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Tobias Capwell

@tobiascapwell

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Independent scholar of arms and armour, curator, author, lecturer, jouster, historical advisor, mailmaker, student of the martial arts.

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The same links, but quite a different material...

The 6 in 1 weave yields a much heavier, denser type of mail, better protection but heavier and less flexible.

I was happily storming away on the sleeves for my 13th-century hauberk, when I realised that I needed a gorget. Which, in the 13th century, is often a padded textile collar 'stuffed' with heavy mail, i.e., mail used as an interlining.

High Medieval sources sometimes refer to 'high' gorgets, that protect the whole neck and throat, and there are also references to the use of 'double mail' for such purposes. So 6 in 1 is my take on that, for present purposes.

Stay tuned, I'll report back on progress.

#armour #armor #13thcenturyknight #13thcenturyarmour #armsandarmour by @tobiascapwell

I was thinking today about how much of my life I have spent in armourers' workshops. Not as much as armourers themselves obviously, but as the clients of armourers go, I have probably racked up many, many days over the last few decades.

Although he died a number of years ago, and I worked with him in the late 1990s, up to about 2002, I still often remember the armourer Peter Leicht with great fondness. I met him when I joined the Royal Armouries in 1996; he had been making quite a lot of armour for the museum and its new live interpretation department, formed and led by John Waller.

Peter learned the craft with Terry English, and made armour with him for Jabberwocky (1977) and Excalibur (1981), among many other projects.

He was a great metalworker, a Bob Dylan fan and a teller of hilarious stories, and I was fortunate to know him.

#armourer #armor #armor #armour #armsandarmor by @tobiascapwell

In late 2014 I resolved that, after ten years of trying, one way or another, I would get this dratted book published. My motivation came from the impending 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Since armour in the age of King Henry V is the heart of the book, missing this auspicious moment was simply not an option. And thanks to @del_mar_thomas , it happened.

For the last few years however the book, the first of the 'Big Three' , has been unavailable.

Now it is coming back, in a limited release! The pre-order is open, link in bio. If you were thinking about pre-ordering but haven't done it yet, now's the time. We're making progress towards our target (required to print), but we're not there yet. And if you have pre-ordered, thank you! Now go harangue your friends, enemies and perfect strangers.

Of course I missed this year's anniversary by two days! Although I'm not sure 611 is an especially significant one.

#armouroftheenglishknight #armour #armour #armsandarmor #armsandarmour by @tobiascapwell

Join sue_brunning and Yours Truly at the British Museum in January - for a talk about arms, armour and warfare in the Bayeux Tapestry!

Registration link in bio. And yes, this one can be attended online!

#bayeuxtapestry #normanconquest #medieval #armsandarmour #armsandarmor by @tobiascapwell

This is basically how I feel after a long day shooting new episodes for EXP. An exhausted knight, forced to his knees before the Dark Gods, the High Priest of Pop Chaos ( @irregulardave ) presiding.

#armor #armour #armsandarmour #armsandarmor #movie by @tobiascapwell

A brief glimpse inside one of Britain's historic gems...

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Mendlesham, Suffolk holds a unique example of a Parish Armoury dating from the early 16th to mid-17th century. Formed of militia quality armour, weapons and equipment, the Armoury survives in context along with original documents about its use, maintenance and the lives of the people of Mendlesham.

St Mary's have formed the Mendlesham Armoury Project to catalogue, conserve and display the armoury for the future, advised by @tobiascapwell , David Edge, @s.d.metcalf and Shona Rutherford-Edge.

You can find out more, follow along and give it your support at

https://www.stmarysmendlesham.org.uk/armoury-project

Link in my bio

📸 © S D Metcalf 2026
🎵 © Max Richter 2025 Of the Undiscovered Country

#armsandarmour #armsandarmor #mendleshamarmoury #armsandarmourconservation
#16thcentury by @tobiascapwell

Ah... isn't it nice when the location is appropriate to the content of one's lecture...

@butleypriory

#medieval #medievalarchitecture #middleages #arthistorian #arthistory by @tobiascapwell

'Armour of the English Knight' Book 1 originally came out in 2015, but I'd been trying to work out how to publish it for quite some time before that. Since 2004 actually, as soon as my Ph.D was finished.

Discussions with several publishers repeatedly came to nothing. All the while I continued to write different proposals, conceiving the project in different ways, trying to work out how to overcome a variety of hurdles. Too big, too long, too technical, too many images, etc.

One question that kept coming back was... The cover. The cover was a problem. This was a book about armour, but armour that doesn't exist anymore. All I've got really are the effigies. Wonderful though they are, you put an effigy on the cover of a book and it looks like a book about effigies. There are a lot of effigies in the book, but they are examined as a way of rediscovering a lost armour style.

The other day I found some rough photoshop ideas I'd played around with, to try and find an answer to the cover. The first one is dated April 2011!

The mock-ups employed some gorgeous effigy photography by @dessyo23 , which didn't end up on the final cover in the end, but which did bring a lot to the interior, especially in Books 2 and 3.

I had reconstructed an English style armour as part of my doctoral research, with armourer Robert Macpherson; using that to suggest the 'ghost' of an English armour, now long gone and lurking behind the effigies was an idea that kept coming back.

I suggested this idea to prospective publishers, and they disregarded it, instead coming up with various other ideas that they liked but I.... didn't.

Happily, when @del_mar_thomas galloped to the rescue, the designer, @mrs.conman , actually listened to me in regard to the cover, and very quickly, she'd nailed it. The final effigy image was taken by @cb_newham .

It seemed like it had been a long road, but we made it. And that was only 2015! Here we are nearly twelve years later and the book is coming back. If you don't have it, and you want it, pre-ordering will help us make it happen. Link in bio!

#armouroftheenglishknight #armour #armour #artbook #publishing by @tobiascapwell

😂Blast from the Past😂

Well over a decade ago I worked as historical advisor on The National Trust for Scotland's new Bannockburn Battlefield Visitors Centre, opened on the 700th anniversary in 2014.

I did what I could to help the project team in their endeavor to create CGI characters and environments that helped tell the story of Robert the Bruce's famous victory over King Edward II of England.

At one point there were some issues achieving lifelike postures and body language for the various characters, and Yours Truly was drafted in to model some poses. Not my usual thing, but saying yes is more fun than saying no.

I didn't even realise that I still had both the original reference pics and the resultant models. I'm working on a video game at the moment, in a similar role, which took me back to old work and old files.

So, from the distant past of 2012, here you go. It amused me anyway, I hope it has the same effect on you.

#medievalknight #Bannockburn #gamedesign #middleages #medievalScotland by @tobiascapwell

Armour of the English Knight 1400-1450 is coming back; pre-order link in bio!

I've been going over some memories of the effort to bring the 'big book' to the finish line.

One big question was... visors.

Since no armour of proven English make survives from the 15th century, my work relied on the visual evidence provided by funerary monuments in England, especially high relief effigies.

This is an art-form made to attract the prayers of the living, for the soul of the dead person commemorated. Knights are shown in their full plate armour. Except... they almost never have visors on their helmets.

The intercessory process requires a connection, between the living person praying and the departed beneficiary. For this to work, the effigy has to give a visual sense of a human being - not just a military automaton sheathed in metal. The visor coming down over the face transforms human to Terminator. So it is removed, and the effigies can tell us almost nothing about the design of face protection on English helmets.

Also, English knights actually really did like to fight open-faced. On foot, removing the visor grants better vision, ventilation and the ability to communicate. So the effigies aren't completely misleading in terms of real world practice.

When it came time to illustrate my book, working with draughtsman-armourers Robert Macpherson and @jeffreywasson , it wasn't long before somebody said 'so... what do we do about the visors?'

We initially developed armour 'blueprints' without visors, but that didn't seem right. English armours cover almost the entire body, and it seemed crazy that they wouldn't have visors ready should they want them. We had to draw something.

Some English manuscripts show the use of both snouted and bulbous visors before 1450. Working with that pictorial evidence, supported with anything else consistent, we got as close to an answer as we could.

Other tantalising glimpses remained... Like the unusual bareheaded effigy at Gnosall in Staffordshire... with his visored helmet placed close by.

Effigy photography by @cb_newham
First slide @churburg_castelcoira

#armouroftheenglishknight #armor #armour #armsandarmor #armsandarmour by @tobiascapwell

Armour Talk!
For anyone who is in the Canterbury area, or can be, I will be giving two evening talks there on Monday 30 November and Tuesday 1 December 2026.

The first one, hosted by Canterbury Medieval Combat, will look at the evolution, design and function of plate armour in the 15th century, with special emphasis on the process of commissioning/building/acquiring one for yourself. This talk is intended to assist those who are just getting into armoured combat - I'll be sharing my thoughts on how to approach such a project, essential principles and priorities, common mistakes, and so forth.

Registration is on Eventbrite. Instagram steadfastly refuses to let me add a link anywhere, anyhow, but I'm sure you're all clever enough to punch the necessary info into Eventbrite or Google.

The second talk will be presented by the Early Modern Medieval Alliance at the University of Canterbury, and will focus on my current research on the Paso Honroso, a major passage of arms held near Léon in 1434. Details to follow!

Regarding the images, that's @via_armorari on plate; @diligent_dwarves on casting; @ninyamikhaila on arming doublet and linings; @isakkroghjonsson on maille; @davisreproductions on buckles; @roman_tereschenko_armourer on eyelets and additional plate; and Alice Cooper on moral support.

#armour #armor #armsandarmour #armsandarmor #knight by @tobiascapwell

The Brigstock Round Table - The Final Contest!

The tournament, also called the tourney or mêlée.

The most highly esteemed type of formal combat is a mounted engagement fought in teams, in this case, of six each side (but historically it could be quite a lot more).

One team was led by @dominic1485 , in the guise of King Arthur, and the other by @motosycho577 , representing King Leodegrance of Cameliard.

Once again our rules were based on the earliest known tournament regulations, dating from 1332. They are fairly basic and essentially enshrine points of common sense as laws of chivalry, but they do contain some interesting details, such as

'if a knight falls off of his horse, he is not to be trampled'

suggesting that maybe intentional trampling was something that would happen if it wasn't banned.

They are also clear that the swords should be blunted on their edges and point.

Something I found interesting, as the judge, was that the rules require more judges the more knights are involved. The larger the teams, the more adjudicating eyes you need on the combat. They are also required to surround the field so that the mass combat is judged as fairly as possible, and every heroic action has the best possible chance of being seen.

After the rules are read out, at the judge's command and the raising of the banner in the midst of the field, the two teams charge into the attack and a kind of group dogfight begins. Much like aerial combat, it's all about the maintenance of speed, attainment of an advantageous position relative to your chosen opponent, and the ability to strike well when the opportunity presents itself.

Our tournament was run in three one- minute assaults, with two-minute pauses between. One minute might not sound like a lot, but in the middle of all that, it can seem like an eternity.

The two groups of judges confer at the end, and each group picks a winner - rewarding the two knights who visibly distinguished themselves, of whichever team.

And that, as they say, is

The End.

Photos by @louiseclaytonhatch and @scholaequestris

#knights #kingarthur #arthurian #medieval #tournament by @tobiascapwell