December 10-13, 2024 Firearms & Militaria
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/11/2024
A munitions grade example of the classic form of early “Irish” basket hilt common to the Anglo-Scottish and Irish forces of the 1500s and early 1600s and bearing a close relationship to the earliest British American colonial contexts. It particularly bears commonalities to those archaeologically associated with the earliest English colonization efforts of Virginia. It has all the characteristics of the “Irish” hilt swords of the Elizabethan period: the pleasing large round pommel, complex six bar basket of thin bars, and shields interrupting the bars in two places. The pommel bears an incised double lined cross. It has a triple fuller double edged broadsword blade. Famed archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume discusses similar rounded pommels found at Jamestown and other early 17th century colonial sites in his The Archaeology of Martin’s Hundred: Part 1 Interpretive Studies (page 404, particularly footnote 415). An example with different quillons but a similar large round pommel and overall shape was found in the wreckage of Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose. They also appear in a circa 1540 portrait of William Palmer as a gentleman pensioner, available for viewing on the Royal Armories website. For similar examples, see Mowbray, British Military Swords, Volume I, pgs. 110-125. CONDITION: The guard retains a brown patina and the grip is a modern replacement, but acceptable for a such a rare early example. The hole in the pommel does not meet the opposite branch in the guard, perhaps indicating that it originally held a vertical branch with a screw connecting it to the pommel, as in some other surviving examples. Blade retains a brown patina with some areas of heavier patina.