1630s English basket hilts

[Peter Hudson]

From; https://maryrose.org/meet-the-soldiers/

[urbanspaceman]

I came across the American Society of Arms Collectors website and an article by Jeffrey Ross on 'The Evolution of the basket hilted sword form from the 16th to the 18th centuries'.
I am sure this society is well known to you all.
The article is most informative and shows excellent examples of basket hilts.

Again, I am certain this is all old news to most of you but it is fascinating new territory to me and continues the input from you folks to establish what was almost certainly the Stone 'baskets' of 1631. See below.
The first from 1550 is described as either English or Scottish.
The second from 1590 is Scottish.
The final from 1625 is English and probably what Stone supplied.

The question that remains unanswered is: was Stone able to produce the numbers of 'new' swords he claimed. He invested heavily at the start (£8,000) and may well have been up and running rapidly enough to supply the "1,000 complete swords a month, of equivalent quality at a lower price than German imports"; the king certainly believed him.

What is especially interesting to me is that Birmingham blades were appearing at The Tower at that time (1630) and were universally declared as unacceptably inferior. A century later they had not improved much; it took the arrival of Shotley Bridge smiths to raise the standard.
The Oleys arrived there soon after:
the first indication I have found so far is William Olley (sic) in 1738. William was a second generation (born 1699) Shotley Bridge forger.
It has long been obvious to me that someone brought high quality forging techniques into Birmingham.
I am wondering if perhaps Olley established his own forge down there and supplied local swordsmiths... hence the appearance of the Oley symbol of the Bushy Tailed Fox.

I fear I have moved beyond my initial subject.

[Jim McDougall]

Peter, thank you for the image of the complete sword from the Mary Rose.
Your thread on this famous shipwreck is outstanding, and I wanted to chime in with focus on the weaponry, most notably of course this basket hilt. Here is the perfect alignment of that.
What I found amazing from some material I found is that there were apparently more of these types aboard as well, so clearly in use by one of the military contingents. This one appears to be the only one that survived intact.

Keith,
I think you are spot on with the form basket surmised to be the likely one Stone supplied. While he was 'tooling up' the Hounslow enterprise from 1629 it is noted he was 'importing' foreign swords (not just blades). It seems unlikely that the King cared where the swords were from. In this entire situation it seems apparent that the import of German blades to in effect 'salt' the production volume at Hounslow was in degree present through the scope of its presence. Stone was enterprising enough to 'broker' these kinds of deals...he was supplying swords...regardless of who made them, however the King wanted them produced in England ...Stone likely made it seem as though they were.

The Oley's and the fox has been a quandary for some time, and that connection seems to have solved the mystery of the 'running fox' (cf. running wolf of Passau) of Birmingham.

While some of these details may be perceived as outside the topic at hand in discussion, they are often inextricably pertinent in the overall understanding of the subject matter.

[Triarii]

I suspect that the basket hilts were more like the bottom right photo above. The contemporary illustrations show an evolution of hilt shapes towards more complete basket hilts by the early C17th. The slightly later Basing House (1645 at latest) and Sandal Castle swords (1646 latest) are very much like the bottom right example. Sandal Castle sword is below (the rusty one) and also my c.1620 version, very similar to both those siege finds.
I'll go digging, but basket hilts were recommended for forces sent to Ireland and for the militia.

In 1614 the London Cutlers Company were supplying 'Irish hilts' and 'open hilts' suggesting again that Irish hilts were close hilts.

Francis Markham, writing in 'Five Decades of Epistles of Warre' in 1622 (he was also the muster master for Nottinghamshire so should know about military matters) recommended swords with 'the hilt of basket fashion, round and well compact', which I take to be the fully developed basket hilt. He also says that musketeers should carry a sword 'with a basket hilt of a nimble and round proportion after the manner of the Irish'.

Portraits from the 1640s and 50s attributed to Colonel Hutchinson, Colonel Booth and one of Edward Massey all show (higher quality) basket hilts of the more developed form but not significantly different from the 1620s form, though flatter bars have become more the norm.

[urbanspaceman]

I'm afraid I'm a little confused by your references to photos - other than your indication of the two examples you posted.
It may be that your browser is displaying the images in a different sequence to mine.
Could you perhaps clarify if possible.
What makes it harder is my ignorance of the examples you refer to i.e Basing House and Sandal Castle.

[Jim McDougall]

I agree, the reference to the photos depicted are a bit confusing, though the 'top' image of the 'very rusty' sword from 'Sandal Castle' which was destroyed in 1646. Apparently this example has a curved blade which is seemingly unusual for a basket hilt, (turcael in Gaelic description).

Blair (1981, from his excellent "The Early Basket Hilt in Britain, from which most of this material is derived), the terminus post quem for this type of basket hilt is set at the 1646 date, however it is well known that these type of hilts was hardly 'old fashioned' by mid 17th century. Hilts of these types while having subtle variations were of fundamentally similar construction much earlier, and dating is somewhat difficult as they were in use over such an extended period.
The Sandal Castle sword is held at Wakefield Museum, the Basing House example is lost, having been stolen from its place of holding.

These early hilt types were known by the terms 'Irish, close or basket' it seems rather interchangeably. Blair specifies that the first recorded use of the 'basket hilt' term was in Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part II, 1597). The 'Irish' term it is specifically noted had nothing to do with these basket hilts being used in Ireland or produced there, but was more a collective term referring to 'Gaelic', if I have understood correctly.

Returning to the curved blade on the Sandal example, this is an interesting aside;
On p.241, footnote #34, it is noted there are references in 1586 to semetaries (scimitars?) or Turky swordes in inventories. The comparison of course suggests turky= curved.
Further, the Cutlers Co. and others were supplying swords with Turkey blades for City Bands in 1642, while in 1622 Francis Markham wrote that "the blade of a musketeers BASKET HILTED sword should be broad, strong and somewhat massie(sic) of which the Turkie or Bilboe are the best. '

We know bilbo was an English term for the highly regarded straight blades of Spain, coming out of the port of Bilboe in the north......and Turkey of course seems to refer to 'curved'.

These references suggest that the hilt form of the Sandal sword (shown in previous post) may well be the form delivered by Stone in 1631, as the basic hilt structure had been in use, and clearly delivered in number in 1622 by the Cutlers Co.
As the form had been in use (in some variation, but fundamentally the same) as early as 1614, 1622 and these forms remained in use well into the century, it seems highly probable that Stones examples were of this type.
Who assembled these and where is unclear, but possibly in the Hounslow compound where shops were being situated post 1629.

[Triarii]

Apologies - the one with the pale background and cord wrapped grip.

The Sandal Castle example (the rusty and bent one in my post - the museum confirmed it is bent as it appears curved in the commonly used photo) was excavated in 1989 and is held by Wakefield Museum. The castle was battered into submission in 1646 (to the extent that the defenders had to dig a trench across the remains of the keep so they could move about) during the English Civil War.

Basing House was stormed by the parliamentarians in Oct 1645 and the basket hilt was found during excavations there in 1971. It's apparently now missing. It's pretty much the same as the one I have.

[Lee]

The second hilt in Triarii's post above brought to mind this previously discussed basket hilt sword attributed to be of English origin: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=25974