It is a common misconception that the medieval Knights was as an upturned turtle when forced from his saddle or from his feet. The image of knights being winched into their saddles for the joust or rolling around on the field of battle unable to get up is a myth perpetrated by the Victorians and continued by early Hollywood movies. A Knight of the mid medieval period, although not as fully articulate as his lighter armed foot soldiers and bowmen had a considerable amount of manoeuvrability. If he did not his time in battle would be very short indeed, once unhorsed or on the floor he would simply be picked off by a lowly foot soldier sticking a handy dagger through a chink or vision slot in his armour.

 

CHAIN MAIL

    When the Normans invaded this land in 1066 the majority of Williams’s knights wore armour consisting totally of Chainmail. Chainmail was flexible and offered reasonable protection against incoming blows from a foe. Worn over a quilted padded Jack called an Ackheton or Gambeson the Chainmail shirt (Hauberk) was made up of individually formed links of iron wire formed into rings and linked together to form a shirt or leggings. This form of armoured protection persisted until the end of the medieval period and somewhat beyond. Chainmail construction was an arduous and time consuming task (a full Hauberk might consist of over 80,000 links) Each individual link had to be made from fine strips of iron wire before being linked together with four other links, then a small rivet would be inserted to hold all the links together and prevent them splitting.

   Although it offered reasonable protection it could not be relied upon to stop a full blow from a great sword and a blow of any force would shatter bone and crush the wearer’s limbs. Its major drawback however was shown when the Knight was faced with bowmen, from the point of view of an arrowhead Chainmail is nothing but a lot of loosely connected holes and the arrow simply picks the one it wants to go through, something new had to be developed.

 PLATE ARMOUR

   Before the advent of Plate armour (Harness) there was an oft over looked missing link. This was a form of armour known as "Cuir-Bouilii", this was Leather boiled in wax and moulded into shape to fit the wearer, becoming hard in the process. It was light reasonably inexpensive and easy to make and above all offered better protection than Chainmail on its own. It still however had a blind spot when it came to the bow and an arrow could still punch through the leather. It was not until near the end of Edward I's reign that plate armour first started appearing on the field of battle.

   A very expensive form of armour  and difficult to produce in large quantities, plate armour could only be purchased by the very rich and powerful nobles (in fact in the 13th century becoming a knight was so expensive that many young men actually avoided being knighted and chose to remain as squires) Formed around the wearer Harness had two main functions, to protect the wearer against blows from sword or axe etc and because of its curved shape to deflect arrowheads. There were to main manufacturing centers for plate armour, the forges of Milan and Germany. They offered two different schools of thought on armour construction, Milanese harness was smooth and gently curved whereas German armour was richly decorated and fluted each of these styles was designed with arrow deflection in mind. Initially Knights wore only a few pieces of plate armour around the head or legs supplemented by Chainmail and it was not until the late 14th early 15th centuries that the Knight became fully enclosed in a suit of plate.