Occasionally we find represented a form of visor (or may we call it the ventaille?) permanently attached to a steel cap when worn over the mail coif, as, for instance, in an illumination of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, 1192, quoted and illustrated by Planché. In the illumination the head-piece figures as a low cylindrical helmet, to which is riveted a visor resembling an inverted letter T, the lower arms drawn out to some width, indeed, much after the fashion of the helmet referred to shown in the Huntingfield Psalter (page 68, Fig. 84).
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Fig. 140. Martyrdom of Thomas à Becket
Latin Psalter, XII-XIIIth century
Harleian MSS. 5102, British Museum
The low-crowned steel cap, or, as it was termed, the cervelière, was not invariably placed beneath the coif of mail, for we can quote three instances where a coif is represented thrown back from the head, certainly suggesting that whatever was the steel head-piece worn with it, it must have been placed over and not under it, as otherwise it would have been exposed to view. An illumination already referred to (page 56, Fig. 70), from the album of Villard de Honnecourt (about 1260) shows the mail coif thrown back, but beneath it is represented a close-fitting bonnet of some soft material to protect the wearer's head from the chafing of the mail. Again on a brass at Norton, Durham, the coif of mail is depicted thrown back and the head bare, whilst in the later effigy, supposed to be that of Robert Ross, in the Temple Church, London, the same evidence asserts itself.
In an illuminated page (Fig. 140) depicting the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket, from a Latin psalter of the transitional years of the XIIth-XIIIth century (Harleian MSS. 5102, British Museum), the head-pieces of the so-called avenging knights are of these three types to which we have alluded. The foremost has the low cylindrical helmet worn over the mail coif, the knight behind him the chain mail coif, with apparently no steel cap beneath, for his hair is visible above the forehead, whilst the hindmost knight wears a high
