Hi its Tod of Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here. Today we're going to
have a look at five daggers from the 16th century. Really based around England
so the styles are different in different parts of the world. Fashion started
really in Italy and then tended to move westwards towards England so we're
always behind the rest of the continent. The first dagger we're going to talk
about is a simple quillon dagger. So you see one similar to this all the way back
to about 1070 is the earliest manuscript evidence of it that I've seen. But it's a
very simple dagger and stylistically things change a little bit particularly
the pommel but fundamentally this dagger form just continues all the way through
until sort of 1550 even 1600. Because don't forget if it's not your primary
purpose to be a soldier for instance, you don't need the latest up-to-date kit, you
just take what you've got. So there's a particularly good picture by Durer
of a merchant going to market and he's wearing a sword that's 200 years too old
for the Durer picture. He just took something that worked. So
although perhaps it's a little old fashioned by this point, this dagger will
suit somebody in the 16th century who for instance is going to muster. So
fighting is not his primary thing, but he has to turn up with weapons that's part
of the deal so he turns up and he takes what he's got. This sort of thing
perfectly suited to somebody who's going to go on campaign who's going to go
fighting but doesn't really want to invest his money. Next up is a bollock
dagger. Now this handle is quite different to the earlier bollock daggers
which tended to be turned, I'm not certain how these were manufactured but
it looks to me like they're actually carved out of a plank. This one I refer
to as a Mary Rose bollock dagger. The Mary Rose was Henry VIII's flagship and
it sank just off the southern coast in 1545 and it was absolutely chock-full of
daggers similar to this form. Quite a long blade on it 12 inches/30
centimeters or there abouts, a little bit bigger and smaller obviously, and this
hexagonal or octagonal hilt very often and again here comes down with an impact plate.
A brass plate at the bottom here and
that's just pinned in place so that you can actually manufacture it very easily,
so there's a couple of pins there that you can see. So this is the sort of
dagger that you'll be seeing on a lower status kind of a guy, so it's not going
to be merchant class it's all going to be well below that so yeoman farmers,
tradesmen, workers, journeymen, sailors of course. The kind of people who do a hard
living will be wearing knives such as this. The next up is the dudgeon dagger
but I'm going to show this now side by side with the Mary-Rose dagger. The
dudgeon dagger was a popular knife form in the north of England southern
Scotland towards the end of the sixteenth century. But there are quite a
few similarities between the Mary-Rose style bollock dagger and the dudgeon
dagger and you can see how one has lead into the other. You have an impact
plate here at the bottom in the Mary-Rose,
usually a brass or bronze. Here we have an impact plate which is usually of
steel, but the the location is the same, you often have two pins here and here
which go through the balls and into the guard. The reason they're there is it's
not a structural thing to hold the knife together, is to locate that guard when
you're carving the handle because otherwise the guard keeps on moving and
you won't get a good fit so it's just to locate the two while you're working it.
Both of these have got some sort of a pretty washer at the to, a peen washer
so there's a lot of language, a lot of similarity, between these two. The thing
that is also notable about the dudgeon dagger is they certainly had double
sided diamond edged blades, but also you quite often see some slightly weird
forms where it's flat on the back and then with these two very oblique shaped
edges here to give a nice isosceles triangle. Then a large ricasso here,
this one has just been hollow ground a little bit, but very often with dudgeon
daggers you have a flat here and you have a motto engraved on it. So often
these mottos which are on the ricasso are very personal things, they've
not just been bought out of a catalog or a showroom like that, so you often get
dates on them, get a little bit of scrollwork.
Then you get some sort of a motto like "God guide thy hand" or "Lord smite my
enemy" or whatever. There's a particular one that I came across years ago which
said "eat cheese or die" which I thought was fantastically weird motto and so in
fact I just had to go make one of those. And the sort of people that would wear
these daggers because of the geographic location being north of England/ southern
Scotland, yeah it's gonna be Border Reivers but it's also going to be the
people who are trying to deal with Border Reivers. So it's going to be the
merchants, the farmers, the better to do people, the gentlemen of Northern England
Southern Scotland at this time that's who would like these type of
daggers. Now dealing with about the same time period, are left hand daggers.
These would be worn by a gentlemen type fella, who's wearing a rapier and they go
on the small of the back so you can reach behind and grasp it with your left
hand. So these are being set up with a little staple on the back here so it
just hangs on the belt at an angle like that and it allows you to reach behind
and to pull it out.
The last dagger we are going to talk about is this stiletto.
The origin for these is in Italy and they're also very popular in Spain. The sort of
guys are going to be dueling in the street are the sort of guys are going to
favour stilettos. So it's definitely a status item, definitely a gentlemen's
type item, or a wannabe gentleman's type item, so basically the sort of young
louts, lads about town, with a bit of money, don't mind a bit of brawling,
they're the sort of people who are going to favour this. They're very small, very handy
type weapons and they are really frankly, unpleasant, they are purely offensive.
They're to do somebody harm, that is the purpose of a stiletto. Now as an Italian
fashion they gently and slowly make their way over to England so it's not
that you're going to see these things everywhere they're not going to be
common. But if you are a very fashionable, very well-to-do man, in London of the
time or possibly even Bristol the sort of the bigger trade centres. This is the
sort of knife that you would aspire to have, because it what it does is it tells anybody who sees it a few things about
you. It tells them that you've got money, that you've got contacts, that you're an
internationalist, you're a man of learning. If you own a knife like this,
which is not of local manufacture, it says an awful lot more about you than if
it is something like a Mary-Rose bollock dagger. So this would be the aspiring
thing of a gentleman or a wannabe gentleman. Well I hope you found that
interesting, it's obviously not an exhaustive study of all the knives
that are available in England in the 16th century, but it shows you sort of five
principle types that would have been around and the kind of people that would
be wearing them really. I hope it was interesting. I'd like to thank all of my
models for taking part and especially I'd like to thank Kentwell Hall for such a
fantastic location, so thank you. See you again