Cut Damage from light weapons such as the side sword, elite scimitar etc. would be completely useless against chainmail and even leather in some situations. I think that it would be fine to buff 1h sword speed but increase armor effectiveness. Armor seems fairly useless right now.
I use a balanced iberian mace and it sucks ass. Too short, too slow so i use a regular sword and kill alot more. I say buff the 1h maces!(especially the iberian one *wink wink) 
The most common used weapons by medieval knights were the battle axe, maces/clubs, broadswords, picks. Why not buff these also cause they seem fairly useless with armor being useless.
Buffing 1h speed would only lead to problems from good 1h'd players who use it without a shield in duels. Granted it'd still be short on range and damage vs any 2her/polearm user but the ability to abuse spam advantage would be quite high. Instead I'll recommend again that the speed of shields is what should be increased, as this is the primary problem in every "1h too slow, get spammed" post. And it's somewhat understandable. I have pumped 7 points into the shield skill, hoping for a good increase in speed, but tbh it's not really worth going past what you need for the shield.
I've also tried using smaller, less powerful shields that are faster in order to be more effective in melee (without resorting to the side sword/spammitar). However there's a reason you still see 90% of the shielders going with the huscarl. The speed difference between the faster shields and the huscarl isn't great enough while the durability and coverage of the huscarl is far greater. Obviously, it is the best shield overall and that's why everyone uses it. If the smaller shields (cav shields, kite shields, heater shields, etc) were given a speed increase you might see more melee oriented 1hers make the switch and fare better in melee, while becoming more succeptable to range. Fair trade-off imo.
Just my 2 cents though.
