbour and a suburb of the town. It is clearly indicated that it is low water, and the high-water mark is shown in the drawing by a different colour. Moreover, a timber pier will be noticed, stretching out between high and low-water mark, and a boat left high and dry by the receding tide. Inthe harbour are ships of various kinds, and especially several of the galleys of which we have spoken. The war-galley may be found fully illustrated in Witsen’s “Sheep’s Bouw,” p. 186.
A Harbour in the Fourteenth Century.
An Early Representation of the Whale Fishery.
The same MS., in the lower margin of folio 9 v., has an exceedingly interesting picture of a whaling scene, which we are very glad to introduce as a further illustration of the commerce and shipping of this early period. It will be seen that the whale has been killed, and the successful adventurers are “cutting out” the blubber very much after the modern fashion.