Gambeson
While the upper protection offered by mail is an excellent form of armour against cuts and thrusts, it offers no protection against direct blows to the body. Similarly, individual links can be torn out of a mail coat and driven deeply into wounds with a consequently high risk of infection. As a result of this, some sort of protective layer was required to dilute the force of blows by spreading them over a wider area.
By the middle of the 13th century, padded armours like the cuisses had been fully developed and these were widely used on various parts of the body. This knight is wearing a gambeson which will be covered in mail, while the lesser ranks of foot-soldier would use them as their only form of protection in battle.
The gambeson is sometimes also referred to as an aketon, but there seems to be no reason for differentiating between the terms. The gambeson, like the cuisses, is padded and made from either linen or wool (the word "aketon" derives from Arabic and suggests the use of cotton). As mentioned earlier, generally the quilting ran vertically.
Not suprisingly, gambesons varied in many ways. Often they were left a natural linen colour, but there is plenty of evidence for coloured ones, and this one has been dyed a rich russet colour of a type that sometimes appears in illuminated manuscripts. Some gambesons had integral mittens, while others had no arms at all and were just worn as chest protection. Quite often, footsoldiers would wear more than one gambeson on top of another for extra protection, albeit at the disadvantage of less manouevreability. Evidence of dagging (that is, the tongues of fabric around the bottom of this one) is also occasionally seen.