In January of 1600 CE (our calendar) Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council mustered a new levy of infantry for Ireland. Six men in every hundred were to be equipped with “good swordes and daggers” and “targettes of wood” (and probably “good murryons” as well, since all the other troops were supposed to have one). What would these shields have looked like? How large would they have been?

Interestingly, the letter grants that targets may be hard to find, so has arranged for merchants in London to bring in a special supply- an arrangement it doesn't make for muskets, bastard muskets, calivers, pikes, halberds, or corselets. It also complains about the quality of the swords and daggers which past levies have brought. There were the usual injunctions against buying cheap clothing or conscripting only the desperate and friendless.

Something like this:

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OK, thanks Sean.

And how to make them:

http://www.bloodandsawdust.com/sca/targets.html