Fig. 22.—German Armour. Date about 1570. The Duke of Westminster, K.G.
The large proportion of mercenaries retained on either side contributed more perhaps than anything else to the disuse of armour. Nicander Nucius relates that in Henry VII.’s expedition to Scotland there were “Italians in no small number, and of Spaniards, and also moreover of Argives from Peloponnesus.” In 1546 Lord Grey de Wilton brought his “Bullenoyes and Italian harquebuziers” from Boulogne. In invading Scotland two years later he divided “his menne of armes, demilaunces, and light horsemenne into troops, appointing the Spanish and Italian hagbutters on horsebacke to keepe on a wing.” Captain Gambo, a Spaniard, and others held command, and, “being backed by the Almayne footmen, entered againe into Scotland.”
In proceeding to quell the insurrection in Devonshire, Lord Grey’s forces included, among other strangers, a band of horsemen “most part Albanoyses and Italians,” and a band of Italian footmen under Captain Paule Baptist Spinola of Genoa. These mercenaries armed themselves in their own fashion and were not to be controlled. Nor does it appear that the Tudor kings were anxious to put even their body-guards in anything like complete armour. Henry VII.’s guard consisted “of fifty yeomen, tall personable men, good archers, and divers others.” A little later, on the marriage of Prince Arthur, the guard consisted of 300 carrying halberts, in white and green damask, with garlands of vine embroidered back and front, richly spangled in front and enclosing a red rose worked in bullion and goldsmith’s work. Nicander Nucius says that “they consisted of halberdmen and swordsmen who used bucklers and Italian swords, so that resting the bucklers on the ground, they could discharge arrows.” Perkin Warbeck, posing as the “Whyte Rose Prince of England,” had a guard of thirty in “Murray and blewe.” Henry VIII. appointed a guard of fifty “speeres” in the first year of his reign, each to be attended by an archer, demilaunce, and a custrell, on great horses. They were so extravagantly dressed, “trapped in cloth of golde, silver, and goldsmithes woorke, and their servants richly appareled also,” that “they endured not long the apparell and charges were so greate.” They were not reinstated until the thirty-first year of his reign. Edward VI.’s guard was 400 strong, all very tall, and dressed in crimson velvet doublets embroidered with golden roses. In meeting Philip of Spain on his way to Winchester in 1554, Lord Arundel took 100 archers in yellow cloth striped with red velvet with their bows ready, Mary’s colours, however, being white and green.
The taste for sumptuous armour became definitely fixed on the accession of Henry VIII. in 1509. Harding relates that, at the Coronation jousts, Brandon “turneyed in harneyes all over gylte from the heade-peece to the Sabattons.” Hall devotes scores of pages to descriptions of the magnificence of Henry, especially in presence of rival potentates or their ambassadors. Before Terouenne, the weather being very foul, Maximilian and his retinue came to the rendezvous in black cloth, but Henry was attended by a large retinue extravagantly dressed, comprising his usual “nine henxmen” in white and crimson cloth of gold richly embroidered with goldsmith’s work, on great coursers as richly caparisoned, with the addition of many gold bells, and “tassels of fyne gold in bullion”—these bore his helm; “the two grangardes,” his spears, axe, etc. He entered Terouenne as a conqueror in “armure gilt and graven”; and Maximilian set out on his return “toward Almaine in gilte harness, and his nobles in white harness and rich cotes.” On the occasion of the French ambassador’s visit to Greenwich, the king disported himself at the “tilte in a newe harnesse all gilte of a strange fashion that had not been seen.” No less than 286 spears were broken. Charles V. is often represented in very richly embossed armour, and some of the suits made for him, such as by the Colmans of Augsburg, show that these sculptured and pictorial representations were not wholly imaginary.
It is not, however, until the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth that the culminating point of richness in armour is attained, when poems abound in allusions to it. In Spenser’s Faerie Queen armour always glitters with gold, and in Camoens’ Lusiad there are “breast-plates flaming with a thousand dyes.”
Fig. 23.—Suit of late Italian Armour. Embossed and damascened. Tower of London.
Little sumptuously decorated armour was made in England, the finest that can claim to have been made here being five existing suits out of the twenty-nine in the Jacobe album. One only of these belongs to the nation, Lord Bucarte’s bequeathed with the Wallace Collection; the opportunity of acquiring Sir Christopher Hatton’s, notwithstanding its historic interest, being hitherto neglected.