This becomes very apparent if we compare the armour on English brasses and effigies of the second half of the XVth century with Italian ones of that epoch, whilst in the XIVth century they compare very favourably with them.
Froissart bears testimony to the skill of the London armourers: "Et en etoient armuriers en la cité de Londres moult ensoignés." Unfortunately, beyond a helm here or there, as that of the Black Prince and that of Sir Richard Pembridge,[1] which both confirm our chronicler's statement to the full, scarcely anything remains of their work. There is a curious entry in the accounts of Leeds Castle in 1367 for "haberions" habergeons) "bacenetts and paletts" bought at a fair at Tremhethe, in the manor of Charing, about eight miles from Leeds, and the hire of a cart to carry them to Leeds, also a cart to carry fifty jack and fifty doublets from Middleton (Milton, near Sittingbourne) to Leeds Castle, and for six carts carrying materials for making armour.[2] We need not wonder at armour being bought at a fair, when we remember that some of the rarest Flemish tapestries at Madrid were purchased by Charles V at a fair in Spain. Another interesting entry concerning English armour occurs in the accounts of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in 1438, for a pair of gauntlets of English fashion (à la façon d'Angleterre).[3] We have seen that English knights were mostly armed with Bordeaux swords in the combats described by Froissart, and it would appear that early in the XIVth century English swords were not of much worth, for in 1321 Edward II sent David le Hope to Paris to learn the method of making swords for battle.[4] In confirmation of what I said above about the decline in the quality of English armour towards the close of the XVth century, I may cite a passage in Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII.[5] Speaking of the military superiority of the trained Swiss who kept their arms in full trim, and whose only employment was war, he says: "Whereas the national militia . . . taken from the plough-tail, clothed in ill fitting and old fashioned habiliments which descended from father to son, badly cleaned and scarcely ever complete, must have presented a spectacle more ludicrous than formidable, as they took the field in rusty head-pieces and cumbrous body armour hastily patched together for the occasion. It is clear from the various unsuccessful attempts described in contemporary papers to prevent even armour furnished by the King from being pawned or purloined, that native troops were of small account in continental war." I believe that traces of this rough patching may be found on some existing pieces of late XVth-century English armour.
- ↑ The steel of which this helmet is made is so lustrous that Sir Noel Paton thought it had once been silvered.
- ↑ History and Description of Leeds Castle, by Charles Wykeham, M.P., F.S.A., 1869, p. 119.
- ↑ Comte de Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne, No. 1243.
- ↑ Wardrobe accounts, Archaeologia, vol. xxvi, p. 343.
- ↑ Vol. i, p. 111.
