In dress and weapons armour had not yet disappeared, but it was much less cumbrous. The corselet, with a morion, or open head-piece, and thigh guards were still in general use; but plates of armour were frequently fastened to any ordinary tunic for the defence of the shoulders, arms, and chest. The pike-men, with their twenty-foot pikes, wore corselets, and were much disinclined to march more than five or six miles a day, owing to the weight of their dresses and weapons. The bill-men were in lighter armour, and their weapons were shorter than the pike, but very effective against cavalry. The bill was a hook-shaped blade fastened to a wooden staff, with a projecting prong at the end and back. Pike-men and bill-men were employed in protecting archers from cavalry and in covering such field-guns as were in use. Civic guards and watchmen were armed with bills. The archers wore a buff-padded jacket, with sometimes an under-shirt of light chain-armour. A jerkin, of leather or cloth, was indiscriminately worn by all ranks. The firearms were of two kinds, leaving out of view artillery. The first could be fired with a rest, and the second were practically very light artillery. The harquebus and the small petronel belonged to the first class, and the culverin, the long petronel, and the muschite (from the French mosquet, a hawk) to the second. Two men were required to handle the weapons of the second class. They had long barrels. They were fired with a match, the barrels resting on an iron fork sticking in the ground. The harquebus was originally a musket-stock with a bow fixed to it; but the term was now used to mean the long-barrelled hand-gun with a touch hole and priming pan and trigger on the right side, which was rapidly driving out other weapons and rendering armour useless. [Illustration: A KNIGHT IN ARMOUR From Meyrick’s _Inquiry into Antient Armour_.] [Illustration: PIKEMAN From Grose’s _Military Antiquities_.]