The helmet is a brimless and pointed cap, either all of metal or of leather or even wood framed and strengthened with metal. Its characteristic piece is the guard which protects the nose and brow from swinging cuts, so disguising the knight that William must needs take off his helmet to show his men that he had not fallen. Such a nasal appears in a 10th-century illumination; at the time of the Conquest it was all but universal. It grows rare and all but disappears in the 13th century, although examples are found to the end of the middle ages. The helmet is laced under the chin, and under it the knight often wore a hood of mail or quilting which covered the top of the head, the ears and neck, but left the chin free--in two or three cases he has this hood without the helmet. A close coif was probably worn beneath it when it was of ringed mail, to spare the fretting of the metal on the head. The knights' legs are shown in most cases as unprotected save by stout hose or leg-bands: only in two or three instances does the tapestry picture a warrior with armed legs, and it is perhaps significant of the rarity of this defence that the duke is so armed. The feet are covered only by the leather boot, the heels having prick spurs. Broad-bladed swords with cross-hilts of straight or drooping quills are fastened with a strap and buckle girdle to the left side. They have a short grip, and the blade would seem to be from 2-1/2 to 3 ft. in length. The chieftain unarmed in his house is often seen with unbuckled and sheathed sword sceptre-wise in his hands, carrying it as an Indian raja will nurse his sheathed tulwar. The ash spears brandished or couched by the knights as they charge seem from 7 to 8 or 9 ft. in length. In a few cases a three-forked pennon flutters at the end. The axe, a weapon which the Normans, in spite of their Norse ancestry, do not carry in the battle, is of the type called the Danish axe, long-shafted, the large blade boldly curved out. Maces, such as that with which the bishop of Bayeux rallies his young men, seem knotted clubs of simple form. Short and strong bows are drawn to the breast by the Norman archers. Of the shields in the fight, four or five borne by the English are of the old English form--large, round bucklers of linden-wood, bossed and ribbed with iron. For the rest the horsemen bear the Norman shield, kite-shaped, with tapering foot, and long enough to carry a dead warrior from the field. On the inner side are straps for the hand to grip and a long strap allowed the knight to hang the shield from his neck. Let us note that although wyvern-like monsters, crosses, roundels and other devices appear on these shields, none of them has any indication of true armory, whose origins must be placed in the next century. 12th Century.