Harness for the tiltyard was usually made thicker than that for field purposes and was thus somewhat heavier. Much taste and labour were expended on its ornamentation.
Though the best armour was imported from Italy and Germany, a large proportion of that in use in England was made at home, and, indeed, there is plenty of evidence that this is so. Henry VIII, like Maximilian, took a strong personal interest in all that related to arms and armour, and was very desirous that the form and quality of harness made in England should be improved. With this object in view, he arranged with the emperor for German smiths to be sent to Greenwich, and some really fine armours were made there during his reign and later, many of which have been preserved, though the iron billets used in forging them were imported from Innsbruck, English iron not having been found to be of a sufficient tensile strength for the best purposes. Whether this inferiority lay in the process of puddling the iron or to the presence of any considerable proportion of deleterious elements, such as sulphur and phosphorous, is another matter. Henry VIII established his “Almain Armouries” at Greenwich about the year 1514.[189]
The form of “Hoasting” armour underwent several important changes during the course of the sixteenth century and to the time when body-armour fell into general disuse. The changes had their origin, mainly, in new departures in the fashion of the civil dress; indeed, the shape of the doublet of each period is faithfully reflected in that of the cuirass of steel. This following of the modes of the day by the smith sometimes resulted in the production of harness which, however effective from a spectacular point of view, proved most unsuitable for service in the field. This was greatly owing to the abandonment of the principle of a glancing surface on the armour, thus tending to effect lodgment for strokes from weapons of attack, instead of deflecting them.
The elegant form of “Gothic” armour of the connoisseur had been modelled, as we have seen, after the shapely Florentine dress of the fifteenth century: but a radical and far-reaching change took place at the commencement of the sixteenth, following on a new departure in civil costume. This style, armatura spigolata, is usually known as “Maximilian,” named after the emperor, and would seem to have been introduced by him in his extensive dominions from Italy, after his Italian campaign in 1496. That “Maximilian” armour was of Italian origin is clear by the very name it bore in Germany at the time, viz. “Mailander Harnisch.” The leading features of this type are:—the globose form of the breastplate; the abnormally wide-toed solerets, following the new fashion in shoes, “bear-paw” or “cow-mouthed” as they were commonly called; the heightening of the shoulder or neck guards (pieces often, though erroneously, termed pass-guards, a mistake pointed out by Viscount Dillon in one of his valuable and suggestive papers on armour); and the substitution of laminated tassets in place of the solid, tile-formed tuilles. The head-piece is the armet, the most perfect as well as the most familiar form of helmet—of which, however, there are several varieties. This armour was usually made fluted, though sometimes plain. When fluted, the whole surface down to the jambs, which are always smooth, is covered with narrow, regular radiating flutings, differing in that respect from “Gothic” armour, with its broad, sweeping flutings and ridgings.
Tonlet armour (à tonne) has a deep skirt of hoops called “jambers,” standing out all round like a more modern crinoline, and moving up and down like the laths of a Venetian blind. It also had its origin in Italy, and was copied from the civil skirts of the doublet of the period, called “bases”; which when reproduced in steel were clumsy and unwieldy. We have here an apt illustration of the lengths people will sometimes go in slavishly following a particular fashion, however clumsy or unsuitable it might be. This style of armour was greatly employed in fighting on foot, though a variety was adapted for use on horseback. A fine and historic armour for fighting on foot, made by Conrad Seusenhofer of Innsbruck, may be seen in the Tower of London.
Bards probably had their origin in the twelfth century, though there is little mention of them in English records before the close of the thirteenth, but in the fourteenth they would appear to have become fairly common. The chamfron, crinet and peytral are observable in engravings of the fourteenth century, when they were probably of cuir-bouille. In the Histoire de Charles VII it is stated that a combat, à outrance, took place in the year 1446, between the Seigneurs de Ternant and Galiot de Balthasin,[190] in which the latter was mounted “sur un puissant cheval, liquil selon la costume de Lombardie estoit tout convert de fer.” A complete equipment of steel plate for the horse was attained in the second half of the fifteenth century, when, according to a picture in the arsenal at Vienna, painted in 1480, “Der Ritter sitz auf seinem bis auf die Hufe verdecten Hengst.” A fine bard which had belonged to Henry VIII, weighing 92½ lbs., may be seen in the Tower of London. Bards for the tourney were usually of leather.
The expression “trapped and barded,” so frequently met with in records, is often misunderstood. The bard is a defence for the horse, while the trapper is its outside textile covering.
The importance of lightly-armed troops in warfare became steadily greater, and even as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century a large proportion of the armour for the field was made lighter, and demi-harnesses were employed for light cavalry.
The imitation in steel of the civil costume was carried to absurd lengths, as is glaringly shown in the so-called “Pfeifenharnis” (pipe-harness), forged after the picturesque dress of the period, with its pipings, puffs or rolls, points and slashes. Illustrations of it may be seen in the Triumph of Maximilian. In a suit in the Wallace Collection (catalogue No. 555) the details of the dress have been faithfully and minutely reproduced in metal. The very fabric of the civil costume has been imitated and the slashes are gilded. Harness was freely and delicately etched, engraved, damascened, and decorated with repoussé work; and some of the ornamentation did away altogether with the glancing surface of the armour, thus greatly militating against its efficiency for military purposes.
A fine armour in the Zeughaus, at Berlin, affords an excellent example of the best work of about the middle of the sixteenth century. It is by Peter von Speyer, of Annaberg, made for the Kurfürst Joachim II, of Brandenburg, whose arms decorate the breastplate. The helm is of the type of armet without collar. The peak in the cuirass tends to be placed lower down as the century advances, until at length the “peascod” form is reached, as shown on [Plate IX (2)]. Here the breastplate is of the true Elizabethan “peascod” form, converging to a retreating point at the bottom. You have this shape exactly in portraits of the Earl of Leicester, and, indeed, of the queen herself. The tassets swell out over the hips, another feature observable in the portraits. This form continued, with some modifications, up to nearly the end of the century.