Subject: laird gentleman knight
Culture: Lowland Scot
Setting: Britain 16thc
Evolution:
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
* Barr 2001 p47
"The Scots infantry that attempted to emulate the Swiss in 1513 were sketchily trained, had little real experience of battle and could not have the same confidence in their drills and tactics as the Swiss. This meant that the Scots adopted the same solution which the French and landsknechts had used of placing their captains, or noblemen in the front ranks. In fact, Scottish noblemen had considered the front ranks as their proper place in a formation since at least the battle of Bannockburn. Scottish armies were led from the front to give encouragement and steadiness to the more hesitant feudal levies."
Armor
* Kightly 1975 p23 (reconstructing a Scottish gentleman at the Battle of Flodden)
"Typical at the front ranks of the Scottish pike columns. This figure wears a doublet and hose, and over them an imported almain rivet armour with arm defences. His helmet is a sallet of Italian manufacture, with a bellows-faced vizor [sic] and an articulated neck guard."
* Sadler/Walsh 2006 p24
"Those below the front rank of Scottish society might wear imported armours known as almain rivet. These were essentially munition-quality harness comprising breast and back, a sallet-type helmet, possibly Italian and tending to feature a rounded or 'bellows face' visor. Articulated tassets covered the thighs, though the lower legs were normally unprotected, save for stout leather boots."
Sword
* Cooper/Turner 2008 p31
"The Lowland equivalent [to the Highland claymore] was distinguishable by straight quillons, but was otherwise the same. It is reasonable to believe that the men armed with these weapons could fulfil a role similar to the Landsknecht 'doppelsöldners', who preceded their own pikemen with the aim of disrupting enemy formations by cleaving off pikeheads and exploiting gaps in the formation; however, there is no evidence for the deliberate employment of such tactics by the Scots on the battlefield."
* Melville 2018 p66-67
"The 'Lowland' two-handed sword is so-called to distinguish it from the Highland sword and also because nearly all the surviving examples seem to have come from the lowland areas of Scotland. One exception is a Lowland two-handed sword which was found in a lumber room in the small town of Dunkeld in Perthshire in 1864. The hilt was badly burnt, which suggests that it was a victim of the mass burning of the town by government troops during the siege of 1689 in the Jacobite uprising against William III. If so then this would be evidence of very late use of the two-handed sword in warfare and would support theories of its use at the battle of Killiecrankie shortly before. In style the Lowland two-handed sword is quite different from the Highland and possibly related to the English style. It is usually bigger than its continental counterpart, but with a similar blade to the Highland sword -- broad, flat and tapering gradually to a rounded point, often with a long, shallow fuller and short ricasso and inlaid with typical German marks. Its distinctive feature is the hilt. The crossguard comprises wide, straight, thin round-section quillons which turn abruptly at the ends at right angles towards the blade immediately before knob- or button-shaped terminals. From the quillon block there extend langets of varying length down the blade (the sole similarity with the Highland sword), sometimes themselves grooved, and a pair of side rings which on about 50 per cent of these swords contain a grid of bars or bars supporting a decorative plate which itself often displays piercings comparable to those in later basket hilts and cusping round the edge. The pommel is solid and globular. There are enough examples of the Scottish Lowland sword surviving for variations in the style of the quillon terminal know to be apparent: plain or flattened spheres, hemispheres, mushrooms, pyramids and cones, but all attached to a short neck bent at a right-angle from the end of the quillon, sometimes even with a decorative collar. By their size and weight most seem to be eminently fit fighting swords -- around 150cm long and weighing 3kg -- a few which are larger and more decorative may well have been intended as swords of ceremony. Dating these swords with any precision seems impossible at the moment due to a lack of dated pictorial or sculptural evidence showing these characteristics, and a lack of securely dated associations. In overall style, however, it is not difficult to place them solidly in the sixteenth century, the plainer and simpler ones towards the beginning."
* Withers 2010 p50
"[The 'lowland sword'] had a very long blade with a characteristic side ring to the hilt, globular pommel and quillons set at right angles to the blade, terminating in knobs. These great lowland swords were used for many years, and even as late as 1746, after the Battle of Culloden, many examples were subsequently found on the battlefield."
