Not saints alone, but necromancers were occasionally attached to military expeditions. Such an auxiliary, according to Wace, accompanied Duke William in his expedition to England:--
"Un clers esteit al Duc venuz Ainz ke de Some fust méuz: D'Astronomie, ço diseit, E de nigromancie saveit: Por devinéor se teneit, De plusurs choses sortisseit."--_Line_ 11673.
Having predicted a safe voyage to William, and the prediction having been fulfilled, the duke remembered him of his _nigromancien_, and desired that search might be made for this learned clerk. But the poor fellow had himself been drowned in the passage:--
"En mer esteit, ço dist, néiez, Et en un nef perilliez."
"Malement devina de mei, Ki ne sout deviner de sei."
"Fol est ki se fie en devin, Ki d'altrui ovre set la fin, E terme ne set de sa vie: D'altrui prend garde è sei s'oblie."
[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF KING HENRY THE FIRST.
In examining the BODY-ARMOUR of the period under review, though we find some change in the adaptations of the old fabrics,--of the quilted-work, of the interlinked chain-mail, of the scale and jazerant,--there appears to be only one piece which is entirely new,--the so-called _Plastron de fer_, a breastplate that was worn beneath the gambeson or other armour that formed a general covering for the body. In a preceding passage from the _Speculum Regale_, we have read of a breast-defence of iron, extending from the throat to the waist, which may have been the breastplate in question. But a passage of Guillaume le Breton more exactly defines this contrivance. In the encounter between Richard Cœur-de-Lion (then earl of Poitou), and Guillaume des Barres:--
"Utraque per clipeos ad corpora fraxinus ibat, Gambesumque audax forat et thoraca trilicem Disjicit: ardenti nimium prorumpere tandem _Vix obstat ferro fabricata patena recocto_, Qua bene munierat pectus sibi cautus uterque." _Philippidos_, lib. iii.
A further evidence of this additional arming of the breast may be derived from the present practice of the East, where quilted coats-of-fence have a lining of iron plates at that part only. In the museum of the United Service Institution may be seen Chinese armours of this construction.
Though from written testimonies we learn that the fabrics already enumerated were in use, and that the materials of the defences were iron, leather, horn, and various kinds of quilting, it is by no means easy to identify these structures in the pictorial monuments of the day. Nothing perhaps can more strongly mark this fact, than the diversity of interpretation that has been given to the armours in the Bayeux tapestry by some of the latest and most critical investigators of the subject. Von Leber sees in them a contrivance of leather and metal bosses: "ein Lederwamms mit aufgenähten Metallscheiben oder Metallbukeln[189]." M. Allou attires the warrior in a "vêtement particulier formé d'anneaux ou de mailles de fer, ou bien de petites pièces de même métal assemblées à la manière des tuiles ou des écailles de poisson[190]." In the _Bulletin Monumental_ of the Société Française, vol. xi., page 519, we have: "On croit distinguer, d'après l'indication de la broderie, des disques en métal appliqués sur une jaque de cuir." Mr. Kerrich[191] considers the coats marked with rounds as chain-mail. M. de Caumont has remarked that "in the Bayeux tapestry some of the figures are in chain-mail, and others in a kind of armour composed apparently of metallic discs sewn to a leathern _jaque_[192]." In the following we have collected the various modes of indicating the armour in this tapestry, and it must be confessed that to appropriate each is no easy task. It is indeed rather from a comparison with numerous other monuments, than from the testimony of these examples alone, that one is able to form any opinion as to the fabrics intended; and even at last the conclusion _must_ be doubtful, and may be erroneous. From analogous representations of various dates, however, it seems likely that the figures 1 and 2 are intended for interlinked chain-mail; Nos. 3 and 4 for jazerant-work (armour formed of small plates fastened by rivets to a garment of cloth or canvas); Nos. 5 and 6 appear to be plain quilted defences; No. 7 seems only a rude attempt to represent the quilted coif; No. 8 is one of many examples where different markings are used on the same garment. In some instances, the markings copied above are so strangely intermixed in the same dress, that one is led to doubt if, in any case, each differing pattern is intended to represent a different kind of armour.