The long, sleeveless surcoat seen over King John's mail on his broad seal goes through the century and is often embroidered with arms. The shield becomes flat-topped the better to receive armorial charges. The great helm is common, although many knights on the day of battle like better the freedom of the mail hood with a steel cap worn over or under its crown, keeping for the tourney-yard the great helm which towards the century-end begins to carry its towering crest. Great variety is seen in the forms of the flat or round-topped helm, some being in one piece, pierced for sight and air, others having hinged or movable ventailes. At the end of the century a sugar-loaf type is the established form. The knight's hawberk is worn over a gambeson of linen, quilted linen or cotton, which lesser men wear with a steel cap for all defence. Breast and back plates also are sometimes borne under the hawberk, and the first plates in sight at last appear in those knee-cops which protect the joining of the upper and lower hose, and in a few examples of bainbergs or greaves of metal or leather. At the end of Henry III.'s reign we have the admirable illustrations of a manuscript of Matthew Paris's _Lives of the Offas_, with many pictures of knights. (See fig 5.) Here we see knights with knee-cop and greave and a plenty of curious headpieces, the plain mail hood and mail hoods with a plate ventaile to cover the face, barrel-helms and round-topped helms and even round-topped helmets with the Norman nose-guard. In the last half of the 13th century appears the curious defence known as _alettes_. This name is given to a pair of leather plates generally oblong in form and tagged to the back of the shoulder. As a rule they are borne to display the wearer's arms, but being sometimes plain they may have had some slight defensive value, covering a weak spot at the armpit and turning a sweeping sword-cut at the neck. They disappear in the earlier years of Edward III. Surcoat, shield and trapper have the arms of their owner. The rowel-spur makes a rare appearance. Weapons change little. although the sword is often longer and heavier. Richard I. had favoured the cross-bow, in spite of papal denunciations of that weapon hateful to God, and its use is common through all the 13th century, after which it makes way for the national weapon of the long-bow. 14th century. In the 14th century, the high-day of chivalry, the age of Crecy and Poitiers, of the Black Prince and Chandos, the age which saw enrolled the noble company of the Garter, the art of the armourer and weapon-smith strides forward. At its beginning we see many knights still clad in chain mail with no visible plate. At its end the knight is often locked in plates from head to foot, no chainwork showing save the camail edge under the helm and the fringe of the mail skirt or hawberk. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--Brass of Sir John de Creke. From Waller's _Monumental Brasses._]