Armour in England, from the Earliest Times to the Reign of James the First

by John Starkie Gardner

[V]
The Age of Enriched Armour

Armour began from about the accession of Edward VI. to cease to be a military necessity, and those engaged in practical warfare were more ready to dispense with its doubtful protection than to encumber themselves with its certain disadvantages. Excuses were found for appearing in the field without armour, or with an imperfect equipment, and punishments were inflicted in the vain attempt to stem the tide of change. Those who served on foot had naturally the strongest objection to bearing its weight, since when opposed to firearms it ceased to have any practical utility. A battle-scene at Hampton Court, the battle of Forty by Snayers, furnishes the strongest justification for its disuse among men-at-arms. It represents a number of mounted men in complete armour, who discharge horse-pistols point blank at each other’s breastplates, the individual struck falling in every case dead or wounded from his horse. The wheel-lock pistol, the arm of the German Reiters, who wore black armour, mail sleeves, and a visored morion, was in the field in 1512. From this time, therefore, armour was worn rather for display than service, and the purchaser came to value its defensive qualities far less than the magnificence of its decoration. Nor was ostentation in arms confined to the noble or knight alone. Brantôme says that among the pikemen and musketeers of Strozzi, De Brissac, and the Duc de Guise, thousands of gilt and engraved morions and corselets were to be seen on parade days, and the armour worn by the picked force of Spaniards and Italians sent by Philip of Spain to occupy the Netherlands was a splendid sight. The great and wealthy have seldom cared to stint in matters of personal adornment, and in days when there were fewer ways in which a taste for extravagant expenditure could be combined with a high appreciation of art, fortunes were spent upon the coverings of the body. Nothing more sumptuous in applied art exists, in regard either to design or execution, than the work lavished on the armour produced for the French, Spanish, and other monarchs in the second half of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Among this the most exquisitely beautiful is the damascened work, scattered over Europe, persistently though erroneously attributed to Cellini, of which, perhaps, one of the finest examples is the target at Windsor. It is no exaggeration to say that neither chiselling, embossing, nor damascening on metal has ever rivalled or even approached that bestowed at this time upon royal arms and armour. The chief seats of production were in Germany and Italy, at Milan above all, then Innsbrück, Augsburg, Nuremberg; and in a less degree Florence, Brescia and Venice. It is singular that few fine suits can be attributed to France, and fewer still either to Spain, the Netherlands, or England. The youth of Edward, the fact that female sovereigns succeeded, and finally, the timidity and horror of war felt by James, account for none of the known chef-d’œuvre suits being made for English wearers. Such extraordinary and magnificent armour was meet for none but the high-spirited and rival princes of Europe, and no king distinguished for valour occupied the throne of England during the period when enriched armour reached its culminating point of grandeur.

Fig. 30.—Part of a suit made for Sir Christopher Hatton.

From the Spitzer collection, and now in the possession of Mr. Charles Davis. This is No. 15 in the Armourers’ Album in the South Kensington Museum, reproduced in our [Plate III.]

There are, however, a certain number of richly engraved and gilt suits which have been in the possession of English families from time immemorial, and the fortunate acquisition for the South Kensington Museum Art Library of an Armourers’ Album of the time of Elizabeth, has enabled many of the original wearers of them to be identified. This MS., as Lord Dillon relates, was in the possession, in 1790, of the Duchess of Portland, daughter of Harley, Earl of Oxford, who permitted Pennant to engrave from it a suit of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, for his account of London; while Strutt was allowed to reproduce that of George, Earl of Cumberland, for his work on dresses and costumes. The book undoubtedly once formed part of the great Harleian Library, but was lost until seen in Paris some years ago by Baron de Cosson. It was sold at the Spitzer sale, acquired by M. Stein, and offered to the Kensington Museum, by whom it was wisely purchased.

The drawings are in pen and ink and water-colours and represent twenty-nine full suits, besides the extra pieces for tilting. Some of them are inscribed “Made by me Jacobe,” the name of the master armourer at Greenwich during part of Elizabeth’s reign, and mentioned by Sir Henry Lee, the Master of the Armoury, in a letter to the Lord Treasurer, dated 12th October 1590, published by Lord Dillon in the fifty-first volume of Archæologia. Wendelin Böheim, the curator of the Imperial collections of armour at Vienna, has recently identified this Jacobe with Jacob Topf, one of three brothers, natives of Innsbrück or its vicinity, and who suddenly appears as court armourer in 1575. This post he seems to have retained and worked at Schloss Ambras till his death in 1597. Suits made by him during this period for the Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol and Archduke Charles of Styria certainly bear some resemblance to those in the Album. Böheim infers from the Italian influence seen in his work, especially in the ornament, that Topf must have proceeded from the atelier of Jörg Seusenhofer to Milan or Brescia, about the year 1558, and taken up his abode in England between 1562 and 1575.

To support the identification of the Jacobe of the Album with Jacob Topf of Innsbrück, it is necessary either that all the suits should have been produced before 1575, or that those made at a later time should be regarded as by some other hand. The first two, for Rutland and Bedford, who died respectively in 1563 and 1564, are relatively plain, and have M.R. over them, and the rest E.R., which can only, it would appear, have reference to the initials of the reigning queens. All the figures are practically drawn from one model, though sometimes reversed, and are in an easy and graceful pose. Two of the richest, namely the second suit for Sir Henry Lee, the Master Armourer, No. 19, and the first suit of Sir Christopher Hatton, No. 15 of the Album, are here reproduced in facsimile, though reduced in scale (Plates II. and III.). One holds a mace and the other a truncheon in one hand, with the butt resting upon the hip, while the other arm is bent and the extended palm rests upon the thigh. They wear the close helmet or armet of Italian fashion, with a high comb and a large sharply-pointed visor. The gorgets are laminated, the pauldrons large and massive, the breastplates long-waisted, known as the peascod shape, ending in a point, with a ridge down the centre called the tapul; the tassets are short and laminated. Only the front of the thigh is protected by laminated cuissarts, and the rest of the leg by close-fitting knee-caps and greaves. The sollerets are complete and take the shape of the foot. The swords appear to be simply cross-hilted and worn in scabbards. Both the suits reproduced are richly engraved with vertical bands of gilt arabesqued ornament in the Italian fashion: Sir Christopher Hatton’s being on a russet ground with a gold corded pattern connecting the bands; and Sir Henry Lee’s on a white ground with a knotted reticulated pattern between. The minor details are considerably varied in the other suits, two of which have been reproduced by Lord Dillon, and two by Böheim in the publications already referred to. The complete list comprises the names of many of the leading nobles and captains of Elizabeth’s reign, only two in it being foreigners.