238 NOTES ON ARMORIAL HORSE TRAPPINGS. 



sufficient apology for the tedious details that have been 

 stated.* 



I am afraid the little shield that Mr. Richardson acquired, 

 and which he has kindly presented to me, is a very 

 small peg on which to hang all I have written ; but I trust 

 the matter may not prove uninteresting, and may help 

 us to discover more, for it is by comparison of the few found 

 out of the thousands of these horse -trappings that must have 

 been in use, and by collating them with scarce MSS. and 

 other evidence, that we are able to imagine and reconstruct 

 the gaily caparisoned accoutrements of the mediseval 

 knight at joust or tourney. 



Heraldry, it is to be observed, serves its purpose even 

 to-day, when the face of the owner is obscured, not by the 

 vizor of the helmet, but by the dust of centuries, and gives, 

 I think, to these little shields a personal and living touch. 



BOOKS FOR REFERENCE. 



Burke, Sir J. Bernard, General Armory. 



Barnard, F. P., M.A., Companion to English History (Middle Ages}. 



Barren, Oswald, F.S.A., The Ancestor. 



Reed, Charles H., P.S.A., Guide to the Mediaeval Room, British 

 Museum. 



Society of Antiquaries of London, Illustrated Catalogue of the Heraldic 

 Exhibition, 1894. 



Hope, W. H. St. John, F.S.A., The Stall Plates of the Knights of the 

 Garter, 1348-1485. 



Papworth, J. W., Ordinary of British Armorials. 



Stothard, C. H., The Monumental Effigies of Great Britain. 



Walden, Lord Howard de, The de Walden Library. 



Foster, Joseph, Some Feudal Coats of Arms. 



Woodward, John, Heraldry, British and Foreign. 



Hendrie, Robert, Theophilus, Encyclopaedia of Christian Art. 



* Also see Proceedings of the Archaeological Institute, Salisbury, 

 1849, The Earldom of Salisbury, by John Gough Nichols, F.S.A. 



