In all the defences which were mainly composed of fabrics, the object seems to have been to provide a substance which would resist cut or thrust and at the same time would offer a certain resiliency to the blow. A practical experiment upon thick leather and upon folded or padded cloth will prove this. Till recent years the Japanese made much of their armour of quilted fabrics, the chief drawback to which was its heat and want of ventilation. [Illustration: _PLATE XXIII_ MAN AT ARMS. MIDDLE OF XV CENT.] This linen armour or linen and fabric covering for armour was a distinct craft in itself, and was practised by the linen armourers, who had the sole right to cover armour or to make such defences as have been enumerated above. That they were also tailors we know from their subsequent incorporation with the Merchant Tailors and also from the Wardrobe Accounts[108] of Edward I, in which Robinet, the King’s tailor, is mentioned as making robes and armours and banners. Besides the lining of armour and the provision of padded defences of fabric, there was a large field of employment in the covering of armour. As may be noticed in Appendix A, this covering of helmets seems to have been common in the first years of the fourteenth century. There were three reasons for covering the steel head-piece with fabric. Firstly, as Chaucer writes with regard to the mail hauberk (page 78), to keep it from wet, the enemy of all iron and steel work; secondly, as Roger Ascham writes of the peacock-wing for arrows, “for gayness”; and thirdly, to prevent the glitter of metal attracting attention.[109] In the _Treatise_ of Johan Hill, written in 1434 (Appendix C, page 173), the covering of the armour, especially for the legs, is ordered to be of scarlet “because his adversarie shall not lightly espye his blode.” Helmet-bags are mentioned in inventories, etc. In 1578 we find “steel caps with covers” noticed in more than one will,[110] and in the Lieutenancy Accounts for Lancashire, _temp._ Elizabeth, the archer’s dress includes a “scull and Scottish cap to cover the same” (Fig. 46). Several helmets in the Waffensammlungen at Vienna still show the silk and satin coverings, and in Munich a triple-crowned burgonet has a black velvet cover. The highly ornate Venetian sallads, covered with crimson velvet, over which is set a gilt open-work decoration of metal, are fairly common in collections (Plate XVI). [Illustration: FIG. 46. Sallad with cover, from a sixteenth-century engraving.]