British costume : a complete history of the dress of the inhabitants of the British Islands / by J.R. Planché.

  • Planché, J. R. (James Robinson), 1796-1880.
Date:
[1855?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: British costume : a complete history of the dress of the inhabitants of the British Islands / by J.R. Planché. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    42/404 (page 18)
    Roman lorica, from which it was derived, was used generally for defensive body armour, and it is only by a welcome adjective, as in this instance the word “scaly,” that we discover the peculiar sort of armour alluded to. It is the want of attention to the true meaning of words in the original authors, and a care- less trust in translations, that have caused ihe very obscurity and apparent discrepancy of which writers on antiquarian subjects so frequently complain. The square or four-pointed helmet was worn as late as the ninth century in France, by the guards of Lothaire and Charles the Bald, and square frowns are frequently seen in the Anglo-Saxon illuminations*. Amber beads are continually found in Saxon tumuli. The row engraved at the head of this chapter (fig. f) was found in a tumulus on Chatham Lines. Tiie iron umbo or boss of an Anglo-Saxon shield above it (fig. e) was found in a barrow in Lincolnshire, and is now in the Meyrick collection. In a MS. in the Cotton collection, marked Clau- dius, B. 4, we find one of the earliest specimens of the ringed byrn, borrowed from the Phrygians, w hich was formed of rings sewn flat upon a leathern tunic. The wearer is a royal personage, crowned and armed with the long, broad, straight iron sword, found in Saxon tumuli, and the projecting or convex shield. He is attended by a page or soldier, in a plain tunic with sleeves, and a cap completely Phrygian in form, bearing also a shield of the same fashion as his sove- reign, who is in fact intended to represent no less a person than Abraham fighting against the five kings to rescue his brother Lot, and who wears a crown as an emblem of superiority and chief command (vide 8 An indication of the square helmet is discernible in an Anglo- Saxon MS. of the eleventh century in the Harleian collection, but the figures are so small and so rudely drawn with a pen that uo reliance can be placed upon the details.