X-Post: Was 16th-c. armor pointed to arming clothes?

Tibbie Croser · Post by **Tibbie Croser** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:16 pm

How often was 16th-century armor pointed to arming clothes as previous armor was? Did this vary among munitions armor, upper-class field armor, and upper-class tournament armor? For example, spaulders often fastened with straps to the wide collar of the gorget. How were the spaulders secured at the bottom? Did they fasten to the doublet, or did a strap go around the arm? Similarly, with tassets that fastened to the cuirass by straps, did the bottom of the tassets point to the trunkhose or were the tassets attached to the thigh in another way? I'm wondering especially about munitions armor and half-suits or 3/4 suits.

There seems to be scant information on separate arming doublets in the 16th century. There are a couple shown in portraits of aristocrats. Did lower-class soldiers even wear an arming doublet with points beneath their munitions cuirasses, or did they wear their normal doublet/jerkin?

sha-ul · Post by **sha-ul** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 7:52 pm

bump for interest :wink:

knitebee · Post by **knitebee** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 7:57 pm

I dont know most of the answers to your questions, BUT I've notices on some 3/4 suits that the bottom lame of the spaulders have a pair of eyelets to attach them just above the elbow. I don't know about how that was done with what garments and all, I've only just recently noticed the pair of eyelets on the bottom lames.

brian

wcallen · Post by **wcallen** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:27 pm

From what I have seen (mainly 2nd half of the 16th c.), The higher quality stuff is a lot more likely to be attached to the arming clothes than the lower end stuff.

Munition armour seems to have been designed to be thrown over more normal clothes. For instance:

http://www.allenantiques.com/A-1.html

doesn't show any signs of needing to be secured to clothing. Everything hangs off of the collar or cuirass. The bottom of these tassets would have been secured to the leg by a strap and buckle.

This one:

http://www.allenantiques.com/A-102.html

Could also be worn without pointing. Short tassets like these hang from the fauld or breastplate, but the bottom is not secured to anything. They just flap.

Another example - Geoffrey's armour for this year:

http://www.allenantiques.com/R-28.html

did not include any points on the clothing. All of the clothing for his earlier period armours has had points to suspend various bits like arms and legs.

On the other hand, the good stuff - high end Greenwitch or German stuff does seem to have locations for pointing the top of the arms and the cuises. Most of the rest still hangs off of the collar either directly or indirectly.

Wade

Russ Mitchell · Post by **Russ Mitchell** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 9:31 pm

I don't have access to Hungarian originals in detail, but the hussar stuff I *have* seen does not seem to require points. But this could easily be due to general differences in dress that don't show up in the west until a bit later.

Jason Grimes · Post by **Jason Grimes** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:19 pm

What Wade said.

Your son has grown up so much since the last pictures I saw of him. They grow up so fast. I wanted to add some information about the early part of the century and armour with out gorgets. Small disclaimer: This info is mostly my own conjecture and relates to the Landsknecht of the HRE and may not apply to any other countries or soldiers.

As far as points on normal clothing I think that they are entirely possible. One point of evidence I can think of is the use of jack chains up until about 1520. In every woodcut I have seen they are definitely pointed to, not jacks, but just to normal clothing. Another point in favor of this is the requirements for entry into the Landsknecht ranks. The first was that you had to own your own weapon. The second was that you had to have strong suitable clothing. I suspect that this clothing was similar to, or the same as, the special clothing for travel that there are many records of. I think that this clothing would have been strong enough to support points or they could have been re-enforced it in some manner.

The Almain rivit in the Winchester museum has the splinted arms pointed to the straps for the breastplate. They may have done this just to make the armour easier to display, because I tried this for my own suit and it didn't work very well. The straps slipped too much and it was hard to position the arms correctly. Not knowing any better I constructed an simple leather gorget that I hung my splints off of and hid it under a mail mantle. I don't think this is how they did it as points would have worked much better.

In the period artwork soldiers are almost always depicted wearing a mail mantle over any arm armour they have if they are not wearing a plate gorget. This makes it frustrating in that the details you want to see are hidden by the mail.

In summary I think that:

Munitions armour and half-suits would need two points, one on each shoulder, to point the spaulders if they are wearing splints. For a full arm harness (not the splinted arms) you would need four points, two for the spaulders and two for the upper cannons. Although if you have full arm armour, you will almost always have a plate gorget. In that case you are back down to just two points for the upper cannons. For 3/4 suit you would most likely again have a plate gorget and partial leg armour (the cuisse and polyne). There you would need four points, two for the upper cannons and two for the cuisses. 3/4 suits are getting into the high end level for armor and the soldiers wearing them are going to be mounted and probably have an arming doublet to support the amour.

Hope this helps.

Tibbie Croser · Post by **Tibbie Croser** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:54 am

Thanks for the replies. Random thoughts: The Leeds suit posted in the Almain Rivet thread has strap securing the limb armor, though they're obviously not original. I suspect that the wide-collared, high-necked gorgets could support a fair amount of weight. Having armor pointed to normal clothing seems plausible. However, armor got heavier as the 16th century progressed; did it eventually become impractical to point it to any clothing?

Rittmeister Frye · Post by **Rittmeister Frye** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:54 pm

From what I can gather, the higher-quality armours continued to be pointed, at least at the shoulder, until at least the end of the 16th century. A painting of the Earl of Leicester's son Robert Dudley (styled "Earl of Warwick") shows just such points on his doublet sleeve, pointed to his rerebraces/upper vambraces (since the pauldrons are not yet fitted to his person in the painting). I know of other paintings as well from the period showing points on the sleeves still. (Note: this painting could be construed as showing either the points coming from the upper part of the sleeve proper, OR from one of the straps connecting the breast and back. Since I've never seen an original rendition of this sort of arrangement, I am concluding that this is merely a trick of the eye, rather than the artist trying to show the points coming from the strap. But I could be wrong.)

My belief is that the cheaper/munitions-grade armours were first to use arming nails (modern-day terminology "rivets") to attach the pauldrons to the upper vambraces, to be supported from the gorget, and the higher-quality armours followe this by the end of the 16th/beginning of the 17th Century.

Cheers!

Gordon

Jason Grimes · Post by **Jason Grimes** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:21 pm

That's a very interesting painting Gordon, I can see where it does look like the points are threaded through the breast/back plate straps. One thing to keep in mind is that some straps were made of iron/steel and hinged to the back plate with sneck hook closures on the breast (or some other method). There are many extent examples through out the 16th century. Metal straps could very well be strong enough to hold up the arm harness. It very well might be the case here as the straps look to be the same material as the rest of the armour. Also it looks like the strap is double wide with two attachment points, this would have given the strap more lateral strength to hold up the arm harness. You can see one of the posts too that is used to hang the pauldrons from. The post looks like it might be attached to the strap as well. These kinds of metal straps would only have been used on high end suits though. Is there a better photo of the painting? This one looks like an etching.

Rittmeister Frye · Post by **Rittmeister Frye** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:47 pm

Jason;

Part of my reticence to believe that the points are from the straps is in fact that this is a later rendition: I haven't seen the original, so I can't say with confidence just how it is arranged. However, when you blow up the present illustration, it looks (to me at least, and I asked my wife her opinion and she concurs) as though the strap is resting on the point, which comes from just below the edge of the strap, from the doublet. But again, being a later illustration, it could possibly be either way. Depends upon how faithful the copyist was to the original.

I agree with you that this is doubtless a metal piece, even though it looks riveted rather than with hooks (as shown on the inside of the upper vambrace on the right arm), since in the blow-up it has a quite obviously roped edge.

Cheers!

Gordon

Jason Grimes · Post by **Jason Grimes** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:15 am

I found another example of metal straps with slots for the pauldron/spaulder attachment straps.

http://www.frostyfoot.com/images/strap1.jpg
http://www.frostyfoot.com/images/strap2.jpg

These metal straps attach to the breastplate with pegs and pins. I'm not sure about the picture you posted Gordon, like you said maybe it wasn't copied correctly, or maybe the original artist forgot to paint the hooks or pins in. Notice that this is again a high end suit that looks to have been made for the tournament.

Edited: Oops, here is another one.

http://www.frostyfoot.com/images/strap3.jpg

These must have been fairly common, at least in the late 16th century.

Talbot · Post by **Talbot** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 10:04 am

Jason, I went to the site and was informed that the domain may be for sale.
No pics, just an ad.

Jason Grimes · Post by **Jason Grimes** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 4:06 pm

Sorry about that, I have changed the URLs to point to another domain. Try the links now. Now I need to find out what is wrong with the other domain. *sigh*

Rittmeister Frye · Post by **Rittmeister Frye** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 4:41 pm

Nifty photo's, thanks for fixing the links! I have to say though, this is the first suit I've seen where in part of the arm harness is fitted to the corselet straps though! (I've done it myself on occasion, but always thought it was totally Farby...) Could you tell in person if the strap was holding the vambraces on, or the pauldrons? I can't tell from the photo's.

Cheers!

Gordon

Jason Grimes · Post by **Jason Grimes** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:05 pm

I wish they were my photos. :wink:

It looks like they were taken by the National Austrian University. The second suit is in the Graz, I'm not sure where the first suit lives. I'm assuming that the straps hold up the pauldrons/spalders and that the vambrace is still going to be pointed to an arming doublet. It looks to me that they have the first suit setup incorrectly, the leather strap should be going under the outside edge of the corselet strap and then around the inside edge of the same.