The Anglo-Saxon thane carried a sword, then solely a horseman’s weapon; while the footman was armed with a spear, an axe, a shield, and a dagger. The Anglo-Saxon spear was long in the blade, and the pole-axe narrow bladed and single edged. Among the valuable Anglo-Saxon records we have, the Ælfric MS., which is profusely illuminated, and contains a good deal of information about swords, mentions the tri-lobed hilt; but the richest mine of contemporary history, for delineation of the weapons of the eleventh century, is undoubtedly the Bayeux tapestry. The arms given in that invaluable record are the lance, the sword, the mace, the axe, and the bow. This bow is shorter than the weapon known as the English longbow, which was not used in battle much before the reign of Edward I. Some of the Anglo-Saxons appear with javelins. The weapons used by the Normans at Hastings still retained traces of their Scandinavian origin. Their army was rich in cavalry and archers, while their Anglo-Saxon adversaries were but ill-provided in these respects. The sword was used in conjunction with the dagger as early as the reign of Edward I. As the great advantages of the use of infantry became more apparent, the yeomanry began to play a much more important part in the warlike combinations of the age; while even the peasantry had now become indispensable in all campaigning on a large scale. It was mostly, however, the freedman who went to the wars, while the serf remained at home to till the soil. This it was which brought the bow and other footman’s weapons so much to the fore. Bills and scythe-knives[34] appear to have been in use early in the eleventh century, indeed probably long before, as this was the class of weapons most easily extemporised from the implements of husbandry. The goedendag, the weapon of the guilds and boors of Flanders, and later of the lower orders in France, is by some considered to have been a ploughshare mounted on a pole or staff; but this is a question which will be dealt with in the more detailed descriptions of the various weapons covered by these notes. The flail also, with its military adaptations, contributed its quota at a very early period towards the armament of the masses; and the English longbow was the arbiter of victory in many a stricken field, and was the main factor in breaking down the inordinate power and oppression of the English, or perhaps more properly speaking, of the Norman barons. English archers carried stakes pointed at both ends as part of their equipment. When driven into the ground with their points towards the enemy they formed an efficient stockade against a charge of horsemen, as the horses impaled themselves upon them. The mace and its kindred weapons, with their common prehistoric ancestor the club, and the long line of the more rudimentary axes, from the remotest times, all played their part in the wars of the earlier “middle ages.”