hauberk

plural hauberks · alternative hawberk

1. A coat of mail; especially, the long coat of mail of the European Middle Ages, as contrasted with the habergeon, which is shorter and sometimes sleeveless.

   The hauberk was to the Norman what the byrnie was to the Saxon, the chief method of bodily defence.

   1909, Charles Henry Ashdown, European Arms & Armor, page 65

   2 more examples

   The hauberk was a complete covering of mail from head to foot. It consisted of a hood, joined to a jacket with sleeves, breeches, stockings and shoes of double chain mail, to which were added gauntlets of the same construction.

   1786, Francis Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons, page 14

   Ursula wore that day a hauberk under her gown, and was helmed with a sallet; and because of her armour she rode upon a little horse.

   1896, William Morris, chapter 29, in The Well at the World's End, volume II, London, New York, and Bombay: Longmans, Green, and Co., book IV, page 258

2. uncommonA similar shirt of scale armour, plate, leather, or other armor material.

   The plate hauberk did not restrict his movements in the slightest, and he didn't feel weighed down as he did in Taraq'nok's chain mail.

   2012, Martin Parece, The Cor Chronicles Volumes I, II & III, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 240

   5 more examples

   The habergeon is the mail in this case, and the hauberk is of plate or splint armour, while the cote-armoure is the surcoat, possibly thickly padded, as in the still-existing surcoat of the Black Prince.

   1898, John Starkie Gardner, Armour in England from the Earliest Times to the Seventeenth Century, page 40

   One, which was destined later to usurp the field completely, consisted of a sleeved mail or scale hauberk, probably of eastern, Iranian, origin, descending to the knees.

   1929, Yale University, The Excavations at Dura-Europos: Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters; Preliminary Report of 1st- Season of Work ..., page 451

   In Demetrios ' portrait, the saint wears a lamellar hauberk and a long surcoat over ornately patterned leggings. The painter has added an unusual element to the composition - a scarf tied around the horse's head […]

   2001, Angeliki E. Láiou, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History Angeliki E Laiou, Angeliki E. Laiou, Roy P. Mottahedeh, The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, Dumbarton Oaks, page 277

   Because the call to arms had come so quickly, he'd not had time to don his chain-mail armor, only a light, plate hauberk that covered his shoulders and torso.

   2008, Robyn Young, Crusade, Penguin, →ISBN, page 460

   Fitted perfectly for her, it consisted of a simple plate hauberk and legguards, plate armguards and sabatons with chain mail underneath. She had discarded the chain mail early, much to Parol's consternation, […]

   2014, Martin V. Parece II, Gods and Steel: The Cor Chronicles, Vol. IV, Parece Publishing, page 77