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 CHAPTER XII

THE ARMET HEAD-PIECE FROM THE EARLY YEARS OF THE XVth CENTURY TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE NEXT CENTURY

It is remarkable that, although Meyrick illustrates two helmets of the armet class in his famous work, this particular and very special head-piece was not described in public or private collections as a distinctive type, or as a link in the evolution of the helmet, until the Baron de Cosson made its importance clear about forty years ago. It is safe to say that up to as late as the seventies of the XIXth century, the XVth century character of this head-piece was entirely unappreciated; while its individual features were confused with the mass of types of closed head-piece which were vaguely classed as of XVIth century origin. We well remember seeing in the Tower of London a fine, though incomplete, late XVth century armet placed on a three-quarter suit of mid-XVIIth century armour, and japanned brown to match the suit. This was as late as 1890, proving that the armet was not even then recognized as a XVth century head-piece in our National Armoury.

As is the case with nearly all names which are employed to-day to particularize the parts of a suit of armour, there is considerable doubt as to the type of head-piece to which the term armet was originally applied. This may be accounted for by the very loose nomenclature of the XVth and XVIth centuries, and also by the fact that the line of tradition that doubtless attached the word armet to the class of helmet to which it really belonged was broken during the latter part of the XVIIth and wholly through the XVIIIth century. The fighting man of the earlier part of the XVIIth century may possibly have possessed, from tradition, a truer understanding of what the armet head-piece really was than we possess to-day; but after that period the original and true interpretation of the armet head-piece was lost, from the fact that this type of helmet had fallen into disuse for so long a period. We have, therefore, nothing to guide us but loosely expressed contemporary records.

The derivation of the word armet is also obscure, and the Baron de Cosson himself does not appear to have come to any definite conclusion on