Dan Howard wrote: |
The name "aketon" implies that the earliest ones in Europe were made from cotton. Cotton was brought to Sicily by the Moors but it never spread to the rest of Europe until the Norman conquest of Sicily in the 12th century. So there couldn't have been any in Europe before this time. |
I dont have acces to the original text of the assize of arms, but the translation to english was gambeson. The sources for the PHD thesis were late 13th and early 14th century.