"Toby Capwell on HYW Armour" Topic

There is a very interesting series of interviews of Toby Capwell at the Wallace Collection by Matt Easton.
YouTube link
YouTube link
YouTube link

Very interesting stuff; OTH his contribution to the new Bannockburn Centre has been disastrous; choc full of the worst of Victorian romantic wishful thinking.

I wonder how much of that was down to Toby.

Did you read his article on the digital warriors at the Centre in Mediaeval Warfare Magazine?

Yup, also a follow-up piece elsewhere. Not only did Scots wear poorer-quality old fashioned armour, their kit was, apparently, dirtier than their English cousins.
The MW issue was, I'm afraid, a bit of a travesty – circular schiltroms, lightly-mounted men-at-arms and god alone knows what else.
Frankly, the centre is a tragic missed opportunity too. A dreadful game that bears no real relationship to the battle, game staff in daft costumes, silly video characters and a pitiful 'Captain Pugwash' style animation to tell the story of the lead up to the battle.
My heart bleeds for the centre's director who is a great bloke.

Ah, yes. I just went through the follow-up piece – ahem!
link

Feel free to give feedback on my piece in the same edition. I think that my schiltroms in the map were also round

I'll forgive you. There is a view – since Gardiner and Oman – that the traditional posture of Scottish armies was 4 divisions in round schiltroms, and this was in fact true for every single occasion that the Scots fought the battle of Falkirk in 1298….The rest of the time (in the rare event of a general engagement) 3 divisions in linear.
schiltroms.
Apart from the huge challenge of moving such a body of maybe 1500-2500 men in he days before cadenced marching, if the Scots line stretched from the Bannock to the Pelstream it would have to have been in very large circles indeed. Even if the units were only 3 ranks deep, there would still be maybe 10 or 12 feet between each file , so not looking exactly like a hedgehog really.
Toby is a serious expert on the physical lumps of metal and their application between combatants, but he's really not at all up to speed with the narrative evidence when it comes to Bannockburn. Incidentally, you'll have seen articles making a lot of the swamps and bogs…odd that they don't appear in the narratives is n't it? In fact the narrative writers all take pains to point out that the action took place on the 'hard ground' the 'dry field' the 'plein terre'…because that was what was remarkable.
Which article was your one? Is it on-line?
Do, please, tell me that it was not you who described the unarmoured 'knife men' darting out from the Scottish lines?
?

The Stirling Bridge and Falkirk one, and my 'rebels' are well-armoured.

As they should be!

Oman again.

When ever I read his name it's usualy because he has made mistakes that still live on…

He aperantly almost singleandedly created the view of ill displined knights and amateur warriors.

Then you got the whole line vs column thing during the napoloeinc wars, and now this?

But I've heard lots of good stuff about his book on the Italian wars

Great work on the Peninsula.

Fair point, and he did revise his earlier, fairly damning, opinions on medieval warfare as he grew older. The quality of a pioneer can be partly measured by their willingness to back track, having made a wrong turn

True, but nobody takes much account of the revisions, so casual researchers still come up with all the old nonsense – some of it has to do with perceptions of poverty, though late medieval Scotland was not poor. Some of it I fear is rooted in English nationalism (our ancestors were brilliant) and in Scottish romance (our ancestors were successful despite only being armed with sticks), neither of which is really a sound basis for analysis.