Commentary on “Armour Purchases and Lists from the Howard Household Books”
This is a summary and commentary on “Armour Purchases and Lists from the Howard Household Books” by Robert W. Reed Jr., an article which appeared in the first volume of…
John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk.
This is a summary and commentary on “Armour Purchases and Lists from the Howard Household Books” by Robert W. Reed Jr., an article which appeared in the first volume of the The Journal of The Mail Research Society in 2003. (link)
Summary
Over the entire observed period, three textile armors are purchased explicitly, while 60 yards of fustian was purchased “ffor to make doublettys of ffence”
A payment of 20d was made for one doublet, but it is not clear if it is for the entire doublet, or just the labor, or just an advance payment.
Thirty-seven standards, 9 gussets, 13 jackets of mail, a haubergeon.
The payment for 13 jackets of mail was 15s.
The mail pieces were purchased from a Herman Stolle, who appears to be a foreign armor merchant.
A “gastron” is also purchased.
The payment for the “gastron” was 10s for cloth and labor of tailors, and 10s to the armorer. This suggests it was an armor of both mail and cloth.
The gastron appears to cost more than 13 jackets of mail. It’s not clear if the jackets of mail that are “made” are necessarily fabricated from scratch, or whether they are recycled or refurbished pieces of armor. Alternatively, the price could be for each jacket of mail.
49 brigandines. One brigandine has a pair of sleeves attached. A pair of splints is also purchased.
The price per brigandine varies from 12s to 30s each.
Ten of the brigandines are purchased for a total of 6L 5s.
There is an entry of payment for 3d for “mending of his brigandines at Nottingham.”
Some of the brigandine is made locally, while ten of them are purchased from Herman Stolle, the foreign armor merchant.
Four plate harnesses are purchased. Three complete, one almost complete, missing sallet and greaves. Two are for John Howard, one is for his son Nicolas Howard, and the last is for a John Nytre.
Nicolas Howard’s harness costs 6L 26s 8d. (I believe the pound at the time contained 30 shillings.) It includes an ostrich feather.
There are consistent payments for the repair and refurbishment of armor. 4s to refurbish armor at Howard’s place for 7 days in 1463. 6s for 12 days later in the same year, and 16 d in miscellaneous expenses
Arming points and, less frequently, wire and arming nails are purchased in bulk.
2 sallets with demi-visors “for yeomen,” and 25 sallets are purchased.
The sallets with demi-visors are 7s 4d, while the sallets are 2s each.
A shamfron is purchased for 4s 2p.
Comments
Brigandines outnumber plate harnesses over 12 to 1 in purchases. This is in contrast to depictions of art at the time, which tend to be more weighted to plate harness.
The Battle of Barnet, 1471.
Nicolas Howard’s plate harness was roughly the cost of eleven brigandines. Think about that.
It appears that the brigandines almost match the number of standard+sleeves or jackets. Thus, it seems reasonable that the armor of a retainer of Howard’s would be a brigandine, and mail standard+sleeves/jacket/haubergeon and open-faced sallet.
However, it’s not clear why sallets appear to be purchased at roughly half the rate of brigandine and mail. It might be that some portion of Howard’s retainers already owned helmets, as part of previous militia requirements. Alternatively, it might be that brigandines were less durable because of the use of textile, and decayed or needed to be replaced at twice the rate of a sallet, which was primarily metal.
In addition, it is worth nothing that a sallet with a demi-visor is nearly four times the cost of a normal sallet. This might suggest that the costs associated with creating a visor might be more related to labor than materials. The shaping and fitting of the visor, the fitting of hinges, and the creation of the ocular may have been far more labor intensive than dishing a sallet.
Brigandine, Italian, c1470, Royal Armoury, Leeds.
Maintenance appears to be split between internal and external labor. Mail and brigandine for retainers appears to be repaired internally, as wire, rivets, and arming points are purchased directly from merchants in bulk. This agrees with my own experience in assembling and modifying my harness – in my apartment with hand tools, I can tailor mail and replace rivets, but cannot significantly reshape plate aside from simple cuts and holes.
Howard’s plate is refurbished with external labor, by an armorer from Ipswich who travels to him from roughly 20 miles away, at a cost of roughly 4s and 7s, respectively. This is a significant cost – each of these refurbishment trips could have instead purchased two or three sallets for his retainers.
Howard’s brigandine is repaired at Nottingham, far to the north of his home, for 3d, presumably while on campaign. But, no mention is made of maintenance of the brigandine or mail of his retainers. Thus the pattern appears to be that Howard’s plate and brigandine are maintained with external labor, while the armors of his retainers, being made of mail and brigandine, are maintained with internal labor.
It is also interesting to note that Howard owns both a harness and a brigandine, and presumably brings both on campaign, given the maintenance in Nottingham. This may be related to providing additional comfort/protection options while on the march.
The brigandine and mail appear to be mostly purchased in bulk from a foreign merchant named Hermann Stolle, however some brigandines are also purchased in bulk from London armorers/merchants. This suggests that these armors would not have been made-to-measure or bespoke, as it would have been in Howard’s case. Instead, it is likely that these would have been purchased “off-the-rack” and modified to fit the retainer it was given to. Again, this is only possible because of the ease of modification of mail and brigandine.
The Howard household purchases suggest that the advantages of brigandine and mail appear to be three-fold. First, because of the ease of modification, brigandine and mail could be purchased “off the rack” and modified with unspecialized household labor. Second, because they could be purchased off the rack, these armors could be imported from areas where mass production, economies of scale, and comparative advantage could drive down the cost of production. (Milan and South Germany are two likely sources for armor imports.) Third, brigandine and mail could be maintained with household labor, while plate harness (and to a lesser extent, high-status brigandine) required expensive external, specialized labor.
In studying the design and use of armor, people frequently turn to surviving pieces, artistic depictions such as paintings or effigies. However, each of these methods has a strong bias towards high status plate armor. Extant pieces tend to survive if they are of artistic merit, or predominantly made of metal rather than cloth. Paintings will tend to favor depicting important and high status individuals, and effigies tend to only memorialize upper class individuals. Studying the more mundane details of armor, such as the daily details of purchase and maintenance, can give us a vastly different perspective into the realities of armor use.
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