‘This is my Sword. There are many like it but…’

Every knight needs a sword and, with my splendid harness finished, I needed a sword that was every bit its equal in status, quality and accuracy.

It was time to go back to the books, do some more research, make some hard choices, and elicit the help of a rather talented friend.

The Right Sword for the Right Time.

The sword obviously had to match with the date and geographical origin of my harness. Just as with the armour, sword styles changed over the centuries (indeed across the decades) and, whilst there were pan-European fashions that transcended borders, there were also regional variations that meant that a German knight would wear a sword that was subtly different from that of an English knight, or a knight from France.

The easiest option to ensure that the sword matched the harness would have been to go back to the effigy. No matter what uncertainties there might be about the dating of the effigy (although there were relatively few with the one at Clehonger) the sword carved with the harness on the figure should be a good solid match.

Sir Henry Pembridge (probably), at Clehonger Church, Herefordshire (Author’s photo).

The unusual trilobate pommel on the sword on the Sir Henry Pembridge effigy in Clehonger (Author’s photo).

The problem is that the Clehonger effigy has a sword that is almost unique. Even for a longsword (that is to say a sword designed to be wielded with either one or two hands), it is long, reaching from below the effigy’s foot (its tip sitting in the mouth of the hound at Sir Henry’s feet) to the centre of his chest. It also has a very unusual pommel type. A trefoil shape, reminiscent of the swords of the early medieval period, rather than the far more common circular pommel of Sir Henry’s own time.

It is always tricky when doing a recreation for the purposes of living history to find a balance between depicting the extraordinary/unique - which is always different and exciting for the public and the reenactor - and providing examples of the norm. This was the case here. The sword on Sir Henry’s effigy is a rare example of its form, and this in itself would be an excellent talking point. However, without having a context for why the sword depicted should be unusual it becomes very difficult to then provide an explanation to the public without falling back on the standard, wholly valid but ultimately unsatisfying historians answer of ‘we don’t know’.

A Great Exemplar of its Type.

I decided that the better choice was to go for the sort of sword that would most commonly be found hanging from the belt of a knight wearing my style and date of harness. It would also need to be ornamented to match the opulence of the armour. Something for a mid-ranking nobleman of good family, but not one of the great barons.

It was time to turn to that bible of the student of medieval swords, Ewart Oakeshott’s Records of the Medieval Sword. Oakeshott had been a collector of medieval swords for most of his life and, through decades of researching and handling, had developed a typology that has become the standard for describing weapons amongst scholars of the subject.

Oakeshott's typology provides a means by which the three main elements of a sword - the blade, the pommel, and the cross (often referred to as the quillons, which is a later term) - can be dated. His access to and knowledge of original swords, whether in his own collection or through the contacts he had among fellow private collectors and museum curators, was unsurpassed. In short, if you are looking for details of a sword of a particular date, Oakeshott’s work is your first, and often last, port of call.

The sword in all its glory. Big and heavy for an arming sword, it still handles beautifully, a testament to its maker’s skill (Author’s photo).

A Sword to Tell a Story.

So, I wanted a mid-fourteenth century blade, cross and pommel. That narrowed things down. Oakeshott has five blade forms for the mid-fourteenth century - Types XIV to XVIII, but at least two of these are for longsword rather than the arming sword form that I was after. The pommel and cross were less easy to pin down as the forms of these remain in use over centuries. However, for the mid-fourteenth century arming sword, a circular pommel was most likely and, given what my thoughts were on decoration, the most appropriate. The cross would be similarly straight forward, but delicately shaped.

The sword was not going to be a plain one. Whilst knights undoubtedly had workaday swords they were never ones to skimp on decoration. Besides, being honest, this was probably my only opportunity to have a truly historical knightly sword.* It needed to be special.

As well as being a vanity project (who doesn’t want a beautiful sword?) the sword was also going to be an educational tool. I wanted it to have elements that would allow me to talk to the public about the sword as a symbol as well as a weapon. The connection between the sword and knighthood is an obvious one, but it also provided an opportunity to start a discussion of the knight and religion (something that is so often missing from medieval re-enactment). An engraved blade would be the obvious approach. There are plenty of examples of swords with inscriptions down the length of the blade, the majority of which are invocations of God, Christ, or the saints. However, by 1350 - the date of my harness - such inscriptions are increasingly rare, whether because such sentiment was going out of fashion, or because the newer styles of sword blade tended to have a profile that did not leave a flat area on which to place an inscription.**

The alternative was for the inscription to be on the pommel or cross of the sword. Again, there were examples of swords with religious invocations on either surface. However, I had other plans for the decoration on the pommel.

The third option for connecting the sword with the religiosity of knighthood was the addition of a relic within it. This practice was an old one. In the twelfth-century epic The Song of Roland, Roland’s sword Durendal is studded with them, including a tooth of St Peter, some of St Baasi’s blood, a lock of St |Denis’ hair and a piece of the Virgin mary’s clothing; a veritable arsenal of sacred protection!

I wasn’t about to go that far, but a fair number of fourteenth-century pommels had an inset capable of holding a small relic, and one sword, in particular, appeared to have the relic still in place.

The decoration on the edge of the brass pommel is drawn from the contemporary Battle Abbey sword (Author’s photo).

A Sword Fit for a King.

Okay, truth be told I had had this sword in mind from the very first. In Oakeshott's Records, it gets its own appendix, as its history and provenance have been somewhat problematic. Reputed to have belonged to Edward III, the weapon is now in a private collection. (This is why I don’t have any pictures, as there are none in the public domain, however, you can see some here.)

It is a superb piece, even when seen through the black and white photos of Oakeshott’s book. All of its elements -the blade, the cross and the pommel - date to the mid-fourteenth century; bang on for my interpretation. It has a diamond-section blade, 86 centimetres long (a Type XVIIIa if you follow Oakeshott’s typologies). The blade had been struck with the badge of the Order of the Garter and a Portcullis, with a little bell or flower bud maker’s mark. Oakeshott, who had the opportunity to closely inspect the blade, said that it had clear signs of wear, shining and ‘severe combat’, with a patination that suggested it had been well cared for, cleaned and maintained for a good while before an equally long period of neglect.

The pommel (Type K) and cross (Type 6) were both contemporary with the blade (this is not always the case. A blade sometimes would be re-hilted with a new pommel and cross to bring it up to the latest fashion). They were made of iron covered in a layer of gold foil. On one side of the pommel was inset an enamel plate displaying the English royal arms as adopted by Edward in 1340, with the leopards of England and the fleur de lys of France quartered. On the other side was a hollow in which lay a piece of cloth behind a disc of polished chalcedony. The cloth was undoubtedly a relic, perhaps a fragment of Christ’s shroud (or the shroud of Edward the Confessor as one commentator confidently announced), or the Virgin’s Raiment. The grip, of adder skin, showed signs of wear where a hand had repeatedly held it. This really was a sword fit for a king, but it was also, in Oakeshott’s view, a functional and effective sword for combat.

The pommel of my sword, with its relic of my re-enactment past (Author’s photo).

A Not So Pale Imitation

My sword isn’t that fancy but it has the same dimensions and weight, around three and a half pounds. This makes it on the heavy side for a single-handed sword, but the pommel balances it beautifully. It is a sword that is quick to cut or to thrust, and manageable in one hand.

The pommel is of brass rather than of gilded iron and retains the hollow containing a relic, in this case for my own history in re-enactment: a cross cut from the guidon that I marched under when I was in command of Wardlaw’s Dragoons, the Sealed Knot regiment I joined at 16, at the beginning of a journey which led to the armour and this sword. It seemed a fitting conceit.

On the other face, I couldn’t very well have the arms of a king. I didn’t want to be tied to the Pembridge effigy too closely (there might be times when being Pembridge doesn’t make sense at the venue I am in), so a heraldic design of any kind was too limiting. Instead, I decided on something a bit different, and that contrasted with the piety of the relic. Drawing on the Thrope falchion held at Norwich Cathedral, which has a similar date to Edward’s sword, the other side of the pommel features a babewyn, one of those cartoonish characters which medieval illustrators used to fill the margins of their works, and which spread into architecture and metalwork too. There is something very satisfying and medieval in reproducing this piece of whimsy in a weapon made for combat.

The space around both insets was filled with a floral motif, and the edge of the pommel with a geometric pattern, both drawn from another contemporary sword, the so-called Battle Abbey Sword.

The web-footed babewyn on the Thorpe Falchion is a wonderful example of medieval whimsy (Author’s photo).

Tower Forge’s modern interpretation of the Thorpe babewyn (Author’s photo).

I am very fortunate in having a re-enactment friend who is also a very fine bladesmith, and he agreed to take on the project. I know he was nervous (the blade was hand-forged, entailing hours of hard work with a hammer, and it could all be undone by the blade warping during the tempering process). The decoration, from the heat-blued cross to the reproduction of the babewyn, was all done by hand, with consummate attention to detail. With its ox-blood red grip and scabbard (the latter decorated with more handmade brasswork) the finished project is sublime, the work of a true craftsman, and every bit the sword I would have wanted.

Does your Sword have a Name?

You might expect that having waxed lyrical about its beauty, and given how important an element in my interpretation it is, that the sword must have a name. After all, don’t all swords? The fact is that by the fourteenth century the naming of swords has long gone out of practice. It is very much a thing of the early medieval period, when the culture of swords was different, and swords in the sagas could have an agency and destiny all of their own. This was echoed in the epics and romances (so the swords of Arthur and his knights, or Roland and his companions can all receive names) but there is no evidence for the naming of swords in real life.

So, there you have it. This sword is mine. There are not, in fact, many like it, but this one is indeed mine.

* Yes, I have other swords (rather a lot, actually) but they are all blunted for reenactment use, or with blades designed to flex when used in HEMA sparring. That’s quite different from a sharp accurate replica of a medieval weapon.

** There’s an awful lot to be said about inscribed blades and the relationship with religious practice and the rituals of knighthood. It’s something that is going to be a chapter in my forthcoming book on the high medieval sword.

Further Reading

• Ewart Oakeshott, Records of the Medieval Sword (Woodbridge, 1991).

• C. Segebade, ‘Edward’s Sword? A Non-Destructive Test of a Medieval King’s Sword.’ AIP Conference Proceedings Vol. 1525, Iss. 1 (2013). p.417.