ABSTRACT
In the fifth chapter of our Third Book we described the development of knightly armour down to the end of the eleventh century, when it consisted of the conical helmet furnished with a nasal, of a long mail-shirt with or without a coif to cover the head and neck, and occasionally of guards for the legs (pcreae bainbergae). 2 We must now make clear the stages by which this comparatively simple equipment gradually passed into the heavy and complicated plate armour of the fourteenth century.
