No word ever escapes the chronicler in praise of English armour; but the splendid model of the Earl of Warwick’s suit is by William Austin, founder, and Thomas Stevyns, coppersmith, both of London, with the gilding, chasing, and polishing by Bartholomew Lambespring, Dutchman and goldsmith of London. The will directs that the effigy shall be made according to patterns, directions obviously most scrupulously carried out.
Fig. 20.
The Earl of Warwick slays a “mighty Duke” who has challenged him to combat for his lady’s sake, and wins the favour of the Empress, to whom he makes a present of pearls and precious stones. The costume is about fifteen or twenty years later than the death of Earl Richard, and shows the extra pieces worn in the tilt-yard, 1450-60.
In contemplating the lithe figure we may well believe that the steely quality and workmanship of such a suit would confer immunity on the wearer; and that the relative elasticity and lightness of a perfectly-fitting suit might confer such superiority on an active and sinewy champion engaging with men swathed like mummies beneath their armour in thick gambeson or mail, as to enable him to emerge from his deeds of arms as triumphantly as the heroes of romance. Nothing was worn beneath but the fustian doublet, well padded and lined with satin, with the small lozenge-shaped gussets of mail under the limb-joints and the short petticoat of mail tied round the waist. It is also unlikely that such armour was concealed under any garment, and we may observe that while some princes and nobles are still wearing brigandines of velvet and cloth of gold in pageants, many more are in “plain armour,” presenting, except when standing collars of mail were worn, a uniform surface of smooth polished steel.
The Missaglia suit remained the type with little modification for several years, almost to the close of the Gothic period. The Quatremayne brass in Thame Church, of the year 1460, presents a magnificent example of it with singularly exaggerated elbow-guards. During the next few years the limb-pieces and gorget become more articulated and flexible, and the breast and back plates are formed of as many as three or four overlapping articulated plates, cut chevron-wise, and notched and indented in an interesting manner. The gauntlets and sollerets are also of excellent workmanship. There are a number of peculiarly fine examples in the Museum of Artillery in the Rotunda at Woolwich, from the Isle of Rhodes, which exhibit the graceful outlines and ornament of later fifteenth-century Gothic armour in perfection, and also present early and interesting examples of engraving on armour. Lord Zouche has also some remarkable suits, said to be from the Church of Irene at Constantinople, in his collection at Parham. Sir Noel Paton’s fine collection also comprises several Gothic suits, and there are some in the Tower. None, however, are connected historically with English wearers, and the destruction of Gothic armour in this country appears to have been unusually complete. The illustrations from the Life of the Earl of Warwick, an English MS. of the second half of the fifteenth century (Figs. 20 and 21); and the scene ([Fig. 25]) from the late fifteenth-century MS. of Froissart, which belonged to Philip de Commines, both now in the British Museum, give excellent ideas of the armour of this period in actual use, while the brasses supply exact figures of the details.
Fig. 21.