8. An Indian suit of armour, sent by the Great Mogul as a present to King Charles II. This is a very great curiosity; it is made of iron quills about two inches long, finely japanned and ranged in rows, one row easily slipping over another: these are bound very strong together with silk twist, and are used in that country as a defence against darts and arrows.
9. A neat little suit of armour worn by a carved figure representing Richard Duke of York, the youngest son of King Edward IV. who, with his brother Edward V. were smothered in the Tower, by order of their uncle and guardian, Richard III.
10. The armour of John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster, who was the son of a King, the father of a King, and the uncle of a King, but was never King himself: and Dugdale observes, that more kings and sovereign princes sprang from his loins, than from any King in Christendom. The armour here shewn is seven feet high, and the sword and lance of an enormous size.
11. The droll figure of Will Somers, who, as the warders tell you, was King Henry the Eighth’s jester. They add, “He was an honest man of a woman’s making—he had a handsome woman to his wife, who made him a cuckold; and he wears his horns on his head, because they should not wear holes in his pockets.——He would neither believe King, Queen, nor any about the court, that he was a cuckold, till he put on his spectacles to see, being a little dim sighted, as all cuckolds should be:” in which antic manner he is here represented.
12. What your conductors call, a collar of torments, which say they, “used formerly to be put about the womens necks that cuckolded their husbands, or scolded at them when they came home late, but that custom is left off now-a-days, to prevent quarrelling for collars, there not being smiths enough to make them, as most married men are sure to want at one time or other.”
You now come to the line of Kings, which your conductor begins by reversing the order of chronology; so that in following them we must place the last first.
1. His late Majesty King George I. in a complete suit of armour, sitting with a truncheon in his hand on a white horse richly caparisoned, having a fine Turky bridle gilt, with a globe, crescent and star; velvet furniture laced with gold, and gold trappings.
2. King William III. dressed in the suit of armour worn by Edward the Black Prince son to Edward III. at the glorious battle of Cressey. He is mounted on a sorrel horse, whose furniture is green velvet embroidered with silver, and holds in his right hand a flaming sword.
3. King Charles II. dressed in the armour worn by the champion of England, at the coronation of his present Majesty. He sits with a truncheon in his hand, on a fine horse richly caparisoned, with crimson velvet laced with gold.
4. King Charles I. in a rich suit of his own armour gilt, and curiously wrought, presented to him by the city of London when he was Prince of Wales, and is the same that was laid on the coffin at the funeral procession of the late great Duke of Marlborough, on which occasion a collar of SS was added to it, and is now round it.