Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/293



About 1475. Great St. Helen's Church, London. After Stothard

About 1490. Wingfield Church, Suffolk. After Stothard

we have already remarked, but severely plain and a little shapeless. It is the work of an armourer-artist, but not of a first-class armour smith, who we should imagine had turned out many such suits to supply the strenuous demand for armaments occasioned by the outbreak of the Lancastrian and Yorkist feud. Common as must have been these English-made suits in England in the early years of the XVIth century, not a single harness is to-day, to our knowledge, in existence. The Suffolk effigy, however, is chiefly valuable for the beautiful series of coloured details which Stothard has succeeded in extracting from it. The breastplate, with its slightly globose plates coming high in the neck, is of the same type to which certain extant examples conform, the provenance of which is usually associated with Innsbrück or Southern Austria. In place of the pauldrons are very simple espaliers; while