While on this subject of suits of mail, I may with advantage overstep the limits of this century--as, indeed, I have already done--and mention that such went on increasing so greatly in protective perfectness, and, _pari passu_, in their oppressive weight, that a knight falling off the horse upon which he had been placed lay perfectly helpless; and history records many times that they were slain by clowns and boys while lying helpless on the ground. When the style of protective armour became so exaggerated, a man so hampered could do little more than hold his spear and guide his horse. Until at last, about the year 1602, King James I. summed up the past experience of armour thus:--"It was an admirable invention, which preserved a man from being injured,--and made him incapable of injuring any one else." In some books it is stated that the introduction and gradually increasing use of gunpowder in war led by degrees to the abandonment of shields; but the above evidences completely refute such an idea. Heavy mail armour, exaggerated into an absurdity--as pointed out by King James--did so disappear when it became evident that such afforded no protection whatever against a small bit of well-directed lead. But shields had already been abandoned by the knights,--long before, at a period when gunpowder was as yet a great and rare mystery. Besides, we find round shields were still in continued use by the foot-soldiery, when every battlefield was contested with fire and sword--the smoke as well as the din of battle. Moreover, examples have come down to us of such shields with fixed pistols projecting through, and with a peep-hole for sighting. Thus shields were made the handmaid of gunpowder; and, as a matter of fact, they were in use by foot soldiers so late as the middle of the seventeenth century. [Illustration] We noticed that the heater shields which obtained so largely during this century, and grew less and less pointed as it progressed, at last became much squarer. The seal of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, 1372, might well be taken for the fifteenth century; the square heater, with blunt-shaped base; the inscription in Gothic, and curiously placed at the top and bottom; and the two supporting helmets, with mantlings and huge panaches, out of which appear below the hinder half of the bodies and legs of two animals, the rest of their carcasses being crammed inside these helmets. This is taken from the engraving in _Herald and Genealogist_, vol. ii, p. 56. [Illustration] But from about this date downwards we can perceive much more discriminating taste exercised in designing seals. The seal of Richard Earl of Arundel, 1330-76, from the engraving in _Herald and Genealogist_, vol. ii, p. 54, is an example of such beautiful design and execution.[3]