Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/128

 the armet, are carefully etched and gilded in the Milanese manner which is usually associated with the decorated Missaglia plate armour of the early years of the XVIth century, the period to which this armet belongs.

Italian, Milanese, about 1500. H 56, Musée d'Artillerie, Paris

The group of armets which we next illustrate (Fig. 442) are all of Italian workmanship; but they are of great interest to us, all having come from English churches, where they must have been preserved almost from the time of their manufacture. Each has hung over the tomb of some notable personage of late XVth or early XVIth century times. We know quite a score of other Italian close helmets to be seen in English churches; but we have not thought it worth while to illustrate them or to refer to them individually. Two explanations can be given of the presence in our English churches of so many late XVth century Italian helmets of the armet type. Either these Italian close head-pieces actually had a popular vogue among the fighting gentlemen of the times of the Wars of the Roses, who, like the famous Earl of Warwick, preferred Italian made harnesses; or those who furnished the heraldic achievements in the XVIth century made large purchases abroad of these head-pieces, then fast becoming obsolete, which, with judicious decoration, they were able to use, in conjunction with the carved wood funeral crests, for the obsequies of deceased knights. Although