14-15th c. Agincourt Arming Cotte

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

It had been a hard six weeks siege, but then Harfleur was yours. You set out from the city anxious to see Calais, the Channel, and then good English fields.

Then it all began going wrong. First, they blocked the ford across the Somme, so the King ordered the army on to Amiens. You crossed only to find yourselves in battle at Corbie. Yes, you carried the day, but to what end? A full week later of forced marching and you're tired, sick, hungry, and still fifty miles from Calais and a ship for home. And that's the good news. The bad news is that you're trapped. From the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon to the Marshal Boucicault himself, the entire flower of French chivalry stands between you and the road home. Hell, they're encamped across the road! Last night, as you sat shivering in a soul-soaking fall rain, you could hear laughter, even singing from their camp. Like hundreds of others, you waited to see the priest and confess your sins. He says today is the Feast of St. Crispin and Crispianus. You can't see what good the patron saints of shoemakers will be against a fresh army three times the size of your own, but as you point your legs to your arming coat, you muse that if they could do something, you be forever thankful….

By that fateful day in October of 1415 the great 14th century “arms race” was over and the “knight in shining armour” had been born. From bascinet to sabatons, full and fully-articulated plate armour was not only possible, but increasingly common for men of station. While this eliminated the need for either both the mail shirt and the thickly quilted gambeson beneath it, it introduced some new challenges. Armour is only as useful as it is mobile, so how do you keep all of those different pieces in place?

If you already wear, or are building, a full-harness of armour c.1380 - 1450 or don't want the padding of a gambeson under your armour, then we are pleased to provide that answer! Designed in conjunction with Doug Strong, co-founder of the Armour Research Society, our Agincourt Arming Cotte has been carefully engineered for ease of movement, durability and authenticity. Based on both the tightly-fitted cotehardie of the 1390s and the early 15th century doublets that grew from them, this garment is designed to keep your arm and leg harness hanging exactly where it belongs, while distributing its weight across your entire torso. Just think, no more twisting, sliding or pinching from your own armour! And as an added bonus, it's an awfully sharp garment in its own right! We'll never know what went through the minds of the men who took to the muddy fields of Agincourt, but we do know that they expected their armour and their arming clothes to work. With this arming cotte, you can too.

A note about arming points: We've attached 8 arming points with leather rectangles at the shoulder, upper arm and leg to use for pointing your armour to our Arming Cotte (please note the upper arm points are not shown in the photographs). If your armour requires a different placement of any of the points all you need to do is carefully remove the leather rectangle from the cotte with a seam ripper and re-sew it to the cotte where you need it. To attach points just sew a 'box' around the edges of the leather square - stitching through all layers of the garment.

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