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that thousand-year period. A large proportion of that huge quantity has been lost forever, though no doubt can exist that many morc sucli medieval swords as we now have for study still lic where rhey fell or were placed in rivers or buried in the ground - as well as many morę in private collections that have never been published. We know, for instance, that in many of the castles in Spain and Portugal, belonging to noble families, there are large numbers of very filie swords of all periods, still quite undiscovered by us. Little by littlc, one by one, these may come to light to be photographed and published. Some may even yet escape into our world!

Bearing all this in mind, those whose special interest and study is of the European medieval sword (or indeed of any other period or region) must beware of the usual facile judge-ment of the "expert" faced with a cross or pommel of unusual form, that such a sword must be a fake because "he has never before seen one like it." Such hasty and ill-considered judgement not only gives the Kiss of Death to what may be an extraordinarily fine specimen, it is in itself both absurd and dishonest. If any such expert could claim to have seen and examined all the countless thousands of swords produced in the Middle Ages, or in any specific period of five hundred years, or even of one century - and he could declare that never among all those had he found one that resembled that which he was then passing judgement on, then his opinion would have to be taken verv seriously, as both honest and sensible. As such a scenario is pal-pably impossible, then such didactic opinions must be considered to eon tai n elements of personal preju-dice or be nothing but moonshine, of no help to others stumbling along his path.

It is only rarely that it is possible to give precise dates and historical contexts to surviving swords, except in the extremely rare cases of well-preserved and docu-mented swords such as the wonder-ful "family" sword of the Comptes de Dreux, which was madę and used between 1220 and 1309, when it was captured and held as a much-valued trophy by the Saracens; or the now authentically established sword of Edward III of England, a national treasure lost to us forever because of such unsound negative evidence. When it came into the possession of an owner not afraid to submit it to the very latest scientific test processes, it was

nroved to uenuine in everv resnect    Figurę 123. A Bastard sword German c.1540, in a privatc collec-

^{[    F    F}    tion. Tooled leather grip. BL: 42.5"; OL: 51Wt 3lb 1 loz.