The Armour Archive

Posted: **Wed Jan 21, 2009 5:14 pm**

What am I looking at here?
<a href="" target="_new"><img src="http://www.themcs.org/armour/knights/2006%20MCS%20Lingfield%20St%20Peter%20and%20Paul%20Reginald%20Cobham%201361%2006.jpg" width="600" height="149"></a>

I found this one on the big effigy website. The website says it dates to 1361. I relize this has probably been repainted since it was orignally made, but I have a few questions.
1. What is black stuff on the lower legs and arms? Is it plate, that's just painted black. If so was that commonly done in period? Is it leather? It lookes like a lot of SCA armor in that respect.

2. Are these supposed to be stylized splinted cuises? Or, are they just fancy paint over plate?

3. What kind of knees are these? Are they articulated, or are they the "soupcan" style?

4. What is the little belt thing tied just below his left knee?

5. What about the torso armor? It looks to me like the gray stuff is supposed to be mail, you can see it in the aventail/camail, in the arm pits, and sticking out the bottom of the surcoat. So, is this supposed to be a COP over mail, or is it just a surcoat, or is there some form of brest plate?

Posted: **Wed Jan 21, 2009 5:38 pm**

The little belt thing below his knee is a garter. In particular, because of its color, I believe that it signifies that the knight in question was a member of the Order of the Garter : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_t ... outrements

If he died in 1361, it could be the Duke of Lancaster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_of_G ... _Lancaster

Posted: **Wed Jan 21, 2009 5:42 pm**

My guess on the black bits is it is blackened steel, though an artist may have just decided to paint it how he liked.

Posted: **Wed Jan 21, 2009 5:49 pm**

That would be the alibaster effigy of the 1st Baron Reginald De Cobham.

1. There are other effigies that have this black armor; Sir Oliver d'Ingham has similar black arms and shins (But like Sir Reginald, not the gauntlets, poleynes or couters). It's been theorized that the black may be representing armor left black from the forge or possibly metal armor painted (rust preventative?) or cuirbroille. The truth is no one knows. But there are atleast 1 other effigy that has this "black armor" in identical locations. Strange huh?

2. It's theorized that the dots on the cuisses are probably supposed to represent rivets, meaning that the legs possibly were a "cuisse of plates" (similar to a coat of plates, but on the legs.) But as you note it could just represent metal painted with a fancy pattern, or even fabric over metal. Once again. No one knows exactly. But since a dotted field has no relevence to Cobham or his family in any heraldic terms, it's assumed the most likely reason is to illustrate rivets.

3. I would simply call them "cops". It looks to me like they are riveted to the "cuisse of plates" and have a demi greave riveted to the bottom.

4. A garter. He was one of the original (first) members of the Order of the Garter.

5. The grey stuff was supposedly gilded silver and blue at one time in the past but evidently it has worn away. But yes, mail. There is no evidence of it on his effigy, but simply the date of his activity as a knight; (Poiters and crecy) mean that he most likely would have worn a coat of plates into battle. He was a bit to well off to ford into the fight with a measley hauberk on to protect his vitals.
Possibly the effigy maker wanted to Calvin Klein the image a bit, as a coat of plates tends to square off the body and is unflattering.

A tad bit of trivia: Cobham was one 3 knights assigned to the black prince at the battle of Crecy. And despite the rumors, had nothing to do with trying to introduce ham into the cob salad in the place of bacon. (Cob-ham...get it?!)
-Cian

Posted: **Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:22 pm**

Also: check out the visible suspension liner in the great helm! Too cool.

-Donasian.

Posted: **Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:25 pm**

hrolf wrote:If he died in 1361, it could be the Duke of Lancaster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_of_G ... _Lancaster

LOL! Dude, those are not the arms of Lancaster.

It's Reggie de Cobham

Also, since the mail below his surcote clearly show as gray/silver, I don't think we can assume that the black represts "silvering" that has worn away -- also as nothing *else* has worn away, the "wearing away" is would otherwise have to be incredibly uniform and complete, and that would mean the estoilles on his surcote were painted the same color -- but SILVER stars on gold is not possible, so that must be what it is intended to be: BLACK.

The only question that remains is, is this painted leather, or painted/blackened steel? (As it appears on the vams, rerebraces, greaves, and helm as well.) My vote is blackened steel.

edit: DAMMIT! Beaten.

Posted: **Wed Jan 21, 2009 8:39 pm**

Well, perhaps there is an opportunity here to clarify some things. We've got an effigy that can't be reliably interpreted by simple reliance on appearances. That paint job almost certainly is not original, for one thing. (I know this effigy has been discussed here before, and seem to recall some mention of when the painting was "touched up" at the least)

So, the fellow is known, and was a prominent person in his day. What survives in the way of written records ? Household inventories, a will, anything along those lines ?

If we could find some written record regarding his personal armour, then we might be able to correllate that against this effigy and perhaps be better able to support conclusions about how different materials and constructions were represented artistically...

Posted: **Fri Jan 23, 2009 12:33 am**

Thanks for all the responses. The order of the garter stuff is pretty inteteresting. Now that I take a second look it is obvious that the black must be some kind of steel, as the helm is the same color. I don't know why that didn't register the first time.

Posted: **Fri Jan 23, 2009 12:53 am**

bhaiduk wrote:What am I looking at here?

original photo here
I found this one on the big effigy website. The website says it dates to 1361. I relize this has probably been repainted since it was orignally made, but I have a few questions.
1. What is black stuff on the lower legs and arms? Is it plate, that's just painted black. If so was that commonly done in period? Is it leather? It lookes like a lot of SCA armor in that respect.

2. Are these supposed to be stylized splinted cuises? Or, are they just fancy paint over plate?

3. What kind of knees are these? Are they articulated, or are they the "soupcan" style?

4. What is the little belt thing tied just below his left knee?

5. What about the torso armor? It looks to me like the gray stuff is supposed to be mail, you can see it in the aventail/camail, in the arm pits, and sticking out the bottom of the surcoat. So, is this supposed to be a COP over mail, or is it just a surcoat, or is there some form of brest plate?

Hi Brenden, try this :wink:

Posted: **Fri Jan 23, 2009 8:42 am**

Shau-ul:
How do you make the picture show up so that it fits into one window?

Posted: **Fri Jan 23, 2009 9:13 am**

I cheat

I use photobucket, then I set the default size for my photobucket to iirc 640X480 which is optimized for forums.& it automatically re sizes the image. plus there is already a link formatted with the tags

Posted: **Fri Jan 23, 2009 11:51 am**

Aaha, I figured it out, thanks Sha-ul.

Posted: **Fri Jan 23, 2009 7:19 pm**

bhaiduk wrote:

Aaha, I figured it out, thanks Sha-ul.

Stop that! You're going to make him fall over!

I'm going to use the CODE tag to try to keep this on the screen-

Code: Select all

Regarding the knees, if you look closely you'll see an edge between the 

scalloped bottom and the poleyn proper. I made a leg harness based on 

several paintings and effigies similar to that - the schynbalds and cuisses 

are stiff, you simply fasten "leathers", which I interpreted to be just what 

it sounded like and used tanned elkhide, to the cuisses. The upper edges 

of mine were rivited to the outside of the cuisses, it looks like these were 

rivited to the inside - it would work either way. The poleyns are rivited on 

either side to the flexible leathers, and to a snugging strap in the middle. 

It moves very well when constructed that way. If your schynbalds are 

well fitted they stay in place on their own, and the scalloped bottom of 

the leather simply overlaps them. It works really well.

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 3:06 pm**

I want to revive this thread a bit, specifficly about his poleyns.

It does look like they could just be riveted to the (leather) cuisses, but would that really work?
My 6 oz veg tan is not supple at all, and if I riveted the poleyns to a cuisses made from it, it'd be similar to riveting them to a plate cuisses. (And I understand most people use much heavier leather than 6 oz.)

Also, if you look at the picture below, you can see a similar setup depicted in 2-d. You'll notice that the rivets on the poleyn overlap the rivets on the cuisses.
This could easialy be part of the stylization, but the artist still made a decision to show this.
Could the rivets on the poleyn be for something else than attatching to the cuisses? And if so, how would thay stay up? There's no evidence for (visible) lacing!
Any ideas on how to re-create this look?

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 3:54 pm**

Oooh, ooh, I know....a computer screen.

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:02 pm**

bhaiduk wrote:Shau-ul:
How do you make the picture show up so that it fits into one window?

I resized the original image's display as follows:
The original code looked like this:

Code: Select all

[img]http://www.themcs.org/armour/knights/2006%20MCS%20Lingfield%20St%20Peter%20and%20Paul%20Reginald%20Cobham%201361%2006.jpg[/img]

I replaced it with HTML tags, specifying a size (height/width) for the display, and using that as the "content" of a URL 'A'ddress tag.
Needless to say, I had to look at the original dimensions (2134x531) to figure out what they should be for a 600 pixel wide display.

Code: Select all

<a href="" target="_new"><img src="http://www.themcs.org/armour/knights/2006%20MCS%20Lingfield%20St%20Peter%20and%20Paul%20Reginald%20Cobham%201361%2006.jpg" width="600" height="149"></a>

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:05 pm**

Wut?

Blaine de Navarre wrote:Oooh, ooh, I know....a computer screen.

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 5:06 pm**

JT is too smart.

JT wrote:
bhaiduk wrote:Shau-ul:
How do you make the picture show up so that it fits into one window?

I resized the original image's display as follows:
The original code looked like this:
Code: Select all
[img]http://www.themcs.org/armour/knights/2006%20MCS%20Lingfield%20St%20Peter%20and%20Paul%20Reginald%20Cobham%201361%2006.jpg[/img]
I replaced it with HTML tags, specifying a size (height/width) for the display, and using that as the "content" of a URL 'A'ddress tag.
Needless to say, I had to look at the original dimensions (2134x531) to figure out what they should be for a 600 pixel wide display.
Code: Select all
<a href="" target="_new"><img src="http://www.themcs.org/armour/knights/2006%20MCS%20Lingfield%20St%20Peter%20and%20Paul%20Reginald%20Cobham%201361%2006.jpg" width="600" height="149"></a>

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 6:49 pm**

Please note that this effigy has been heavily restored and painted in modern times. Drawing conclusions based on the paint would be fallacious.

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:21 pm**

What are you looking at

it's a effigy

it's like a coffin but has a statue of the dead guy layin on it

:lol:

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:44 pm**

Yes, but the details I noted are all sculptural elements, which are unlikely to have changed.

Galfrid atte grene wrote:Please note that this effigy has been heavily restored and painted in modern times. Drawing conclusions based on the paint would be fallacious.

Posted: **Mon Dec 20, 2010 8:24 pm**

Yeah, sorry, I was directing my response towards the older posts. That line of rivets is visible on the pre-restored effigy as well.

The Armour Archive

What am I looking at here?

What am I looking at here?

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