The desire for a better defence than a steel cap and camail and a less cumbrous one than the great helm, in which the knight rode half stifled and half blind, brought in as a fighting headpiece the basinet with a movable viser. This is found throughout this century, disappearing in the next when the salet and its varieties displaced it. But there were many knights who still fought with the great helm covering basinet and camail, a fact which speaks eloquently of the mighty blows given in this warlike age. The many monumental brasses of the last half of the 14th century show us for the most part knights in basinet and camail with the face exposed, but their heads are commonly pillowed on the great helm and in any case the viser would hinder the artist's desire to show the knight's features. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--Brass of Sir John de Foxley. From Waller's _Monumental Brasses_.] The fully-armed man of the latter half of the 14th century seems to have worn a rounded breastplate and a back-plate over his chain hawberk. Chaucer's Sir Thopas must always be cited for the defences of this age, the hero wearing the quilted haketon next his shirt, and over that the habergeon, a lesser hawberk of chain mail. His last defence is a fine hawberk "full strong of plate" showing that "hawberk" sometimes served as a word for the body plates. Over all this is the "cote-armure" or surcoat. Many passages from the chroniclers show that the three coats of fence one over the other were in common use in the field, and Froissart tells a tale of a knight struck by a dart in such wise that the head pierced through his plates, his coat of mail and his haketon stuffed with twisted silk. The surcoat in the age of Edward III. became a scanty garment sitting tightly to the body, laced up the back or sides, the close skirts ending at the fork of the leg with a dagged or slittered edge. The waistbelt is rarely in sight, but the broad belt across the hips, on which the dagger comes to hang as a balance to the sword, grows richer and heavier, the best work of the goldsmith or silversmith being spent upon it. Arms and legs and feet become cased in plate of steel or studded leather, and before the mid-century the shoulder-plates, like the steel shoes, are of overlapping pieces and the elbow also moves easily under the same defence. (See fig. 7.) 15th century.