50234 oak sih 5

97

Swords of these dimensions, then, may legitimately bc considered to be two-handcrs; and in numerous literary references, inventories, and wills of the 13th and 14th centuries, we see that to their contempo-raries there was no doubt which was which. Jean Froissart, whose Chronicles of England, France and Spain give the most vivid and Iively (though possibly sometimes fictional) account of the first part of the Hundred Years¹ War, from about 1340 up to the end of the century, makes, for instance, a com-ment about a militant churchman, the Canon de Robesart, in 1358: "II tenoit unc espec d dcux mains, dont ill donoit les horions sigrandę que nul les osoit attendre," ("He held a sword of two hands, with which he gave strokes so great that nonę dared face them.")

This certainly seems to indicate a two-han-der, but does it? An equally valid meaning could be that he held a sword with two hands, i.e. a Grete Swerd of Type XIIIA. However, if this remark is set beside another from a rhymed Chronicie ofDu Guesclin, we may perhaps assume that Froissart did mean a two-hander: "Olhńer Manny le fere tellement D'une espec a ll mains, qui tranchoit roidement...." (Olirer de Manny struck in such a way with a two-hand sword, which slieed kccnly.)

However, it is in the dog-Latin of wills and inventories that we find elear men-tion of two-handers. In the will of the Englishman Sir John Depedene, who died in 1402, for instance, there is the entry "Unum Gladium ornato cum argento et: J. Twahandswerd." No mistaking that "one sword decorated with silver and one two-hand sword."

There is no mistaking, either, what was meant by a Sword of War. In the im entory of the effects of Humphrey de Bohun (1322) we find:

Figurę 86. Two XIII A’s in the Fitzwillian Museum in Cambridge.