In this article, I’ll talk about the role of a squire, my experiences squiring for Jake Norwood at the Deed of Arms at WMAW, and my thoughts on its meaning for the use of harness.

Generally, when most people think of squires, they think of a comically servile person attending to a comically onerous knight. I generally think that this is because modern people fixate on the aspect that is most alien and uncomfortable to us, the notion of a personal servant, and the perception of a large contrast in status between the knight and the squire. I think people ham it up to overcome their discomfort, but it prevents them from grappling with the full potential of the role.

(For the purposes of this article, I’ll use the words “knight” and “squire,” even though my discussion extends more broadly to groups of people that operate in support of a fully armored person.)

I squired for Jake at the Deed of Arms with the intention of publicly presenting my ideal version of a squire. An expert in his knight’s harness. A critical component of a crew-served weapon. A fighter in his own right, but not his main job. A member of an entourage that gains from and reflects upon the social status of the knight.

As a quick warning, I don’t suggest that strangers try this with each other. Jake and I are good friends, and we both know precisely what we were trying to achieve. I took on a role, to understand how a weapon system might have been used, and not because I get a big kick out of actually playing the role. Jake has commanded people in modern military contexts, and knows what the boundaries are between the role I was trying to achieve and the actual relationship between us. Trying this with strangers, or friends who don’t understand the purpose of the role, can quickly get really weird.

An Expert at the Knight’s Harness

A squire needs to be knowledgeable on armor in general, but especially needs to be an expert on his knight’s harness, as his most commonly known duty is helping him arm and disarm. In watching people arm, I know that no two harnesses are identical.

Jake’s helmet, a close helmet made to replicate a sallet and bevor.

For example, Jake’s helmet is a close helmet sallet with perforated plate extending upwards from his bevor protecting his face. There is a specific sequence of locking pins to depress to open his sallet, and two straps, one at the front and one at the back of his neck, to remove it. This is critical to know when assessing whether his helmet is fully locked and safe, but is also helpful when trying to rapidly remove a helmet and get him air.

In early bouts, we found that one problem was that although he started visor up, his visor would slam down when he started wrestling with an opponent. This was both a feature and a bug – he was protected from a stab up close to the face, but he was functionally blind and couldn’t breathe.

Even when harness is nominally of the same shape and design, the interaction of the harness with a wearer’s body means that an intimate knowledge of how the armor fits its user is critical. In helping him arm as a squire, I know that one problem is that the plackart is sitting on his hips a bit too heavily, and bruising and chafing that point. We worked together to try to mitigate that problem by adding padding, lining the doublet, and taking care to smooth out any underlying fabric when the faulds were buckled together.

One way that modern squire practice doesn’t reach its full potential is that squires are generally a pool of volunteers, who might be knowledgeable about armor generally, but won’t know the specifics of a particular harness. I can see why modern events do this, as the notion of direct personal service is very uncomfortable by modern norms. However, I just want to point out that this can affect our understanding of the experience of being in harness, as critical components of an armored person’s entourage are not trained to a historic level.

Part of a Crew-Served Weapon

When someone is in armor, their capabilities both increase and decrease. For example, Jake in his harness is nearly impervious to most weapons, and can dish out serious violence on anyone in front of him.

However, he has difficulty opening his visor and lowering his bevor to breath and see. He has difficulty picking up a dropped weapon from the ground , and returning his dagger to his sheath because his bevor blocks his vision below. He cannot adjust many of the straps on his harness. Raising his hand to wipe his face or drink water is basically a weighted curl.

Most people have pointed to these difficulties and thought of a knight as this inherently contradictory figure – both a killing machine yet completely helpless in other regards. But a squire isn’t just a person that helps put on the harness, he can actively mitigate many of the difficulties of armor in use.

A squire can serve a knight much the same way an assistant gunner serves a gunner in a machine gun team.

A squire can do many, many basic tasks. Some of them are literally impossible for someone in harness. Others are very difficult. Yet other tasks are not difficult, but taxing if done repeatedly. A squire does this not because of servile social relationship with the knight, but because the two are part of a team for a crew served weapon, and the squire is like an assistant gunner for a machine gun team, who brings extra ammunition, swaps out barrels, and is generally for keeping the weapon online for as long as possible. In a tournament, the knight’s success reflects well upon the squire, and the squire’s ability and competence reflect well upon himself as a future knight. In war, the knight’s success could mean the difference between life or death, or financial ruin. Thus the squire has a vested interest in enhancing the knight’s performance wherever possible.

For example, during the Deed bouts, my priorities were i) focused on assessing the safety of Jake’s helm and harness ii) returning his visor to open at any break iii) picking up dropped weapons and handing to them, and/or returning them to his sheath. As quickly as possible. These tasks are extremely difficult for Jake to do by himself, and not having to do that, and knowing that I would handle it automatically takes a lot of the physical and mental workload off of him and lets him focus on performing.

But my tasks didn’t end there. Once the bout was over, I did several things. First, I removed his helmet as quickly as possible. This allowed him to breathe, drink, see, vent heat, and reduces the psychological stress of claustrophobia. This was aided by the previous point, the fact that I knew his specific helmet and how to get it off quickly.

Additionally, I tracked the location of his helmet, his sword, and his other belongings, and brought them to him before the bout, so he didn’t have to. This allowed him to basically sit the entire time between bouts and watch the other bouts or think about his next bout.

Last, I focused on his comfort. I had a leather costrel filled with a (historically attested) water and vinegar mix that I carried specifically for him, and offered it to him frequently to remind him to hydrate in case he forgot. I wiped his face of sweat so that he wouldn’t have to raise his arms and use strength. I found a piece of wool for him to sit on when he complained of the hard bench he was sitting on. I did these not because of a servile relationship that we have. Rather, because we were a team, and it was game time, and Jake was up at bat, and we wanted to win.

I think modern knight-squire relationships have trouble exploring these concepts, because of modern norms of independence and equity. A modern knight may be afraid to ask for help with very basic or intimate tasks, and a squire might not want to do them, or be uncomfortable with proactively doing them or offering to do so . Again, this isn’t to say that this is how everyone should do it all the time, but we might be missing out on key insights on the experience of harness when we don’t explore these ideas.

Squires as Fighters

Historically, squires were trained to fight, and operated as fighters in a backup capacity. They needed to guard the knight’s tent while he slept, bring him items in the middle of battle, save him from capture, and retrieve his body if he died. I have a harness of my own – it’s nowhere near as nice as Jake’s, but it’s got a few important properties. First, my harness is structurally and philosophically very similar to Jake’s. We are both simulating late 15th century German Gothic harness, worn with the an open face between the sallet and bevor. A lot of the tactical insights we learn about how to use our armor can be shared. In addition, in the hypothetical event that one of his pieces is unusable, some of mine can step in as a substitute.

Personally, my harness is sufficient to compete in tournaments in my own right – I have competed in several armored tournaments, but when playing the armed squire I would scale back. I would wear a maille sleeves, skirt, standard, breastplate, sallet. The philosophy of this configuration is that it retains essential elements of protection, can all be put on without help, and leaves my hands and eyes free to aid the knight or fetch objects, which was my primary job. I would be able to see if we are badly outnumbered or being flanked and warn Jake, yet would be armored enough to fight in an emergency. In contrast, there are many components of Jake’s harness that are impossible or very difficult to wear without help – the plackart, the helmet, the arm harness. I’m positive that when certain high status armors were made, the assumption is that they would be worn with an armed retinue of people trained to assist.

Having trained and fought in armor which structurally resembles Jake’s, I personally know the aches and pains of that configuration. This experience informs my squiring. I know getting that visor up or helmet off ASAP makes a world of a difference. I can assess how his harness moves, the straps, and location of individual pieces, and check if things are out of place. I know how difficult small things become in harness, anticipate his needs, and proactively try to do them as squire, rather than wait to be asked.

Appearance and Social Status

A squire reflects the social status of his knight, but also gains from it. Squiring for Jake gave me several moments to reflect on how that fact survives even in a modern context.

When I thought of squiring for the Deed, I knew I had to wear something presentable, that reflected the high social status of both myself and the knight, but also conveyed a martial attitude. I had an outfit I was going to wear for the banquet, but modified it to look like a younger person. I wore a maille vest underneath my doublet, a simple but elegant polished rondel dagger, and arming points which contrasted brightly with my doublet. All of these are overt markers of a fighting man ready for trouble, but packaged in a nominally high status black courtly outfit. The specific details of material, color, cut might be off, but this is the general idea of the appearance I think an ideal squire would have, one which ennobles and reflects well upon the standing of the knight as a high status man at arms.

Jake chatting with Roland Warzecha in between bouts.

But the squire also gains from the knight’s social status. The knight runs in social circles that a squire suddenly gains access to by proximity. By squiring for Jake, I discovered that I was meeting famous HEMA people I ordinarily wouldn’t have met. I can see the precise same thing happening for squires historically.

With this in mind, I thought to myself during the Deed, “If, hypothetically, Jake’s social status reflects well on me, then what can I do to make sure he looks good?”

One small thing I did was to make sure Jake wore his red Hungarian hat whenever he didn’t have his helmet on. It’s period-ish, but the hat really tied together his look. It’s a small thing really, but dammit it made for some great Facebook photos.

Last, the squire’s service reflects upon himself. Serving as a squire reflects upon how he might one day serve as a knight. The same qualities that make one a great squire would make one a valuable military and political asset, or ally. And a higher up noble looking for good people to elevate would do well to observe the qualities of the people beneath him. In thinking and experiencing the role, I definitely believe that a squire’s service ennobles both the squire and the knight.

Conclusion

To an outsider, this whole thing has got to sound weird. But my basic points are twofold. First, without exploring the social structures and specialized roles that surround a man in harness, we might be getting an incomplete picture of the experience of wearing and fighting in harness. Without the squires, specialized attendants and entourage that would normally accompany a man of status that can afford bespoke full harness, armor can be a frustrating, tiring, heavy, and hot burden. This isn’t to necessarily say that we should replicate these social structures en masse in the modern world. Rather, when we graft modern values onto medieval practices, we might be missing important pieces of history, and it’s worth it to occasionally take a brief look around to see what we’ve missed.

Second, the practice of squiring has changed the way I think of service in the medieval world. There are broader ways to think of service, patronage, the relationships between knights and squires, but also between lords and their retainers, which don’t map to modern analogues. We don’t have to import these social structures and norms into the modern world we practice in, because it comes with a lot of unpleasant stuff like sexism, religious fanaticism, etc. Instead, occasionally pushing the boundaries of modern social structures and norms can give us glimpses of history we otherwise would not be able to see.