lambrequin falls from beneath the cap. We illustrate this little ornament not only because it gives an exact representation of the crested helm of the time, but because there is the possibility that it may have been applied to some military apparel once the property of the Prince in question (Fig. 323).
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Fig. 323. Bronze ornament
Showing a crested helm
Found in Queen Street
Westminster
Collection: Author
The helm of Sir Richard Pembridge, formerly in the collection of Sir Noël Paton, is now in the possession of the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh (Fig. 324). For 457 years the helm rested upon an iron perch over the tomb of Sir Richard Pembridge in the nave of the cathedral church of Hereford, where, on a column close by, hung the knight's shield, which has now been missing for over a century. The helm was knocked from its perch on the occasion of the falling in of part of the roof of the cathedral in 1786, when the right leg of Sir Richard's effigy over which it hung was broken, and the large indentation at the back of the head-piece was probably caused. In the same year the helm was described and engraved on a large scale, though with indifferent correctness, in R. Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain" (page 135). In 1822 the Dean and Chapter of Hereford, with mistaken generosity, removed the helm from above the tomb, where it had, no doubt, been placed after the burial of Sir Richard Pembridge, and presented it to Sir Samuel Meyrick to add to his famous collection—an act of vandalism which was not then sufficiently appreciated to be condemned. The Pembridge helm remained in the Meyrick collection at Goodrich Court until it was disbanded and sold piecemeal in 1872, when Sir Noël Paton had the good fortune to purchase it. It was Sir Noël's boast that his were but the second hands into which this famous head-piece had passed in a period of five centuries. Sir Richard Pembridge, we may add, was the representative of a knightly family which had settled near Weobly, in Herefordshire, a spot which bore the same name as early as the thirteenth century. He was one of the first Knights of the Garter, being fifty-third in order of creation. His alabaster effigy shows for the first time a Knight wearing the Garter about his leg.
In drawing a comparison between the Pembridge and the Black Prince helm, it will be noticed that the cylindrical portion of the latter is fashioned
