regulations of Louis XI of France ordering these coats of defence to be made of from 30 to 36 folds of linen.1 Leather, either in its natural state or boiled and beaten till it could be moulded and then allowed to dry hard, was frequently used at this period for all kinds of defensive armour. In Chaucer's ' Rime of Sir Thopas ', from which we have quoted before, occur the words, ' His jambeux were of quirboilly.' The jambeauxwere coverings for the legs. This quirboilly, cuir bully, or cuirbouilli, when finished was an exceedingly hard substance, and was, on account of its lightness as compared to metal, much used for'tournament armour and for the Barding or defence for the horse. In the Roll of Purchases for the Windsor Park Tournament, held in 1278, mention is made of cuirasses supplied by Milo the Currier, who also furnished helms of the same material.2 In the Inventory of Sir Simon Burley, beheaded in 1338, we find under ' Armure de guerre ' :—' Un palet (a headpiece) de quierboylle.' There is a light leather helmet of the ' morion ' type, dated sixteenth century, in the Zeughaus at Berlin. Banded mail still appears in drawings or on monuments up to the end of the fourteenth century. We may now turn to the making up of these varied materials, and will endeavour, step by step, to trace the gradual evolution of the full suit of plate from the first additions of plate defence to mail till we find that the mail practically disappears, or is only worn in small portions where plate cannot be used. . Setting aside the plastron de fer, which, as has been noticed, is seldom shown in representations of armour, we find the first additional defence was the Poleyne or knee-cop. We must suppose that there was good reason for thus reinforcing the mail defence on this part of the body. Probably this was due to the fact that the shield became shorter at this period, and also because the position of the wearer when mounted exposed the knee, a very delicate piece of anatomy, to the attacks of the foot-soldier (Fig. il). Poleynés are mentioned in a wardrobe account of Edward I in 1 Arch. Joum., Ix. 95-136. 2 Archaeologia, xvii. 34 THE TRANSITION PERIOD CHAP, II