Thus refreshed and sobered, the jolly priest twirled his heavy partizan round his head with three fingers, as if he had been balancing a reed, exclaiming at the same time, 'Where be those false ravishers who carry off wenches against their will? May the foul fiend fly off with me, if I am not man enough for a dozen of them.'

--Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott

The link is to an online Elizabethan manual of defense, which are always well worth studying. Re-reading Ivanhoe gave me cause to wonder if a partizan might not have been anachronistic. It also made me realize that the "Wizengamot" before which Harry Potter is brought in The Order of the Phoenix is a corruption of "witenagemot", the meeting of the wise, which made me feel foolish for not realizing it earlier:

"My lineage, proud Norman," replied Athelstane, "is drawn from a source more pure and ancient than that of a beggarly Frenchman, whose living is won by selling the blood of the thieves whom he assembles under his paltry standard. Kings were my ancestors, strong in war and wise in council, who every day feasted in their hall more hundreds than thou canst number individual followers; whose names have been sung by minstrels, and their laws recorded by Wittenagemotes; whose bones were interred amid the prayers of saints, and over whose tombs minsters have been builded."

I can't wait for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to be done. Although, frankly, Ms. Rowling's Minesweeper record is much faster than mine, and I got lots of practice when I was managing that restaurant. A facility for Minesweeper does not indicate time is being well spent.

If the owner of said restaurant is reading this, that was a joke.