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The Visor of a Fourteenth-century Bascinet found at Pevensey Castle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

James G. Mann
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Extract

On 24th November 1932 our Fellow Major C. J. ffoulkes exhibited a mysterious object that had been found during the restoration of Pevensey Castle. Almost immediately afterwards H.M. Office of Works produced from the same site an object about which there can be no doubt whatever. It is a visor of what is possibly the most striking of all medieval headpieces, the hounskull or pig-faced bascinet. Furthermore, it is the first recorded from an English site.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 1936 , pp. 412 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1936

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References

page 412 note 1 Antiq. Journ. (1933), xiii, 170 seqq.Google Scholar

page 412 note 2 The word ‘hounskull’, found in contemporary text, has been interpreted by Mr. C. R. Beard as an English corruption of the German term Hundgugel for this type of bascinet with snouted visor.

page 412 note 3 Laking, Record, i, fig. 281 a, b, c.

page 414 not 1 ‘Do et lego… unam integram armaturam de armaturis meis, videlicet meum heaume á visiere, meum bassignetum’, Will of Odo do Rousillion, 1228; Buttin, C., ‘Le Tombeau d'Ulrich de Werdt’, Archives Alsaciennes, 1925, p. 50Google Scholar , quoting Gay's Glossaire Archéologique, sub verb. ‘Armatura’.

page 414 note 2 Stothard, C., Monumental Effigies, pl. 49.Google Scholar

page 414 note 3 Ibid., pl. 71 and 72.

page 415 note 1 Portfolio Monumental Brass Society, ii, pls. 35-7, and Proceedings, iv, 336.

page 416 note 1 V. Gay, Glossaire Arhéologique, quoting Lobineau, Histoire de Bretagne, ii col. 1639Google Scholar.

page 416 note 2 Rymer, , Foedera, ii, 204 (1808).Google Scholar

page 416 note 3 Arch. Journal, xv, 354 (1858).Google Scholar

page 416 note 4 Ibid, xi, 381 (1854).

page 416 note 5 Viscount Dillon and Hope, W. H. St. John in Arch. Journal, liv, 275Google Scholar.

page 417 note 1 Trapp, and , Mann, Armoury of the Castle of Churburg, 1929, nos. 13, 15, and 16.Google Scholar

page 417 note 2 Loan Exhibition of European Arms and Armour, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 3rd August to 27th September, 1931, no. 50 (illustrated).

page 417 note 3 Z.H.W.K. xii, 245, Abb. 1, ex-Baron von Renné.

page 417 note 4 The numbers of the garrison between 1366 and 1370, when Sir John St. Clare was constable, have been published by Salzman, L., Sussex Archaeological Colleciions, xlix (1906), 20Google Scholar . At that time it varied between 5 men-at-arms, 12 archers, 1 watchman, and 9 men-at-arms, 20 archers, and 1 watchman. In 1381 William Fiennes and William de Battesson were given a writ of aid to impress men-at-arms, archers, and others, to defend the castle, probably in addition to the regular garrison.

There is an entry for the purchase of 8 crossbows (balistis), 9 bows, and 44 sheaves of arrows, but unfortunately, no mention of armour, as was the case in the preceding century in 1285, when 22 habergeons, 7 hawberks, a corslet (sic), 3 pairs of greaves, 2 head-pieces (testar', presumably chanfrons), and one crupper (croper'), are recorded, and lard, bran, a barrel, and a leather sack, were bought for cleaning the armour. The constables during the period of our visor were Sir John St. Clare (1366-70), Sir Nicholas de Louveyne (1370-2), John Colepepper (1372-80), William de Battesford (1380-1), John Colepepper again (1381-90), Roger Ewent (1390-4), Sir John Pelham (1394), whose grant was extended for life on the accession of Bolingbroke as Henry IV. In 1394 a payment of 8s. was made ‘for clearing out of a certain place outside the castle which was filled with rubbish and dirt thrown out of the castle’; if our visor had already been cast away it seems to have had a fortunate escape (Salzman, ibid. 22).