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Welsh Bucklers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Summary

The paper deals with a well-known group of Tudor bucklers (once thought to be Roman), made of leather reinforced with riveted iron or brass rings, sometimes accompanied by radiating strips. The evidence of a group of fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Welsh poems and other records is used to establish that they originated in Wales, and that Wrexham was a noted centre of production. A corpus of recorded examples is given.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1982

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References

1 A reference was first made to descriptive passages relating to bucklers in medieval Welsh poetry in the Introduction to my book The Davies Brothers, Gatesmiths, one of which interested Mr. Claude Blair, the Keeper of the Metalwork Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He suggested that this source deserved a more careful investigation. This I was able to do with the assistance of Miss Enid Roberts of the Welsh Department of the University College of North Wales, Bangor: without her help this would not have been possible. Also, I tender my thanks to Mr. Dennis Davies for further assistance. For the original Welsh of the quotations given in translation in the text of the article see the Appendices I–II on pp. 92–6.

2 Cywydd o waith Guto'r Glyn, ‘I Ddafydd Abad Pant y Groes, i ddiolch am Fwcled’. Gw. Ifor Williams a J. Ll. Williams, (gol), Gwaith Guto'r Glyn, 296–8. ‘To David, Abbot of Valle Crucis Abbey, to thank him for a Buckler’. The best MSS. sources are: BL Add (British Library Additional) 14866, poem begins p. 408. This MS. is in the hand of David Johns, Vicar of Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, 1573–?96. Peniarth 99, poem begins p. 215. MS. written by one of Dr. John Davies's clerks (late sixteenth century). Mostyn 146, poem begins p. 196, late sixteenth-century hand. (Mostyn and Peniarth in the National Library of Wales.)

3 The National Library of Wales has recently bound a first-line index to the Welsh strict metre poems in manuscript form in the N.L.W. and other repositories (Bangor, Cardiff, London, Oxford, etc.) which has been completed by the Board of Celtic Studies and the N.L.W. This consists of 4,500 typescript pages. The poets are listed alphabetically and likewise the first lines of their poems (together with title where available). From this vast collection historians may glean many untapped sources of historical material.

4 Cywyddau o waith Gutun Owain, gw. E. Bachellery (gol), L'Oeuvre Poétique de Gutun Owain, 95–9, ‘Cywydd i (a) ofyn Bwcled i Siôn Pilstwn dros Siôn ab Elis Eutun o Watstay’. (Ap or Ab = son of.) N.L.W. 359. (b) ‘Cywydd i ofyn Bwcled dros Wmffre Cinast i Ruffudd ap Hywel ap Morgan o Faelor’. N.L.W. 18364. Other MSS. sources are: BL Add 14967, poem begins p. 63. MS. temp Henry VIII, possibly written by one of Gutun Owain's pupils. Mostyn 147, poem begins p. 78; early seventeenth-century hand, BL Add 14976, poem begins p. 231; early seventeenth-century hand.

5 King Arthur's Round Table is referred to in the ode to Rhys Nanmor (see p. 78 below) as being covered with rivet heads.

6 The ffristial, according to Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (University of Wales Dictionary) can mean ‘dice, dice-box, backgammon’ and boards for other games. Games-boards would be acceptable, to illustrate the decorative qualities of the buckler. It had inlaid squares of coloured woods. The word eurgrwydr was also used frequently in describing bucklers, meaning ‘gold-chased’. It was a stock-description used from the beginnings of Welsh poetry—from the end of the sixth century. The second element, crwydr, means ‘sieve’, i.e. powdered, speckled.

7 In his famous poem to Owain Glyndwr's court (early fifteenth or late fourteenth century) Iolo Gôch speaks of chapels, houses and shops like those of Cheapside, although there was only one medieval hall with one other small building. But the windows reminded the poet of chapel windows and the contents of the hall were like the merchandise of the shops in Cheapside.

8 Cywydd o waith Tudur Aled, gw. T. Gwynn Jones (gol), Gwaith Tudur Aled, Cyfrol II, 452–4, ‘I ofyn Bwcled i bedwar mab Elis Eutun dros eu Hewythr Hywel ap Siencyn o Dywyn’. Written before 1494.

9 Ibid. 449–51, ‘Cywydd i ofyn Bwcled, a Marwnad Ieuan ap Deicws’. Also: Cardiff 11, poem begins p. 93; late sixteenth-century hand. Llanstephan 39, poem begins p. 106b; written 1560–80. BL Add 14971, poem begins p. 137b; in the hand of Dr. John Davies. (Llanstephan MS. also in N.L.W.)..

10 Pedigrees of the family of Ieuan ap Deicws show that he was from ‘Y Llanerchrugog’, a name which persists in the old parish of Ruabon. Vol. III of J. Y. W. Lloyd (Chevalier Lloyd), The History of Powys Fadog, 55–8, a pedigree copied from the Cae Cyriog MS., the work of John Griffith, genealogist, of Ruabon. His work in turn was based on Peniarth 128, compiled by Edward ap Roger (b. c. 1527, d. 1587) of Ruabon, a reliable genealogist. N.L.W. ‘Ruabon MS.’ by A. N. Palmer, p. 42: A lease from the lords of Bromfield and Yale to Robert ap Griffith ap Howell and Ieuan ap Deicws ap Deio, dated 16th June, 12 Edward IV (1472), for eight years from the ditch called ‘Claughwad’ (Clawdd Wad or Wat's Dyke) to the mountain of Glasffrey in the parish of Ruabon, at an yearly rent of 3s. 4d.

11 Edwards, Ifor, ‘The charcoal iron industry of east Denbighshire’, Trans. Denbighs. Historical Society, ix (1960), 29.Google Scholar

12 Cywydd o waith Huw Cae Llwyd, gw. L. Harries (gol), Gwaith Huw Cae Llwyd ac Eraill, pp. 103–4, ‘I erchi Bwcler’. (No. XLII.)

13 ‘Blaenau’ denotes the upper regions of a valley; and in this instance, since the donor is from the Lampeter area in South Wales, it probably refers to the upper reaches of the Teifi where he dwells. The poet, Huw Cae Llwyd, was a native of Llandderfel, in the upper regions of the River Dee, but he spent the greater part of his working life in South Wales.

14 Unpublished M.A. Thesis (Bangor, 1938) by Mary Gwendoline Headley: ‘Barddoniaeth Llawdden a Rhys Nanmor’. No. 50, ‘Cywydd i ofyn Bwcled i Lewis Môn’. The poet, Rhys Nanmor, seeks the gift from Lewis Môn, a smith, living in Temple Bar, London, working for Henry VIII, and acting as ‘a squire for him over Canterbury’. He may have had a forge somewhere near the coast of Kent, or Sussex, near the ‘Strait of Dover’.

15 Cywydd o waith Lewis Glyn Cothi, gw. Jones, E. D. (gol), Gwaith Lewis Glyn Cothi (1953), pp. 157–8, beginning with line 29: ‘Cywydd i ofyn Bwcled gan Siôn ap Dafydd’.Google Scholar

16 See Appendix II.

17 I owe a special debt of gratitude to two people for help in preparing this study: firstly, my co-author, Mr. Ifor Edwards, whose Davies Brothers, Gatesmiths (Welsh Arts Council/Crafts Advisory Committee, 1977) provided me with the key to the problem of Welsh bucklers for which I had been searching since 1958; secondly, Miss Enid Roberts of the Welsh Department of the University College of North Wales, Bangor, who has patiently answered innumerable questions about the interpretation of Welsh texts. I must also record my thanks to the following for help of various kinds: Dr. Sydney Anglo, F.S.A.; Mr. Geoffrey de Bellaigue, F.S.A., Surveyor of the Queen's Works of Art; Mr. W. J. Blair; Miss M. L. Campbell of the Victoria and Albert Museum; Mr. John Cherry, F.S.A., of the British Museum; Mrs. G. Cousland of the Lord Chamberlain's Office; Professor A. H. Dodd; Mr. Ian Eaves of the Tower of London Armouries; Mr. M. Bevan-Evans, formerly County Archivist of Flintshire; Miss Nia Henson of the National Library of Wales; our Librarian Mr. John Hopkins; Mr. D. Ifans of the National Library of Wales; Mrs. A. L. Kaeppler of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Mr. K. Corey Keeble of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Mr. R. W. Lightbown, Sec. S.A.; Mr. Michael Keen of the Victoria and Albert Museum; Mr. A. V. B. Norman, F.S.A., Master of the Tower of London Armouries; Mr. A. R. E. North of the Victoria and Albert Museum; Mr. Stuart Pyhrr of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Mr. Williams Reid, F.S.A., Director of the National Army Museum; Monsieur J.-P. Reverseau of the Musée de l'Armée, Paris; The Rev. Canon M. H. Ridgway, F.S.A.; Mr. Eurys Rowlands; Miss E. Simpson of the Cheshire Record Office; the late Mr. Albert Tilley of Brecon Cathedral; the late Dr. Richard Williams, F.S.A.; Mr. Guy Wilson of the Tower of London Armouries; the staffs of the Public Record Office, the Manuscript Students Room of the British Library, the Museum of London, and the Library of the Royal Society.

18 ‘Those Shields or Targets which had double stays for the Arms and Hand were for Horsemen; but such as had only one handle were Bucklers for Foot-men. As the Figures doth manifest.’ Randle Holme, The Academy of Armory and Blazon (Chester, 1688), p. 11 and figs. 62 and 64 on p. 7. Cf. also Donald McBane, The Expert Sword-Man's Companion (Glasgow, 1728), pp. 65–6.

19 The only general history of the buckler available appears to be the one given by Sir Laking, Guy F. in his Record of European Armour and Arms (London, 19201922), vol. 11, pp. 242–9Google Scholar. For the use of the bucklers see Castle, Egerton, Schools and Masters of Fence, 2nd edn. (London, 1892), pp. 22–4, 26, 34, 59.Google Scholar

20 Above pp. 75, 76, 77.

21 Above p. 79.

22 Above pp. 75, 78, 79.

23 Above pp. 76, 79.

24 Above p. 75.

25 Strutt, J., The Sports and Pastimes of the. People of England, reprint of the 3rd edn. (London, 1867), p. 311. The original, in the British Library (Cottonian Ms. Cleopatra B11) dates from the late thirteenth century.Google Scholar

26 Above pp. 75, 77, 78.

27 Above pp. 75, 76, 78, 79.

28 For example, the reference to a workshop ‘by the Strait of Dover’ in one of the poems. Above p. 77.

29 Grose, Francis, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons (London, 1786)Google Scholar, pls. 34 and 37.

30 Williams, Richard, ‘Early Tudor bucklers with a note on an exhibit in Brecon Cathedral’, The Transactions of the Radnorshire Society, xxvii (1957), 1219. Since the article is such a short one I shall not give the page numbers of further reference to it.Google Scholar

31 See below pp. 83–4.

32 Above p. 78.

33 Appendix IV.

34 Discussed below pp. 88–90.

35 Appendix IV, nos. 1:1; 2:2 and 6; 3b: 2–4.

36 Ibid., nos. 2:10–11;Bosses 1–4;Rim-rings 1.

37 Ibid., nos. 2:3, 7–9; 3b:1, 8, 12, 13.

38 Ibid., nos. 2:2, 3 and 10. It is possible that other bucklers in this group (e.g. no. 5) include brass rings and laths.

39 Ibid., no. 3:1. It is at present on loan to the Tower of London Armouries.

40 Auerbach, E. and Adams, C. Kingsley, Paintings and Sculpture at Hatfield House (London, 1971), no. 49Google Scholar. Cf. also the possibly related drawing by Lucas de Heere in the University Library, Ghent (MS. 2466, f.70). This shows a similar figure carrying a circular shield of which only the inside, with two brasses for the arms, is visible. See Chotzen, Th. M. and Draak, A. M. E., Beschrivning der Britische Eilanden door Lucas de Heere (Antwerp, 1937).Google Scholar

41 It belongs to the misericords at Ludlow which are associated with a payment made in 1447 by the local Palmers' Guild for 100 planks bought in Bristol for new choir-stalls. See D. H. S. Cranage, An Architectural Account of the Churches of Shropshire, vol. 1 (Wellington, Shropshire), p. 117. Remnant, G. L., A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain (Oxford 1969), p. 135 gives the 1447 reference but dates these stalls to 1435 without explaining why.Google Scholar

42 Cf., for example, the buckler held by the so-called figure of a jester on one of the late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century misericords at Christchurch Priory. See Pictorial Guide. The Choir Stalls and Misericords, Christchurch Priory, Hampshire, n.d., pl. 14, where the buckler is incorrectly called a platter.

43 See: Miller, Oliver, The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, 2 vols. (London, 1963), nos. 24 and 24Google Scholar; Anglo, S., ‘The Hampton Court painting of the Field of Cloth of Gold considered as an historical document’, Antiq. J. xlvi (1966), 287307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trapp, J. B. and Herbrüggen, H. S., ‘The King's Good Servant’. Sir Thomas More 1477/8–1535 (National Portrait Gallery, London, 1977–8), no. 67.Google Scholar

44 Anderson, M. D., Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches (C.U.P., 1963)Google Scholar, pl. 21b. See also Baker, John, English Stained. Glass (London, 1961), pp. 225–7.Google Scholar

45 Roy. MS. 18D.II, f.148. Sir Warner, G. F. and Gilson, J. P., Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the old Royal and King's Collection (British Museum, 1921), vol. II, pp. 308–10, vol. iv, pl. 105b.Google Scholar

46 Brewer, J. S., Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. 3, pt. 1 (London, 1867), p. 295. The record of payment is contained in an account for stuff provided for the Queen by Elys Hylton.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., p. 128. He is mentioned merely in connection with a search made for suspected persons.

48 See below pp. 86–7.

49 Smith, Lucy Toulmin (ed.), The itinerary in Wales of John Leland in or about the years 1536–9 (London, 1906), pp. 6970.Google Scholar

50 British Library Harleian MS. 1419 B., f. 413v.

51 Dodd, A. H., A History of Wrexham, Denbighshire (Wrexham, 1957), pp. 26, 32, 36.Google Scholar

52 For a pedigree and other information about the family see Lloyd, J. Y. W., The History of the Princes, the Lords Marcher and the Ancient Nobility of Powys Fadog, vol. 11 (London, 1882), pp. 184, 193–4, 326–9. 353. Cf. also Leland, loc. cit.Google Scholar

53 P.R.O., E101/420/11, f.16.

54 P.R.O., E36/216, ends at Easter 1521.

55 L. & P.H. VIII, vol. 4, pt. 1 (1870), p. 606.Google Scholar

56 See below.

57 P.R.O., E101/420/11, f.74.

58 Ibid., f.149.

59 Ibid., f.156v.

60 P.R.O., E101/424/9, pp. 153–64.

61 L. & P.H. VIII, vol. 10 (1887), p. 328.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., Vol. 14, pt. I (1894), p. 418.

64 Ibid., vol. 15 (1896), p. 566. Cf. also vol. 18, pt. 11 (1902), p. 281; Patent Rolls Edward VI, vol. III (London, 1925), p. 356.Google Scholar

65 L. & P.H. VIII, vol. 16 (1898), p. 642Google Scholar. Cf. also Patent Rolls Elizabeth, vol. 1 (1939), p. 325.Google Scholar

66 L. & P.H. VIII., vol. 20, pt. 11 (1907), p. 323.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., vol. 21, pt. 1 (1908), p. 475.

68 Ibid., vol. 19, pt. 1 (1903), p. 156.

69 Patent Rolls Edward VI, vol. v (1926), pp. 339, 348.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., pp. 363, 375.

71 Patent Rolls Philip & Mary, vol. IV (1939), p. 400.Google Scholar

72 Lloyd, op. cit., p. 328.

73 Appendix IV, no. 2:1. For the best published account of it see Niox, Le Général, Le Musée de l'Armée. Armes et Armures Anciennes, vol. 1 (Paris, 1917), pl. L1.Google Scholar

74 Cf. the foliage decorating the initial letters of some Tudor official documents, for example, Auerbach, E., Tudor Artists (London, 1954), p. 25Google Scholar, pls. 3, 7–10, 12. The hawthorn was one of the national emblems in the early sixteenth century, because, it is said, Henry VII found his crown under a hawthorn bush: see, for example, Russell, J. G., The Field of Cloth of Gold (London, 1969), p. 112.Google Scholar

75 See Harrison, K. P., ‘Katherine of Aragon's pomegranate’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, ii, pt. 1 (1954), 8892.Google Scholar

76 J. B. L. Carré, Panoplie (Paris, 1797) [written in 1783], p p. 392, 395 and pl. XVI.

77 See: Ibid., pp. 437–43, pls. XXX-XXXI; Buttin, Charles, Une prétendue armure de Jeanne d'Arc (Paris, 1913)Google Scholar (reprinted from Mémoires de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France, vol. LXXII), p. 22; idem, L'armure aux lions’, Revue de l'Art, liv (1928), 156.Google Scholar

78 Carré, loc. cit., n.76 above.

79 B. L. Harleian Ms. 1419 A, ff.55, 117v, 156v; 1419B, ff.413v–414. The second and third references are duplicated in 1419B, f.469. It is an indication of the essentially civilian character of the buckler that only two are listed in the volume of the inventory covering the royal armoury. See Dillon, H. A., ‘Arms and armour at Westminster, The Tower and Greenwich’, Archaeologia, li (1888), 267.Google Scholar

80Item one other Buckler guilte with the late Marqueis of Exeter his Armes’ (Harl. 1419B, f.414). This must have belonged to the first Marquis who was attainted and executed in 1538. See also the reference below to a silver buckler with the royal arms.

81 Harl. 1419B, f.469. This duplicates Harl. 1419A, f.117v.

82 Harl. 1419B, f.413v.

83 L & P.H. VIII, vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 165; vol. 4, pt. III, p. 3071.

84 I am grateful to M. J.-P. Reverseau, Conservateur au Musée de l'Armée, for making a special examination of the buckler at my request and confirming that it is, in fact, iron.

85 See Decrue, Francis, Anne de Montmorency, (2 vols, Paris, 1885 and 1889) vol. 1, pp. 195201.Google Scholar

86 Ibid., passim. For his relationship with Henry VIII see especially vol. 1, pp. 13, 14, 97–9, 182–5, 195–201.

87 Ibid., vol. 11, p. 416.

88 ffoulkes, C. J., Inventory and Survey of the Armouries of the Tower of London, vol. 1 (London, 1916), pp. 105–5Google Scholar; Dufty, A. R. (ed.), European Armour in the Tower of London (London, 1968), pls. X–XI.Google Scholar

89 P.R.O., S.P.I: vol. 19, ff.229–30; vol. 20, ff.44–7. See also L. & P.H. VIII, vol. 3, pt. 1 (1867), pp. 227, 283, where the two documents are calendared separately and the memorandum misdated. The connection between them has subsequently been noted on the originals.Google Scholar

90 The tonlet was the skirt of overlapping hoops attached to the bottom of the cuirass. The term was applied particularly to the very deep, almost knee-length, skirt fitted to some foot-combat armours like the one at the Tower. See Dillon, op. cit., p. 258; ffoulkes, loc. cit; Gay, Victor, Glossaire archéologique du moyen âge et de la Renaissance, vol. 11 (Paris, 1928), p. 407Google Scholar; Giraud, J. B., Documents pour servir à l'histoire de l'armament au moyen âge et à la Renaissance, vol. 11 (Lyon, 1899), pp. 10, 13, 31. 34. 471.Google Scholar

91 The only artist known certainly to have engraved armour for Henry is Paul van Vreland who is first recorded in his service in 1514, and was still employed by the crown at the time of his death in 1551. The etching on the Paris buckler and the Tower tonlet armour is not like any of his identified engraving, but he may of course, have used a different style for etching. See Blair, C., ‘The Emperor Maximilian's gift of armour to King Henry VIII and the silvered and engraved armour at the Tower of London’, Archaeologia, xcix (1965), 2031. Cf. also the engraving on an early sixteenth-century dagger bearing the Tudor royal arms in the Musée de l'Armée, Paris (P.O. 1125): J. G. Mann, ‘A kidney dagger with the royal arms’, The Connoisseur (March, 1932), 158–60.Google Scholar

92 Remnant, op. cit, pl. 6d.

93 See Norman, A. V. B., The Rapier and Small-Sword (London, 1980), pp. 24–5, 47Google Scholar; Fairholt, F. W., Costume in England, 4th edn. (London, 1896), vol. 11, p. 98Google Scholar; Aylward, J. D., The English Master of Arms (London, 1956), pp. 118, 124–9, 172.Google Scholar

94 Quoted by ffoulkes, C. J. in European Arms and Armour in the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1912), p. 58, no. 162. I am grateful to Mr. A. G. MacGregor of the Ashmolean Museum for checking the text with the original manuscript (1685 B.14).Google Scholar

95 Philosophical Transactions Royal Society, London, vol. XX, (1699), pp. 205–8; Cf. also Levine, J. M., Dr. Woodward's Shield. History, Science and Satire in Augustan England (University of California Press, Los Angeles and London, 1977), pp. 167–8, to which I am indebted for drawing my attention to Thoresby's bucklers.Google Scholar

96 He was, however, beginning to have second thoughts by the time he had prepared the catalogue of his collection of antiquities for publication. This is dated 1712, but was actually published three years later as an appendix to his Ducatus Leodensis (London, 1715). In it Thoresby comments (pp. 564–5) that he had ‘apprehended’ that the bucklers were Roman, but now has doubts because of the softness and pliability of their leather and absence of any references to iron-faced shields in antique sources. He is now ‘ready to think that they belong to some later Northern Nations’.

97 Royal Society Library, Journal Book of the Royal Society (copy), vol. IX, p. 100.

98 See n. 29 above. One of the bucklers, then in Dr. Green's Museum, Lichfield (no. 2:7), was later in William Bullock's London Museum. It was called ‘the Roundel Rondache, or Norman Shield’ in the Companion to the Museum (12th edn., 1812, p. 25).

99 He said that it had been found ‘a very small Distance, eastward of its [Canovium's] site, in opening an old Drain, and was then about two feet below the common surface … the two Leather Clasps or loops for the Arm were entire, but these on Exposure to air, soon mouldered away’, (Minute Book, vol. XXVII, pp. 338–40). Two drawings of the buckler by J. R. Underwood are preserved in the Society's Library (Primeval Antiquities, vol. i, f.163). See also Archaeologia, xvi (1809), 128. The reference to ‘two Leather … loops for the Arm’ must be a mistake, since the buckler, which is of Type 3b (no. 3), has attachments for a normal wooden grip.Google Scholar

100 Journal of the Chester and N. Wales Arch. Soc. V (1895), 6671.Google Scholar

101 5s., vol. XII, p. 141.

102 7s., vol. V, pp. 311, 321.

103 Glenn, T. A., ‘Buckler Found at Caerhun’, Arch. Camb, lxxxvi (1931), 365. He calls it Tudor, and ‘not even necessarily Welsh’.Google Scholar

104 Vol. VII, p. 181.

105 Appendix IV, no. 3b: 4.

106 Appendix IV, no. 3b:5.

107 Catalogue of Antiquities, Works of Art and Historical Scottish Relics Exhibited in the Museum of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain during their Annual Meeting, held in Edinburgh, July 1856 (Edinburgh, 1859), p. 68.Google Scholar

108 I have inspected all the bucklers of which the present location is known with the exception of nos. 3b:3 and 4.

109 The numbers refer to thelist on pp. 102–10.

110 Coles, John M., ‘European Bronze Age Shields’, Proc. Prehist. Soc. xxviii (1962), 175–9.Google Scholar