Helmets
THE GREAT BASCINET A solid plate protecting the wearer’s chin and throat appears to have become a typical addition to the bascinet throughout western Europe after c. 1410, if not before. The true ‘great’ bascinet was created when this plate was joined to a bascinet skull drawn down to the wearer’s shoulders. An excellent surviving example of this most basic of great bascinet constructions is now in the British Museum.
Here the skull has been extended down to overlap with the backplate,37 to which it would originally have been strapped by means of a leather attached to its interior by means of two rivets; the hole near its lower edge, probably for a bolt, is a later addition. The lower edge of the front neck plate, riveted to the sides of the skull, lines up with that of the extended onepiece skull. There are no pivot holes for an additional front neck plate, so we must assume the helmet never had one. There is also no means for fastening the helmet down at the front; fixing it in back but not in front may have been an attempt to balance protection and mobility, giving additional security while also permitting some slight movement of the helmet. The characteristic enlargement of the whole helmet, and the relative size of the face-opening, was conceived to permit the wearer’s head to move around inside. Allowance of the head to turn and nod while the helmet itself remained stationary distinguished the ‘great’ or ‘large’ bascinet from its smaller predecessors. The great bascinet was an extremely successful design. As well as being used on the battlefield until at least 1450, in the second half of the fifteenth century it was adapted for tournament combats fought both on foot and on horseback. For sporting use, great bascinets originally intended for the field were modified and pressed back into service, even into the early sixteenth century. Today a number of these helmets survive in addition to the one in the British Museum, either complete in all their parts or as fragmentary skulls only.
Fig. 1.94. Great bascinet, by Master ‘T’, Italian, c. 1410-30. Musée de l’Armée, Paris, inv. no. G. PO. 637.
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Fig. 1.95. Great bascinet, French or Italian, c. 1410-30. Museo de Navarra, Pamplona.
Fig. 1.93. Great bascinet, c. 1410-20. British Museum, London, inv. no. M&LA OA 2190.
Fig. 1.1.96. Great bascinet, French or Italian, c. 1410-30. From the tomb of Jean Salins de Vincelles, now in the Musée de Beaux-Arts, Dijon.
Perhaps the earliest example of this helmet form is the bascinet, c. 1390-1400, which once hung over the tomb of John de Melsa (d. 1377) in the Church of St. Bartholomew in Aldborough, North Yorkshire (now Royal Armouries inv. no. IV. 1677).
Fig. 1.92. Ashwellthorpe k. 1417.
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