A&S

Swetnam Chapter 5

This is part of an ongoing project to summarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

We now begin to get to the combat application part of Joseph Swetnam.  Chapter five is a combination of how to fight a duel with a bit towards the end on avoiding duels.

 

Chap. V. The cause of quarrells, and what preparation you aught to be prepared with to answer a challenge.

Swetnam truly has it in for people who duel without cause.  He does give leave to duel if your reputation is truly insulted, but for other than grave insults he admonishes us to turn the other cheek.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Chapters 2, 3, & 4

This is part of an ongoing project to summarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

Chapter two of Joseph Swetnam’s work is less than three pages long.  That’s not enough for a whole post.  So I’ll put three chapters together here.

Chap. II. Declaring the difference of sundry mens teaching, with a direction for the entrance into the practice with thy weapons

There are innumerable styles and fashions of fighting.  Every man practices his art in a slightly different way.  Once you have settled into a style it is very difficult to change, even if there is a major issue with what you’re doing.

But true skill of weapons is never forgotten.  Even years later you will remember how to fight.  Even if you have just having seen someone else fight before you will remember some of it.  Similarly a man who doesn’t know how to swim may save themselves from drowning by remembering what others did.  If people are able to do this, how much more if they were trained from a young age.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Chapter 1

This is part of an ongoing project to summarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

This first Chapter sheweth what weapons are chiefly to be learned, with many other principall notes worthy of observation

Swetnam likes long chapter titles.

Now we get to the beginning of the manual.  As I understand it the first several chapters are not directly about combat, but are instead about various topics related partially to combat.

A number of different looks at Joseph Swetnam I’ve read ignore these chapters.  I’m hoping to get a feel for his concept of combat through reading them.

I’ll try to organize his thoughts, something Swetnam doesn’t seem to have done.  That means that it won’t be in the original order, as Swetnam jumps around a lot.

 

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Preface to Peers

This is part of an ongoing project to summarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

 

Unto all Professors of the Noble and worthie Art of Defence I send greeting

Is how Joseph Swetnam begins his second preface.  This one is only eight pages long, rather than 14.

He begins with a call to his peers.  He extolls them for being men of good self government and the pinnacle of the community.  He calls on them to remember that their lives are not their own but their country’s.  He extolls them to be the best they can be because you never know when you may die.cover page

He explains that his peers must set a good example.  He gives an anecdote of a gentleman who was exceedingly good at putting out eyes with his rapier, and that although he was a very good fencer it encouraged others to attempt it, which was bad because it first encouraged men to take foolish risks while fencing, and second that one should not enter the duel with a murderous mind.  The point of the duel should be to end the duel, not to kill your opponent, as you may be hung for that.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Swetnam Preface to the Reader

This is part of an ongoing project to sumarize and provide SCA focused commentary on The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence by Joseph Swetnam, published in 1617.

For links to the other sections of the Swetnam Project please go here.

I am using this facsimile: http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf for the project.

 

As I said in my previous post I’ll be breaking Joseph Swetnam’s manual down by sections.  This is for the first three sections (kinda).  It includes title page, dedication, and first preface.

 

Prince Henry

Prince Henry 1594 – 1612

I’ll throw a few pictures in to break up the 1700 word post.

First off we have our standard title page with a bit of aggrandizing.  We have our dedication to the Prince Charles, the brother of his dead Patron.  I wonder if he was hoping to snag himself a new patron with this.  Nothing surprising here.

Then we have our introduction for those who aren’t his patron.  It’s entitled: “An Epistle unto the common Reader”.  The intro to the reader is fourteen pages long.  It includes such comments as that he isn’t a scholar and has never attended university.  But he seems to consider himself good enough anyway.  The next five pages seem to be his trying to prove that you don’t need a university education to quote random things.  The only problem is that he’s not very good at it.  He is more than heavy handed with his metaphors – which go on forever – and he approaches his point in a slow spiral so you know about where he’s going, but he never seems to get there.  He mixes quotes from scripture with morality plays and popular ballads.  It very much seems like a first year university student trying to pretend he’s learned by spewing as much information onto the page as possible.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Thoughts on Reading Swetnam

Well I’m kinda back.  I’m only allowed to pick up my sword for 15 minutes at a time, but I have my strength coming back to most of my body and I’m on a lot fewer drugs, so my head is much clearer.  This means that I can get back into some of my studying.  After my work with Saviolo I very much wanted to move on to Joseph Swetnam.  So it’s time for that now.  With Saviolo I found that I didn’t like his writing style as much as I did Di Grassi (though I liked the content more), so it’s interesting to me to see Joseph Swetnam’s style which seems very different from the earlier masters.  I’ll be writing this as I go through his Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence which was published in 1617.Cover

Similar to Di Grassi and Saviolo I’m reading Swetnam in the original.  This is the big reason why I’m starting with the English masters and not the Italianate ones.  I would like to get a grounding in the thought of the time rather than read it through the eyes of a translator.

First Di Grassi published his work in 1570 (translated into English in 1594) and Saviolo published in 1595.  I still think that Saviolo’s work is derivative of Di Grassi’s, and subscribe to the thought that Di Grassi’s manual was taught in Saviolo’s school before his own manual came out.  I did find a number of parallels between Saviolo’s work and dall’Agocchie’s work which came out a few years prior.

Joseph Swetnam published in 1617 – 22 years later.  Saviolo should thus be a completely new generation of fencing.  His work is more likely to be derivative of Fabris, Giganti, and Capoferro but from an English perspective.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Academic Rapier

I currently have a lack of both time and money, which makes it difficult for me to attend more than my local practice for fencing.  What I do have is a lot of time for reading while on the train.  So, similarly to what I did when I decided to learn more about bread making I picked up some books.

The first one had very little to do with rapier: Warrior to Soldier, 449-1660.  It’s a history of warfare in England from the Saxons right through to the New Model Army.  It’s a great overview for anyone in the SCA with an English persona.  It helped me to understand the rapiers position in England, as that of a day to day sidearm.  I knew that it wasn’t a military weapon, but to see the evolution of the military sword and armour was very enlightening.  Though the rapier came to prominence in England, the decrease in armour was actually because of the firearm.  I always figured that firearms in general brought about the change in armour, but it wasn’t actually until the advent of the musket (which at the time was so heavy it needed a prop) that armour became useless.  The first muskets allowed a half trained man to kill someone in the heaviest armour who had been trained from childhood.  Although new armour was designed that could withstand a musket shot, it was so heavy that it required a man to be on horseback, and slow.  It was useless on the ground, and couldn’t be used to protect the horse as it was too heavy.  So if the cavalry had the bulletproof breast plates on their horses were still vulnerable, and the musketeers just aimed for the horses instead.  The armour was so heavy that people refused to wear it.  They would rather wear little armour and be fast.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

February Update

Some thoughts today:

Stats

I was browsing my stats.  I never realized how popular my Roman Legion Cooking project I did for AT War was.  It seems that that is the most viewed page, and the biggest reason people come to this blog.  Followed closely by my bread experiments.

Norse Bread

I’ve been planning some more experiments with the bread.  I’m thinking that since the mead barm bread went so well I might try to expand on that.  A friend of mine did a project on Norse Bread, and it brought up some great ideas.  I could use the resarch into norse bread and the types of grains that were found in it, particularly in the Birka find, and make a mead barm bread with the proper grains.  I’m not sure if they would use mead barm or beer barm to leaven it, but since both would be readily available it would make sense.  My no research suspicion is that they would use mead barm, as it would impart a light sweetness to the bread.  Based on the types of norse bread I’ve read about I’d assume that they would go stale about a day after baking, so they would likely be eaten fresh and hot.  Perhaps a lightly leavened pan bread….  Much research is required here.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago