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Fig. 149a. A pair of knee-cops
Early XIVth century. Collection: Mr. W. H. Riggs, Metropolitan Museum, New York
We have now to deal with the first developments of plate armour for the body, as it is in the middle of the XIIIth century that we note for the first time the introduction of plates as an additional defence to the chain-mail. Whatever the nature of this defence, whether iron, copper, or hardened leather, its first position was over the vulnerable knee-joints, to be followed almost immediately by its application to the elbow. It is somewhat difficult to determine if it was first added as a defence or as a shield against the constant drag and chafing of the mail on the prominent joints of the legs and arms. A shield for this purpose would seem to have been almost a necessity, when it is considered that both the sleeves of the hauberk and the chausses of mail had by now become closer fitting. An admirable example of the knee-plates, knee-cops, or genouillères, added alone, is to be seen in the effigy of an unknown knight in Gosberton Church, Lincolnshire, the date of which should be about 1260(Fig. 150). Actual defences of such a type exist only in one known collection, that of Mr. W. H. Riggs, given to the Metropolitan Museum of New York, where several pieces of boiled leather defences for knees or elbows are to be seen (Fig. 149A). They have been assigned to the XIVth century, and were discovered in a grotto in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux. Excellent counterparts of genouillères that purport to be of mid-XIIIth century date are in the Sir Noël Paton Collection, Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. These we illustrate as showing the probable appearance of such plates (Fig. 151, a, b). A representation of genouillères differently constructed, and made probably for a different purpose, are seen upon the effigy, now in Hatfield Broad Oak Church, Essex, of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who died in 1221, but whose effigy does not seem to have been completed until about 1260. Here we note over the mail of the thighs a form of trouser of gamboised or quilted material, reaching to the knee, the knees
