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BIDOWER, 14th CENTURY
An extract from Armies of the Middle Ages, Volume 1by Ian Heath
23. BIDOWER, 14th CENTURY
Among Sir Thomas Dagworth’s indenture for service in Brittany in 1346 are included 40 ‘bidowers’ or ‘bayouneys’; these were undoubtedly bidets, ‘bidower’ also appearing in the sources as ‘bidaut’. These sources indicate that they were light-armed Gascon infantry (‘bayouney’ undoubtedly deriving from Bayonne) equipped with spear and buckler, paid at the same rate as English foot-archers (3d per day), their vintenars receiving 6d and their commanders 1s. There were bidowers in the Anglo-Gascon army at Poitiers in 1356.
Guiart (c. 1305) records Navarrese and other Spanish ‘bidaux’ as being armed with 2 darts, a lance and a coutel at the waist, remarking that ‘of other arms they have none.’ The figure depicted here is from a Flemish tapestry of c. 1385 thought to depict a bidaut.
[Based on Julius Caesar and Attendants from the Nine Heroes Tapestries]
