On the 17th of February 1448, a band of around three hundred Englishmen, led by Lord Moleyns, captured the East Anglian fortified manor house of Gresham Castle.¹ This action was not part of any larger conflict, but rather the result of years of disagreements between local families---indeed the next civil war, the Wars of the Roses, would not officially start for another seven years. Defending the castle was 26-year-old Margaret Paston and her twelve servants. Taken by surprise, the defenders were simply ejected, taking up residence with a nearby Paston-friend in Sustead.
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| Gresham Castle (from Paston Footprints) |
Two years later, Margaret's husband, John Paston, was still fighting in the courts to reclaim their lost property. In a petition to King Henry VI in 1450, he described Lord Moleyns' men as a small army "to the nombre of a thowsand persones... arrayd in maner of werre, with curesse, brigaunders, jakks, salettes, gleyfes, bowes, arows, pavyse, [and] gonnes."² While understood by Paston-historians as a bit of an exaggeration (their estimates are closer to 300), the letter does highlight some of the armaments of the local, East Anglian gentry. Of recent interest to me is the mention of "pavyse" or pavise (if however, like me, you're also interested by the reference to brigandines, please check out my earlier article here). Since I portray a crossbowman in service to the Pastons, I became enticed by the idea of recreating an English pavise. While John Paston described his enemy as possessing pavises, though, I'm using this source to, at the very least, place pavises within the experience of East Anglians in the second half of the 15th century. We don't know for sure if the Pastons' retainers were equipped with pavises, but we do know there were longbowmen, crossbowmen, and hand-gunners. My basic supposition then is that if Lord Moleyns' men had them, there's a decent chance that Pastons' men may have had them as well.
History Of The Pavise
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| French Siege of Duras in the Chronicles by Froissart (1377) |
Pavises seem to have fallen into two main categories by the 15th century: an archer's shield or the hand-held shield of a man-at-arms (or "large and small" pavises as described in the inventory of gifts given by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy in a 1449 as part of the wedding dowry of his great-niece Mary to King James II of Scotland). Judging based on surviving examples in museums like the Met, a typical archer's pavise may have been around 42 inches tall by around 20 inches wide. Made from wood as the core, it was then wrapped in canvas, glued to the wood with hide glue, then painted with gesso to establish a blank "canvas," whereupon a coat of arms and/or saint were often painted. Medieval historian and professor of history at Loyola University Kelly DeVries defines the pavise in his 2007 article "The introduction and use of the pavise in the Hundred Years War" as
a large usually rectangular shield that could be held in the hands or propped up by a wooden or iron brace to provide protection for its user. Associated with the northern Italian town of Pavia -- although perhaps only in legend -- it is generally thought that these shields originated there sometime in the early to mid-thirteenth century.
DeVries further explains, referencing a mandement from the French King Charles V in 1365, that at least the French pavises were made from aspen, ideally.
To help me understand the construction, I relied heavily on The Shieldery's video on YouTube, linked here. If you'd like to make your own, I highly recommend starting there.
Crafting The Pavise
While I would have loved to start with aspen, due to cost and availability of materials, I opted to use pine. The process was almost exactly the same as in the video. I started by cutting down the boards to shape and size and glued them together using wood glue. I chose to screw down the two side boards to the center one to help the glue set, then backed the screws out a day later, drilled the holes a bit wider (3/8"), and hammered in 3/8" dowels, also glued. I'll note here that the process of building the shield was definitely not historically accurate. I effectively sped up the process by using modern tools, but also aided the longevity of the shield by using modern wood glue.
After trimming the dowel ends and finalizing the shape by planing and sanding, I then laid out linen canvas on the front, cut it so it overlapped that back a bit, and applied a thick layer of hide glue, spreading it around by hand (wearing latex gloves). Instead of using 100% authentic hide glue that I heated myself, I cheated a little by using Titebond's "genuine hide glue." If I make another pavise, I will gladly do this again as it was super easy to use and, after gluing the back canvas, took only a bottle and a half. Once the glue had cured and was no longer tacky---about two days---I applied gesso over the back in two layers, sanding between the layers.
Before I could gesso the front though, I had to install some hardware: two oversized steel staples and a leather handle, nailed in place with two, proper forged nails. I fired up my forge and, using a 1/4" mild steel bar, I hammered out the two "staples." Lacking a nail jig, I just had to buy proper hand-forged rose-head nails. Before hammering in, I drilled pilot holes to keep the wood from splitting, placing them approximately where they are located on the originals. The staples and nails ended up sticking out about an inch on the front, so I hammered these down and into the wood/canvas a bit---this is why I waited to gesso the front. As a side note, I made the handle from a scrap piece of veg-tanned sole leather (~16 oz) and the sling from 8 oz veg tan.
After applying two layers of gesso to the front of the pavise, the final stage was painting. This, to me, was the most interesting and rewarding part, mostly because I've never painted before and I discovered that it's almost too easy to do. After consulting the member of our unit who portrays John Paston, we decided that I should paint the Paston coat of arms and griffon on the front and a depiction of the martyrdom of St. Edmund on the back (he, like the Pastons, was from East Anglia, and he was martyred by being shot by archers).
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| Image from the Paston Footprints |
The paint I'd use is egg tempera which The Shieldery explains in the same video linked above, but is also explained in articles here and here. Essentially, egg tempera is made by mixing equal parts egg yolk with water and then a drop or two of white vinegar as a preservative (apparently, the vinegar extends the life of the egg-mixture to about five days). To extract the yolk, use your preferred method for separating the egg white (I just used my hands), but then gently pinch the yolk with one hand and, while suspended over your collection vessel, poke it with a toothpick or pinch it with your other hand, allowing the yolk to drip out of its sack. The egg yolk mixed with a little water and vinegar is the glue for the paint. The paint itself is a 1:1 mixture of the yolk-glue with pigment. I used non-toxic cinnabar, titanium white, yellow ochre, red iron oxide (brown), black iron oxide, and ultramarine. Mixing the paint is straight-forward: lift some pigment with a scraper onto a palette and drop in egg-glue to the right proportions (I used a little eye-dropper), and then mix with the scraper. Making St. Edmund's pale flesh color, for example, required some yellow ochre, a small amount of cinnabar, and an even smaller amount of titanium white. Less white gave me the correct color for shadows while a little more white gave me highlight color. Having read those linked articles above, I started with dark and background colors first, working towards the front, doing my best to use the cross-hatching method. You can see my progress in the images below, from sketch, to background paint, to final, all over the course of three days. One great thing about egg tempera is that the paint dries fast, allowing you to paint over it fairly soon after. You can also remove mistakes easily by touching a wet Q-tip to the mistake and lifting the paint.
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| Sketch of St. Edmund |
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| Dark layer painted first (some experimentation with glue-pigment ratio) |
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| Lighter paint added |
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| Details and shading painted in |
After the paint had dried and cured for about a week, I used Liquitex's professional matte varnish in spray form to varnish the whole shield. While linseed oil may have been used to protect the egg tempera paint on historical shields, I wanted something modern to make this shield last a bit longer. The benefit of using the spray varnish is also that I didn't have to worry about accidentally making the paint run by brushing it.
Overall, I'm pleased with how well it turned out. This project inspired me to paint a lot more with egg tempera now. I do regret not trimming the canvas on the upper corners (you can easily see the folds of excess fabric on the inside top of the shield), but that's my only regret for now. If this post inspires you to make your own, please post in the comments below. As always, I'm more than happy to offer advice if you decide to make your own--just fill out the "contact me" form on the right!
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¹ Gresham Castle has become a favorite of mine. It's a great example of a local, yet substantial defensive structure. Made of stone with four crenellated curtain walls, four round towers (one at each corner), a moat, drawbridge, and inner-courtyard with the presumably two-story wattle-and-daub manor house, Gresham was no push-over. To see a 3D reconstruction for yourself, check out this link. Today, it's little more than an overgrown copse of trees with a moat, standing in the middle of a farm field. I had the pleasure of exploring the site a little this summer, by means of bushwhacking, and I can definitively say that very little still survives (click here to see pictures from when I visited).
² In modern English: "to the number of a thousand persons... arrayed in [a] manner of war, with cuirasses, brigandines, jacks [of plate or mail?], salets, glaives, bows, arrows, pavises, [and] guns."
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