There  are  two  suggestions  as  to  the  kind  of  armour  intended. One  iS|
that  the  armour  thus  represented  was  a  garment  of  doth,  silk,  velvet,  or


Fourteenth  Century  Armour. 345

other  textile  material,  lined  with  plates  of  metal,  which  are  fastened  to  the
garment  with  metal  rivets,  and  that  the  heads  of  these  rivets,  gilt  and  orna-
mented, were  allowed  to  be  seen  powdering  the  coloured  face  of  the  gar-
ment by  way  of  ornament. Another  suggestion  is  that  the  garment  was
merely  one  of  the  padded  and  quilted  armours  which  we  shall  have  next
to  describe,  in  which,  as  an  additional  precaution,  metal  studs  were  intro-
duced, much  as  an  oak  door  is  studded  with  iron  bolts. An  example  of  it
will  be  seen  in  the  armour  of  the  forearms  of  King  Meliadus  in  the  wood-
cut on  p. 350. Chaucer  seems  to  speak  of  this  kind  of  defence,  in  his
description  of  Lycurgus  at  the  great  tournament  in  the  "  Knight's  Tale,"
under  the  name  of  coat  armour : —

"  Instede  of  cote-armure  on  his  hamais,
With  nayles  yelwe  and  bryght  as  any  gold,
He  had  a  here's  skin  cole-blake  for  old."

Next  we  come  to  the  rather  large  and  important  series  of  quilted
defences. We  find  the  names  of  the  gambeson,  hacqueton,  and  pourpoint,  and
sometimes  ihtjacke. It  is  a  little  difficult  to  distinguish  one  from  the
other  in  the  descriptions  ;  and  in  fact  they  appear  to  have  greatly  resem-
bled one  another,  and  the  names  seem  often  to  have  been  used  inter-
changeably. The  gambeson  was  a  sleeved  tunic  of  stout  coarse  linen,
stuffed  with  flax  and  other  common  material,  and  sewn  longitudinally. The
hacqueton  was  a  similar  garment,  only  made  of  buckram,  and  stuffed  with
cotton ;  stiff  from  its  material,  but  not  so  thick  and  clumsy  as  the  gam-
beson. The  pourpoint  was  very  like  the  hacqueton,  only  that  it  was  made  of
finer  material,  faced  with  silk,  and  stitched  in  ornamental  patterns. The
gambeson  and  hacqueton  were  worn  under  the  armour,  partly  to  relieve  its
pressure  upon  the  body,  partly  to  afford  an  additional  defence. Sometimes
they  were  worn,  especially  by  the  common  soldiers,  without  any  other
armour. The  poiurpoint  was  worn  over  the  hauberk,  but  sometimes  it  was
worn  alone,  the  hauberk  being  omitted  for  the  sake  of  lightness. 