following description of Satan's dress when dis

The monk of Croyland tells us that the new fashion Edward IV. chose for his last state dresses was to have them with " very full hanging sleeves, like a monk's, lined with most sumptuous furs, and so rolled over his shoulders as to give his tall person an air of peculiar grandeur." By the sumptuary law enacted in the last year of his reign, cloth of gold or silk, of a purple colour, was permitted to none but the royal family. Cloth of gold of tissue was confined to the use of dukes, and plain cloth of gold to that of lords; velvet and damask satin were appropriated to the gowns and doublets of knights,-damask or satin doublets and camlet gowns to esquires and gentlemen. None but noblemen were allowed to wear woollen cloth made out of England, or furs of sables; and no labourer, servant, or artificer might wear any cloth which cost more than two shillings a-yard.

Richard III. and his "cousin of Buckingham" were notorious for their love of dress and finery; but there is little if anything to distinguish any fashion peculiar to this short reign. A splendid manuscript, marked No. xv. E 4, in the Royal Collection in the British Museum, being the 'Chronicles of England,' written by command of Edward IV. and dedicated to the noble King "Edouard Ve de ce nom;" and another manuscript in the same collection, marked No. xv. E 2, and dated 1482, afford us the latest authorities previous to the accession of Richard. In the former, the clog or patten spoken of by writers of the fifteenth century is visible, with the rolling furs, collars, and hanging sleeves described by the Monk of Croyland.

The female costume of the reign of Henry VI. is marked by the prevalence of the horned and the heart-shaped head-dresses, with the short waists and the long trains to the gowns; the surcoat and other outer garments having, except upon state occasions, disappeared almost entirely. In April, 1429, we are told, a cordelier came to Paris, and

That is, of cloth of Rennes, in Brittany. The stomacher was a common article of male apparel at the close of the fifteenth century, and laced across like the better-known stomachers of our greatgrandmothers.

+The sumptuary law of the 3rd of Edward IV. expressly forbids the stuffing of the doublet with wool, cotton, or Cadis (Qy. Cadiz or Spanish wool?) to any yeoman or person under that degree.

FEMALE COSTUME IN THE TIME OF HENRY VI.
IIa leian MS. 2278.

preached in the church of St. Genevieve, nine days successively, from five in the morning to ten or eleven o'clock, from a high scaffold, to five or six thousand auditors. In the middle of his sermon above one hundred fires were seen lighted, into which the men threw their gaming-tables, cards, and whatever else he blamed, and the women their head-dresses, horns, tails, and ornaments of pomp. Whether the London fashions changed with the Parisian, we cannot exactly affirm; but nearly forty years later we find, from Monstrelet, that the ladies of France were still rejoicing in the length of their trains, which they only shortened at the command of fashion in 1467, substituting broad borders of fur or velvet, corresponding with the turn-over collars and cuffs of their gowns, which were about the same period open in front to the girdle, and laced over a stomacher, the waist being still worn very short, and confined by a broad band of velvet and a sumptuous buckle. Nearly at

the same time in France and England arose the steeple head-dress, which, like its predecessors, was preached, written, and painted against in vain. A variety of it still exists in Normandy, under the title of the cauchoise, or head-dress of the 'Pays de Caux,' and is well known to modern tourists. Some time previous to the close of the reign of Edward IV., however, this high cap disappeared, and the heads of the ladies were covered either with a sort of velvet cowl turned back upon the forehead and hanging in plaits behind upon the neck, or with a caul of gold net, as in Henry IV.'s time, with this exception, that it was now ornamented with two wings of gauze or some other most transparent material, projecting like those of a butterfly, and represented in the illuminations or on monumental brasses in so imperfect a manner as to deprive us of all guess at the way in which they were attached to the caul aforesaid. Some

generally with oreillets or ear-pieces), to the list of defences for the head. The breast-plate is frequently composed of two pieces, the lower one, called the placard, rising to a point in the centre and fastened over the other with a screw or ornamental buckle. Sometimes these two plates were covered with silk of different colours; sometimes only the upper plate, the placard being left uncovered, giving the appearance of the wearer being only half armed. The jazerant or jazerine jacket is also of this date, composed of small overlapping plates of iron covered with velvet, the gilt heads of the rivets or studs which secured the plates forming the exterior ornament. The placard was sometimes worn with this also. Plates called tuilles, depending from the taces or skirts of the armour over an apron of chain-mail, first appear in the reign of Henry VI. The jupon, with its

EFFIGY OF LADY PEYTON. Isleham Church, Cambridgeshire.

times a veil of the same light stuff appears twisted about it in an equally mysterious manner, and we have not as yet been able to meet with any illumination or description that can enlighten us on the subject.

The armour of the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV. is distinguished by the addition of the salade or sallet, and the casquette (a steel cap,

In a MS. copy of Froissart, in the Harleian Collection, a pig is painted in the margin, attired in one of these monstrous headdresses, walking upon stilts, and playing on a harp.

EFFIGY OF RICHARD BEAUCHAMP, EARL OF WARWICK. From his Monument in the Lady's Chapel, St. Mary's Church, Warwick.

military belt, is still occasionally met with, but suits of complete steel, elaborately ornamented, are generally represented upon the monumental effigies of this period, and the loose tabard of arms completely superseded the jupon toward the close of the reign of Edward IV. The spurs were screwed into the heels of the sollerets instead of being fastened by straps; the necks were exceedingly long, and the spikes of the rowels of proportionate magnitude. The reign of Richard III. presents

us with some magnificent specimens of armour.

EFFIGY OF SIR THOMAS PEYTON. Isleham Church, Cambridgeshire The pauldrons or shoulder-plates are very large, the elbow and knee-pieces of fan-like form, and elaborately wrought; the breast-plate globular, and the salade surrounded by a wreath of the wearer's colours, with a single feather at the side. To the weapons we have enumerated in our previous notices were added, during the latter half of the fifteenth century,-1, the langue-de-boeuf, a species or glaive, so called from its shape. The earliest mention we have met with of this weapon is in the petition of the widow of Tresham, an ex-speaker of the House of Commons, who was slain by a party of the Lord Grey's men, on the 21st of September, 1450, who are described therein as being armed with jakkes, sallettes, long swords, longde-beofs, and bore-spears;" 2, the voulge, another variety of the glaive or guisarme; 3, the halbert as still known; 4, the genetaire, or janetaire, a kind of Spanish lance; and, 5, a rude engine, which was gradually to be improved till it superseded nearly all the rest,-viz., the hand-gun or hand-cannon. Edward IV., on his landing at Ravensburg in 1471, had amongst his troops 300 Flemings provided with this fire-arm, which, in the manuscript quoted by Grose, is spelt "hangegun." If this be not a mistake for hand-gun, the weapon may have been so called from a hasp of

• Parl. Rolls.

It

iron generally affixed to it by which it was hung at the girdle. The hacquebut, hagbut, or hagbusshe, for it is spelt in all manner of ways, is first mentioned in the reign of Richard III.* was an improvement on the hand-gun, and probably received its name from the shape of its wooden stock. The capricious spelling, however, throws additional difficulty in the way of our researches, and until further light be thrown upon the subject we cannot decide whether the term alludes to the but of the stock or the bouche of the tube.

One important department in the art of war which appears to have been cultivated in this age with great success, especially by the English, and in which, therefore, we may presume that considerable improvements were made upon the methods formerly in use, although we are not enabled to give any detailed specification of what they consisted in, was the attack of fortified places. Henry V. succeeded in taking every one of the French towns which he attacked. With regard to his mode of proceeding, we learn from the accounts of the contemporary chroniclers that it embraced the drawing of lines of contravallation and circumvallation, the erection of tents for the encampment of the army when the siege was protracted, the making of approaches by entrenchments, and even the operation of mining,-as well as the direct assault of the walls by batteringrams, artillery, and machines for the projection of darts and stones. Some drawings of the period, copies of which we subjoin, furnish nearly all the information on the subject we possess in addition to these general statements of the historians. powder, musketry, and cannons, it will be perceived from these representations, had by no means as yet superseded the more ancient engines. The battering-ram, machines for throwing stones, towers moving on wheels and filled with archers, and in other cases, archers on foot, and armed either with the common bow or the cross-bow, were still the forces usually employed. Instruments and contrivances of a corresponding description were of course used in the defence. In some of the drawings, however, the "red artillery" is shown in association with the archers and the moving

towers.

Gun

From various causes the spirit of chivalry, which had reached the height of its influence in the reign of Edward III., continued rapidly to decline throughout the present period. The few combats that now occurred were most commonly judicial encounters, intended to decide the truth of charges of treason, or other criminal accusations;

• Vide An Order to the Constable of the Tower, in Harleian MS. 433. Phillipe de Comines mentions the Arquebus as used at the battle of Morat, fought June 22, 1476; and Fauchet, who wrote in the following century, says that the term was derived from the Italian Arca-bouza,-corrupted from bocca, and signifying a bow with a mouth. Grimston, however, in his Historie of the Netherlands,' speaks of "Harquebuses, an engyn which footmen used in warre, devised at first by the Almains," and, if so, the German for Harquebus is Hakenbüsche, compounded of two words, signifying a hook and a gun, or any other cylindrical vessel, and thus we get back to the Hagbush or hacquebut, which was probably the same weapon.