PLATE LXIV.] Towards the close of the thirteenth century we find an armour offering a new appearance, to which has been given the name of Banded Mail. Notwithstanding much careful consideration, its exact structure has not yet been discovered, though the representations of it are very abundant. For a whole century, manuscript illuminations, monumental brasses, painted windows, royal and baronial seals, metal chasings and sculptures of various kinds, afford us an infinity of examples; in none of which has hitherto been detected the exact evidence either of its material or its construction. Monumental sculptures, from their large size and the careful finish of their details, might have been expected to solve a problem which they only perplex. The effigy[344] here engraved, of a knight of the De Sulney family, exhibits the warrior armed from head to foot in a suit of banded-mail; and in the following woodcut we have given a portion of the armour of this figure, of its real size. The profile view has been copied with particular care, in the hope that it might be of use in determining the structure of this very singular defence. By many writers this fabric has been described as pourpointerie; by others it has been considered as only a conventional mode of representing the ordinary chain-mail. Mr. Kerrich, whose opinions will always be received with, the greatest respect, speaking of the rows of little arcs used to express the latter defence, says: "When there are lines between the rows, whether _two_ or only one, I conceive it means still but the same thing[345]." M. Pottier, in the text to Willemin's _Monuments Inédits_, does not distinguish the so-called banded-mail from the other, but names it simply "armure de mailles[346]." But it seems difficult to believe that the common chain-mail could be intended, so widely different are the two modes of representation, whether in sculpture or in painting. Observe, for instance, the details--especially the portion in profile--from the effigy at Newton Solney. And in the following subject from the Romance of Meliadus, (Add. MS. 12,228, f. 79,) there seems no assignable reason for marking one figure so differently from the rest, unless the armour itself were of a distinct kind[347]. [Illustration: No. 65.] [Illustration: No. 66.]