[Hammering]
My name's Kevin Hicks welcome to my YouTube Channel The History Squad. Now we're here
today on location in England. The Lancaster Armories, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire just an
arrow shot away from Sherwood Forest and we're going to be chatting about some of the logistics
to do with armor on campaign, and we've got Alex here who tells me he knows what he's
talking about. So let's ask him the question. So you're going on campaign, you're a noble knight,
your servants are going to help you with your armor, you break a leg or leg of armor,
what'd you do? Yeah it's fairly interesting actually especially since we indeed have
um part of the text from 1450 about how an English knight should be armed by his
servants and what he should carry with him to bring on campaign. Of course it's much
different for a medieval knight and nobility because of course they would have servants
to bring all their haulage with them. A career soldier, he'd mostly be carrying stuff himself.
So I say the list that we have and it's actually named 'How a man shall be armed for his ease when
he shall fight on foot'. Talking about English foot soldiers and foot knights in particular,
and it's from 1450 so around 600 years ago and the list reads, it's fairly extensive but there's some
important parts to it. A tent should be put in the field, a chair for sitting, a basin for washing,
five loaves of bread. Now of course possibly to feed the other servants or be offered to
guests along with a gallon of wine. A board and pair of trestles, basically a flat pack table.
A broad cloth which could possibly be referring to a makeshift tablecloth or perhaps just spare
cloth to repair the knight's armor. A knife, a drinking cup, however it also specifically
mentions a drinking glass as well. Arming points, hammer, pincers, arming nails those are very
important. A kerchief which may be referring to kind of a medieval head scarf, then also moving on
to the weapons. So you've got the spear, the long sword, the arming sword, the dagger everything a
knightly person would need in combat, and then finally of course, keeping with the Christian
medieval tradition they'd have a pennant when doing their avowing and thier praying. So here
we have some arming nails that I've provided, these are basically rivets in the modern day.
So what these would be used for of course is actually attaching one segment of plate
to another. So we see here for example these three rivets to connect. So as you can see here
these arming nails or rivets are basically used to attach the armor to each other.
Something I've noticed uh with regards to for instance re-enactment armor is that you've got
nice big dome head rivets or you've got brass rivets here, but what I like to see is the way
these. Can you pass me one so I can just have a look. You've made these, they're tissue thin so
they will really flatten out and so when you're moving around your clothing or even a weapon on
the outside. You look, some of them are really quite, quite flush aren't they, if you can see
that. That's quite fantastic and I've seen this on original pieces when I worked at Warwick Castle
for instance, I was able to examine you know numerous pieces of armor and you can see that the
rivets were flush. You look at some of the armor you know from India maybe which is on the on the,
the cheaper end they are just factory made rivets and that that's a really good piece of detail,
I like that. It's just attention to detail. If you look at the originals you see they're very flush
because if you have the rivets you don't want any armor inside to kind of catch, maybe tear
on uh the clothing or the , so you'd want to make them as flush as possible. Likewise of course, any
rivets on the outside, if they're domed or if they have sharp edges they can always catch a blade and
that can cause some injuries or something that you didn't want to happen. So you really want to
hammer it as flush into the steel as you can and it just helps with the glancing blow much easier.
There's just something here I've noticed Alex, do you do you actually make these from scratch,
these buckles? With the buckles generally what we have is we import the basic shape and then we mold
the shape to an actual medieval design. So you make you make a modern into. Yeah, all attention
to detail and again buckles changed, decade to decade, century to century, so again it's one
another thing you have to look at so what kind of buckles and straps are they were using with
the kind of armor you're making. Just an extra level of research we have to do. Yeah I love that,
that amount of detail there to me is, is bang on. It's quite wow, it's quite lovely. So you're a man
at arms or a knight on campaign you've had a bit of an ambush or a bit of a scrap, they're
now going to take off your armor. So a couple of rivets are out or some of your points are broken,
who repairs it? If you're a lowly soldier, you'll probably repair your own armor. If you're a knight
of course you'd have your servants who would know a certain amount, they'd know your armor so they
can of course don the armor on you very quickly, very efficiently, but chances you would also bring
a blacksmith or an armorer along with you, because again you could afford to do so. Yeah for sure.
Um so with them they would bring certain things like hammers of course and they would help of
course to bang out dents in armor. We have a few different types here. Again, as we were
saying before if it ain't broke don't fix it, so the hammers we use in the workshop today
are pretty much, well, as they were almost yeah almost the same as about 600 years ago. So with
these hammers that we use for different things you can take out dents in the armor as well,
of course you can bang in rivets, there's a different type of rivet for attaching leathers
than there is for articulation. You tend to want a domer rivet and mushroom it, so you can still
get the movement and you're not just squeezing the two pieces of metal together. So again you'd use,
you know, you want to bring a different hammer with you for that, and again sometimes they have
different, uh like two different types of heads on them as well. So rather than bringing two
separate hammers you just bring the same hammer and it would be kind of a universal tool for you
as well. As indeed you do. Can you show me the anvil there because. Yeah of course. I've seen
these before and it never twigged. So you're on campaign, you're the servant, the boss's armor
is buckled or you've got to re-rivet. So this is your anvil, because normally when you say anvil,
it's the dirty great thing that's just there. Yeah? This I love because you can put that in
a hole, in a tree stump or whatever and you have your anvil. Yeah indeed all you need basically is
a flat surface or sometimes it'd be a little domed on top as well, just something you could literally
put in your pocket and as long as there's enough surface to literally put the armor on, just so
you've got a flat surface, enough to bang in a new rivet, that's all you need. So it can even be
smaller than that, that's probably actually quite on the large side, so if you want to take with
you on campaign. It wouldn't have such a hefty stake either, because again you can just rest
on a piece of wood, keep it secure, get a friend to hold it while you bang in the rivets, you're
only tapping away, you're not doing massive hits. So again you just get maybe one in 50 soldiers to
carry one of those with you,, they don't weigh that much, maybe a few kilograms that's it,
but in your backpack you're not really going to notice. There's one little thing, and I don't know
if you know about this. Can you pass us the points from over there. Yeah of course. Right, now,
your armor isn't strapped to you, it's pointed onto
you. You're probably going to mention that I'm not trying to steal your thunder, but
so your points go through your arming jack, which is the jacket underneath.
And it was the ladies who made this. Now a little saying from history.
Will you hurry up and get to the point. This is the point, right. So you're a knight in armor
or you're being dressed in your armor, it can go on for a very long time. So legend has it,
the saying when he turns to his squire and says 'Will you hurry and get to the point'. Did you
know that? I didn't actually no, I learn a new saying in armory every week it seems.
But uh yeah as I say I mean you'd carry a few of those just like again a modern serviceman in the
army today would wear so bring some new shoelaces with them yeah, shove them in a pocket, shove them
in your pouch, you're not going to notice the weight of them definitely and they can just be
kind of awkward to make while on campaign, so why not just bring a few with you. Likewise as well,
you would also bring probably a section of mail because around this time of course you're wearing
a plate armor and mail armor especially more mail probably in around the 1400s 1450s. If you were
a lowly soldier you'd probably be able to either make or get in contact with mail or more than of
course fully tailored plate armor and in in your own house you can tailor it how you want. So along
with uh mail sections as well for maybe you know you had a few arrows come in you and you needed
to replace a few mail sections, you'd pincer them out. Of course these are modern pincers but again,
if they ain't broken don't fix it, the same design as it used to be. So you'd break some
of the male links that were broken and then you would push the new mail links in and then this
would be a riveting pincer as well, or pliers, you just rivet in some new sections. So what
are you saying then so this is Joshua's, me son's right. So a couple of arrows have gone through it,
now what I know from experience is they will take out two or three links
and you've, you've then got a hole now what I assumed, see you've taught me something now,
was you would just put new links in one at a time, but what you're saying is, you've got a piece of
scrap or spare riveted male you can cut a piece out and then patch it, just the way I would patch
a coat. It's a classic case of either or, whatever you had with you to be honest. Again of course
depending on the type of mail especially regarding like coifs, standards, you tend to have patterns
go through with the mail, so again kind of just the same as fabrics, you know you'd have darts of
fabric, you wouldn't want to change that you'd need to replace the whole thing. Yeah yeah. So
you can change certain links, but yeah if it was just a standard piece on the chest for example,
there's no extra pattern work going in, no change of angle in how you sew the mail together yeah,
you could just get a section and it just saves you probably about half an hour or an hour in
your camp in the evening. I've actually seen close-ups some male standards, the collars,
at the Wallace collection. Yes indeed. And when you, you hold it up you realize that it is panels
that all match perfectly and they follow the contours of the,
the owner absolutely perfect. It's not just a case of making reams of of mail, maille or
chainmail as they call it nowadays, it's, it's actually tailored which is quite spectacular.
No exactly, and again we forget the kind of skill set that these medieval people would have you
know that's not your Classic Hollywood people covered in mud and draped in greys and browns,
looking all depressed all the time and hating life and being scared of God etc, these are people who
actually you know they had a lot of spare time on their hands depending on what they were doing. A
lot of down time where you're just left us to learn your own skills and that brings me on to
the next one actually, because there's o course there's mail here, there's metal and there's also
a lot of fabric that we use. So again, a modern example, just simple linen thread and um a needle,
it was a universal skill like you know you sending an email is a universal skill for people nowadays,
sewing during the medieval period pretty much everyone knew it, and again it's a lost art. In
the evening, campfire, you'd just be spending an hour sewing while you're having a drink and
your stew with your friends. You just made me smile because I mean I was in the army nearly
50 years ago I started. Oh gosh, I now feel old, but when I joined the army you got your hussif,
your housewife, your little sewing kit and if you had a hole in your woolen socks, you actually
repaired it and the fact is in history, people did have the skills to repair a pair of shoes,
to repair their, their jacket or whatever it was. But an interesting point you brought out there was
time, and that's the problem with the modern age, and it grates on me sometimes, we don't have time.
No, no this is very true, at least not to learn the right skills that we should really be you know
continuing with and again that's the whole idea of reenactment and making medieval armor you know,
there's no point to it today other than you know, respecting your history and trying to
you know re-grasp and relive it a little bit uh but again it's, it's still an important thing
to keep up and unfortunately armory in the UK at least is definitely a dying breed quite literally.
Yeah well, Lancaster Armories you're, you're getting to grips with it. I just got a little
thing. I was asked some time ago what's the worst invention in history? What do you think? Well
my own personal opinion would be the invention of different rooms in the house so that no one
continues to congregate around the central hearth, around the central fire because everyone's just in
their own rooms, on their beds just focusing on this and they weren't speaking to family members
anymore learning you know the news of the day, sharing gossip, talking about their hopes and
aspirations. There's no congregation around the central hearth anymore. No community. That would
be my opinion. Well I answered mine with a simple thing, I don't like the invention of the clock.
The clock? An interesting idea. Well you mentioned that they had time. Medieval man, medieval woman
had far more time off, leisure time than we have now, and you look at the stress of modern man.
You go back six seven hundred years, I know they had problems, I know they had their diseases,
but they got up when the sun got up. They went to bed when the sun went down or maybe
they sat around that hearth talking, and I feel sometimes that we are controlled by the clock.
We definitely are I think yeah. So getting back to the list of what a nobleman was expected to have,
you know tables chairs all of these things I think it's quite a fascinating,
but Alex if a guy is just a common bowman, one of a dozen men in a company,
his chainmail breaks or his armor breaks and what's he to do then? Well as we mentioned
of course a knight would have a vast retinue of professionals but the common lowly soldier
who was just a career s oldier or maybe someone who just wanted a little share of plunder uh, to
take home to their farmstead, again they'd have to learn all these skills themselves. One important
thing to note as well of course is that if you were a soldier just going and there on yourself,
you probably wouldn't have your bag filled with all this kind of stuff as well as your rations,
your foods, your water anything like that. Bedding for example, the big one that you had to take
with you. If not, you're on campaign you're going through many villages, many hamlets, many towns,
probably many cities as well so chances are if you don't have the items or you don't have the skills
to do it yourself you'll definitely be able to find someone who can most certainly do the stuff
for you. Again either pay them some money all friendly and everything, or serve them with the
business end of a bill hook and they'll definitely do your bidding for them. Just applying a bit of
pressure. D'you know it's interesting, I found on some research that I was doing on this very
subject and a noblemen had been cut to pieces, I think he was at Crecy and he was dragged away
during the fight and it was his men who stitched him up. Yeah, you know and you think to that oh
my goodness me. Well something I learned in the army was if you suddenly sliced yourself open and
there was nobody else around I could stitch you up just as a common soldier, it's just amazing
how through the ages we're still linked you know, we can still achieve what they could do.
Some things just haven't changed at all really again if you're going on campaign you're going
to need to make sure you bring all the relevant care in your uh in your bag with you. Rope.
Rope? Rope was one of our biggies and curry powder okay, lovely stuff. Well Alex,
thank you very much. Cheers, thank you. So I hope you enjoyed that little video of ours down
at Lancaster Armories and if ever you need to get yourself some really good munition quality armor,
this is the place to go. There's a link in the description. So if you did like our little video,
like, share and subscribe and don't forget to turn on the all notification buttons so you know what's
coming down the line from the History Squad. And finally a shout out to two of our Patreon members
hey guys, and that's Derek Schultz and Christopher Varner, hey guys thanks a million. Bye for now.
[Hammering]