A _lorica_ formed of metal, without the aid of any texture of wool or of silk, could scarcely be anything else than a coat of chain-mail. We may further refer to the Bayeux tapestry (Stothard, Plate XVI.), where the _pillards_ are appropriating the armour of the slain. The last figure in the second border of that plate is stripping the hauberk over the head of a fallen warrior; and, in thus turning it inside out, discloses the interior of the garment, which exhibits the ring-work exactly in the same manner as it is seen on the outside of others. At a later period, a similar evidence is afforded by the sculptured monumental effigies; the overlapping folds of the hauberk shewing the ring-work on the inside as well as on the outside. Figures of the thirteenth century in the Temple Church and in St. Saviour's Church, London, offer illustrations of this fact. Further instances may be found at Stowe-Nine-Churches in Northamptonshire, and at Aston, Warwickshire; and probably no English county is without similar examples. Compare also the curious fragment of chain-mail found at Stanwick, Yorkshire, and now deposited in the British Museum.
The defence made of iron rings, of which Varro attributes the invention to the Gauls, appears to be no other than the hauberk of chain-mail:--"Lorica a loris, quod de corio crudo pectoralia faciebant, postea succuderunt Galli e ferro sub id vocabulum, ex annulis, ferream tunicam." Whoever may have been the inventors of this armour, the probability seems to be that it came into use gradually: from its costliness and rarity, leaders only could at first obtain it; that, as handicraft improved, and the efficiency of the defence became acknowledged, its adoption was extended, and its costliness diminished. The notion, that in the thirteenth century the hauberk of chain-mail came suddenly and generally into use, is against all known precedent, and contrary to the natural course of human inventions.
Other kinds of body-armour were worn at this time. Charlemagne, as we have seen, was defended by a kind of jazerant-work. Ingulphus tells us that Harold, finding the heavy armour of his troops an incumbrance in their mountain warfare with the Welsh, clothed them in a defence of leather only. Something similar is seen in this figure from Cotton MS., Cleop., C. viii.