Subject: 'swashbuckler' swordsman
Culture: late Tudor English
Setting: duelling, Elizabethan England mid 16th-early 17thc
Evolution:
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
* Castle 1885 p19-20
"Notwithstanding the general restrictions, a great deal of obnoxious swaggering was common among the fencing gentry, who were as a rule looked upon with dislike and suspicion by the quieter portion of the community. The contemptuous name of 'swashbuckler,' applied to obtrusive devotees of the art of fence, graphically described these shady braves, and the chattering noise they created in their brawls, or even when merely swaggering down a narrow street.
"It would seem that 'swashbucklers' congregated mostly in West Smithfield, the London 'Pré au Clercs,' one of the few spots where their rioting could be tolerated.
"'They got their name,' says Fuller, 'from swashing and making a noise on the buckler, and that of ruffian, which is the same as a swaggerer, because they tried to make the side swag or incline on which they were engaged.' ..."
* Withers/Capwell 2010 p43
"Duelling quickly became a craze. Hundreds and then thousands of men were killed each year during the second half of the 16th century, all in supposed 'affairs of honour'. These disputes could be caused by a verbal slight, physical altercation or even an insulting glance. Sir Walter Raleigh -- the famous Elizabethan explorer who established one of the earliest American colonies at Roanoke Island in what is today North Carolina -- wrote earnestly that 'to give the lie deserves no less than stabbin'. It was this brutal subculture that led to a number of key innovations in the design and use of edged weapons."
* Cohen 2002 p34-35
"Fighting had become an everyday activity -- men skirmished in the streets, in theaters, in print. 'Soon anyone wanting to be a good swordsman had to join a school of fence. Castle records, and aristocrats were happy to take lessons from plebian masters. [SIC] In addition to straightforward sword-work, schools taught disarms, tripping, and wrestling moves -- less useful perhaps in a formal duel but vital when suddenly attacked in an alleyway or dark passage. These schools, meanwhile, became havens for assassins and cutpurses, and Castle speculates that 'brutal revelry, as well as darker deeds,' likely took place in comparative safety behind their walls. A contemporary is more direct; 'Dead men, with holes in their breasts, were often found by the watchmen, with their pale faces resting on doorsteps or merchants' houses, or propped up and still bleeding, hid away in church porches.'
"Between 1490 and 1550 vast numbers of swords were produced throughout Europe, at increasingly affordable cost. Sword deaths from personal quarrels rose accordingly. As London doubled in size to 200,000 inhabitants between 1580 and 1600, it saw a vast influx of restless young men. By 1586 the city had at least eight major fencing schools and many more smaller, less formal venues of instruction. In many towns the art of arms fell so low, taught be however considered himself capable of passing on advice, that the fencing master was also the dancing instructor -- or even the local dentist. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth passed vagrancy acts requiring fencers to have 'respectable occupations to satisfy the law' -- but to little avail. The playwright Christopher Marlowe was at one point charged with manslaughter after a rapier and dagger duel involving one of his closest friends; in 1593 he was killed in peculiar circumstances in a tavern brawl. Five years later, Ben Jonson was penning his play Every Man in His Humour (Boabdil: 'You shall kill him, beyond question: if you be so generously minded.' Matthew: 'Indeed, it is a most excellent trick!') when he killed a fellow actor, Gabriel Spencer, in a rapier duel. He was arraigned at the Old Bailey in October 1598, where he pleaded guilty, being released by 'benefit of clergy' (a one-time plea that any literate person could employ), forfeiting his 'goods and chattels' and being branded on his left thumb."
* Capwell 2012 p13
"It is possible that the ancient act of provocation, the rhythmic clashing or 'swashing' of one's sword on one's shield, is the origin of the term 'swashbuckler'. In the 17th century the English churchman and historian Thomas Fuller discussed the term in his /History of the Worthies of England, in the process providing a captivating description of urban fencing culture in England:
A Ruffian is the name for a Swaggerer, so called, because endeavouring to make that side to swag or weigh down, whereon he ingageth. The same also with Swash-Buckler, from swashing, or making a noise on bucklers. West Smithfield (now the Horse-market) was formerly called Ruffian's Hall, where such men met casually and otherwise, to try masteries with sword and buckler. More were frighted then hurt, hurt then killed therewith, it being accounted unmanly to strike beneath the knee .... But, since that desperate Traitor Rowland Yorke first used thrusting with rapiers, swords and bucklers are disused, and the Proverb only appliable to quarrelsome people ... who delight in brawls and blows.
"Certainly the street-fighting hotheads of the 16th century had this term applied to them in their own time, in a less than positive way. For example, the playwright and satirist Robert Greene once disparagingly described the sword-cutler as 'patron to swashbucklers and ruffians'. "
Costume
* Norris 1938 p696-697 (describing "a young gentleman of the 1570's and 1580's who is an expert in the art of sword-and-buckler-play")
"He looks very smart in his doublet of cloth garded with black or dark velvet, but it is more in the fashion of the previous reign than of this. His hat with a high crown bulging at the top is more up to date, and his shoes are decorated with cuttes and loops. He is armed with a good long hefty sword and a small buckler known as a 'rondel,' 'rondelle à poing,' or 'boce.' This particular art of self-defence or aggression began to decline towards the end of the century owing to the increasing popularity of the rapier, which caused a certain amount of dissatisfaction. One of the characters in The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, 1599, expresses public opinion in the following words:
"'Sword and Buckler play begins to grow out of use ... if it be once gone, this poking fight of rapier and dagger will come up: then a good tall Sword and Buckler Man will be spitted like a cat or rabbit.'
"The word 'tall' was often used to mean courageous."
* Norris 1938 p297-298
"The young gentleman about to engage in sword and buckler play wears only a tunic with skirt open up the front. On occasion he would don a surcote. The decoration of the tunic comprises bands of dark-coloured velvet, and cuttes which reveal the linen shirt. The large sleeves finish at the elbow, or they could reach to the wrists. Notice that the belt and sword carriage have been added for the occasion. The exercise gained by the practice with sword and buckler was greatly encouraged, in fact, enjoined by the authorities as a means of keeping the youth and manhood of England fit."
Sword
* Capwell 2012 p106-107
"One valiant man with a sword in his hand, will do better service, than ten Italians, or Italianized with the rapiers.
"When George Silver wrote this line, he had in mind the English basket-hilted sword. Composed of a wide, cut-and-thrust blade and an iron cage-like hilt to protect fully the sword hand it was, in English eyes, a forceful, manly sword for a tough, no-holds-barred style of fighting, for dealing what Silver approvingly referred to as 'good, downright blows', in combat that could also involve Silver's 'grips, closes, wrestlings, striking with the hilts, daggers or buckler' and 'striking with teh foot or knee in the cods'. Single blows with its broad blade could take away a person's hand, arm or head. It was primarily a cutting sword, because of limitations in hand position caused by the basket, as Italian fencers seem to have noted:
the Italian teachers will say, that an Englishman cannot thrust straight with a sword, because the hilt will not suffer him to put the forefinger upon the blade, nor to hold the pommel in the hand, whereby we are of necessity to hold fast the handle in the hand.
"It was also an coarsely [SIC] beautiful weapon. The bars making up the basket tended to be gracefully tapered down to where they converged on ovoid panels over the from of the fist on either side, before branching off again to rejoin at the base of the blade. The blade itself was subtly tapered and as elegantly proportioned as any of the medieval arming swords that were its direct ancestors. The bars of the basket were decorated on finer examples, the most popular technique among Englishmen being encrusting, usually in silver, although gold was also used occasionally for especially prestigious weapons. It was an organic, almost unrefined form of decoration perfectly suited not only to the character and aesthetics of the basket hilt, but also to the English traditionalist's attitude to swordsmanship.
"[...] Although the basket-hilted sword was in origin and design a military weapon, the attractive encrusted basket allowed it, from the middle of the 16th century, also to be worn, instead of the rapier, in a civilian context. Such a fashion choice could not have been a more obvious statement, a rejection of the Continental science of mathematical attacks and the long 'frog-pricking' weapons that came with it, in favour of a more conservative and militaristic public image. Jus as George Silver argued for the application of traditional English sword-fighting methods to the civilian world of the Renaissance as well as on the battlefield, so too did at least some English gentlemen wear their broad-bladed war swords in everyday life."
* Held ed. 1973 p143-144 (John F Hayward, "English swords 1600-1650" p142-161)
"The Elizabethan backsword has a hilt of simple construction, with straight, usually counter-curved quillons, knuckle-bow and ring-guard on one or on both sides of the cross. This simple construction persisted for a long time and is still found on a backsword with a Hounslow blade in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow. A more evolved type ... has the heavy globular or octagonal pommel which is one of the characteristic features of late 16th or early 17th century swords made in England. The quillons are counter-curved, and the hilt has fully developed arms, knuckle-bow and a loop guard reaching from halfway along the bow down to join the rear arm. This particular construction was not confined to backswords but will be found on rapiers and riding swords as well.
[...] The typical broadsword had a basket hilt .... The shell, which is divided into two halves, one on either side of the cross, is another feature that will frequently be noticed on English swords. The English basket hilt, which is, of course, the ancestor of the Scottish basket-hilted sword of the 17th and 18th centuries, was, if the dates on portraits showing it can be believed, already in existence before the last quarter of the 16th century. A portrait of Sir Edward Lyttleton at Hagley in Worchestershire dated 1568 shows him with one of these basket-hilted swords with long counter-curved quillions [SIC]. The earlier examples can be recognized by the presence of the long quillions [SIC], while the later ones have only a rear quillon and have developed the two loops at the base of the basket in front, characteristic of the later Scottish versions of this hilt. [....]
"A second type of broadsword had a simple cross hilt; many samples of this particular type survive, a high proportion of them in Continental collections. Thus there are examples in the Hermitage, Leningrad, in the Tøjhusmuseum, Copenhagen, the Swedish Royal Armoury, Stockholm and the Swiss Landesmuseum, Zurich. There are two versions of these cross-hilts, differing in decoration rather than in form. In the one type the ornament is of silver or gold and silver encrustation in the iron of the hilt, while in the other thin medallions of silver, embossed or stamped with figure subjects, are inset in the hilt and the surrounding areas are either damascened with gold or encrusted with silver."
Shield
* Norris 1938 p298
"A buckler was a small round shield about twelve inches in diameter, often made of steel, with a handle across the back by which it was held out at arm's length to ward off the sword thrusts of the adversary: at the back there was a hook to suspend it from the belt above the sword. The noise made by these two arms when the wearer strutted, or the striking of his sword on his own buckler or his opponent's, originated the appellation, 'a swashbuckler.' Bucklers were also made of wood or wickerwork covered with leather and reinforced with brass or steel studs."
* Boeheim 1890 p191
"Im englischen Heere wurden noch am Anfange des 17. Jahrhunderts kommt der Rundschild geführt, welche in ihrem Mittelpunkte eine Schießvorrichtung besaßen. In diesem Falle war das Schloß im Inneren des Schildes angebracht und ein kleiner, kurzer Lauf ragte aus dem Schildnabel hervor. Derlei Exemplare werden noch im Tower in London Bewahrt."
* Capwell 2012 p14
"As the Elizabethan swordsman and author George Silver observed, 'The buckler blinds the fight'. Even at the very end of the 16th century Silver regarded the sword-and-buckler fight to be one of the traditional fencing styles that, technically and morally, should be judged superior to Continental rapier practice. The old weapons made the 'noble, ancient, victorious, valiant, and most brave nation of Englishmen' the betters of foreign 'false teachers of defence' who 'forsake their own natural fights' (such as sword-and-buckler fencing)."
* Fryer 1969 p78
"Buckler A shield for parrying blows, generally small and circular in shape. It had a handle on the reverse and was held in the left hand."
