Читать книгу The Dates of Variously-shaped Shields, with Coincident Dates and Examples - Grazebrook George - Страница 7

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exhibits several varieties of shape, Norman and the Norman convex at the top (Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4); and many of these are curved, so as to partially surround the body. The great seal of Stephen represents a pointed boss and a shield almost pear-shaped. One very curious seal, that of Richard Basset, about 1145, merits a full description. He appears bearing a kite-shaped or very elongated pear-shaped shield (No. 3), about four feet long, and carried down to a sharp point. The top is bi-lobed, like a heart, and it is strengthened all round by a metal rim, while further strength is imparted by a boss or figure like a simple escarboucle, carried out to the sides. He wields a very powerful sword, with an extraordinarily heavy hilt, and with it he cuts off the large duck-like beak of a formidable rampant-winged animal like a dragon, and, apparently, thus frees a human figure held in its beak. This curious seal is attached to a charter printed in Blomefield's History of Norfolk (see No. 44). The seal of Gilbert de Gant, who died 1156, presents a shield more triangular than No. 2, and in the centre is a sharp pointed boss [Top. and Gen., i, 317]. The same boss appears in the seal of Ralph son of William, of Dimsdale-on-Tees, 1174–80 (Herald and Genealogist, i, 227); also in a good many contemporaneous seals, and it was evidently meant for use as an offensive weapon. It is noteworthy that on the first seal of Richard I. a spike is shown on the shield; his first coronation was in 1189. On the second seal there is none; his second coronation took place on 17th April, 1194. This may show the date when this fashion was discontinued. In the seal of Sewal de Ethindon, about 1167, the curved shield of Norman form, No. 2, runs down into a long point, somewhat twisted round, so as to show down on the right side of the rider. It does not protect his leg at all; in fact, the arrangement, to our eyes, seems awkward and most embarrassing to the mounted knight (engraved Nicholas Upton, p. 84; see No. 45). While in that of Sayer de Quinci, towards the end of this century, a heater-pear shield No. 6 appears. This is engraved in Spelman's Aspilogia, p. 67.

Plate II.

The men's seals of this date which present their shields for our consideration usually show them on horseback, fully caparisoned; and many interesting details of spurs, swords, and arms are represented, as well as the furniture for their horses. We are able here to show the two seals of Malgerus le Vavasour, 1140–50, showing heater-pear, almost heart-shaped shields. See Collect. Topog. et Genealog., vol. vi, p. 127, where the deed to which these are attached is supposed to date between 1180–6; but Malger's son, William Vavasour, was a judge 1166–84 [Itinerary of Henry II.], and Sir Robert, the grandson, paid a heavy fine—1200 marks and two palfreys—in 9 John, 1207–8, that Maud his daughter [and widow of Theobald Walter] might marry Fulke Fitzwarine: we have thus no difficulty in proving that the date of this seal is circa 1140 to 1150. We also give the beautiful seal of Egidius de Gorram, 1175–80 [Collectanea Topog. et Genealog., vol. v, p. 187.] The unmounted knight is represented in scale armour, kneeling, and holding a sort of heater-pear shield, No. 6, with a pointed boss.

The fields of seals are now quite plain, except sometimes in those of ladies. In the first seal of Roheis de Gant, Countess of Lincoln before 1156, lilies are introduced, to fill up what would otherwise appear too great a bare space. This is engraved in Topog. and Genealogist, vol. i, p. 318.

In counterseals of this century heater shields appear such as are common during the next century. A most curious instance of a pear-shaped curved shield, having a bouche cut into it for the introduction of the spear, occurs in the seal of Theodoric Count of Flanders, 1159, who wears tegulated armour. It is engraved in Oliver Vredius, p. 17 (see No. 46). So far as we know, this useful bouche, as a resting place for the spear, disappeared—to crop up again, as an improvement and novelty, in the middle of the fourteenth century.

Harl. MS. Y. 6. (See p. 18.)

The marvellous set of chessmen found in the Isle of Lewis afford us a most interesting series of shields of this century. They are fully illustrated, Archæologia, vol. xxiv. They give us the long Norman pear or kite-shaped No. 3, the Norman convex No. 4, also a flattened convex with rounded corners, and these shields are all long and narrow, just wide enough to cover the body. There are many instances of exactly similar shields. In Harl. MS. 2803, a Bible, written about 1170, Goliath of Gath bears a shield exactly resembling them; and in the most interesting monumental effigy of William, Count of Flanders, son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, who died in 1127, engraved in Oliver Vredius' Seals of the Counts of Flanders, 1639, p. 14. He apparently was a very old man at his death. He bears a shield exactly like the Lewis chessmen in shape, but the face of it is filled up with an elaborate escarboucle, carried out and attached to the rim, which wholly surrounds the shield. Shields with the flattened convex top and rounded corners, but of much shorter proportions, occur in Harl. MS. Y. 6. (engraved Hewitt, vol. i, p. 127), written at the end of the twelfth century, and one clearly shows the curved formation which is indicated in numberless seals and illuminations of this date.

The inscriptions are in Latin and in longobardic characters, but Gothic letters are sometimes alternated, while in others plain Roman capitals still occur. I have noticed one remarkable instance of an inscription of this century, in Norman-French, around the seal of Alanus fil. Adam, temp. Henry II. The deed to which it is attached is printed in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. v, p. 116.