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Figurę 81. Hilt of the sword from the cofFin of a Prince of Castile, Fernando de la Cerda, who died in 1270. The pommel is of bronze, and the odginał yellow and red cord binding of the grip sur-vives in spite of the dead hand of Fernando having rested upon it from the time of his burial in 1270 until he was taken out and undressed in 1943.

are today. What, for example, is meant in 15th-century texts by "a Bastard Sword"? For that datę, we have no documentary evidence (or rather, I should say I don't know of any, whieh is quite different) for the use of the word, but from a French document of the 17th-century, we have a positive definition. Marc de Vulson, in his In Vray Theatre d'Honneur, discussing a duel whieh took place in 1549 before Henri II, describes the swords used: "...deux espee bastardes pouvant servir a une main ou a deux..." (two bastard swords, being able to servc with one hand or with two). Though this is a latc reference, Vulson was probably using a contemporary reference to these swords of 1549; and at that datę, such weapons had changed hardly at all from those in use two centuries earlier. The 20th-century term "hand-and-a-half" sword has bcen coined the bettcr to define a Bastard Sword, but we are by no means surę that a 15th-century knighdy ghost, return-ing, would know what we mean by it, especially if he were Spanish, Italian, or German, or indeed anything but an Englishman or a French mail. So when such terms are met with in medieval writ-ings, we have to grope about for their meaning

Figurę 82. Hilt of.the sword of Sir Robert de Bures, from his brass in the church at Acton in Suffolk, c. 1320.