Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/146

 dents. This helm bears an Italian mark which appears to be composed of the letters P A, surmounted by a crown. At some period this rare piece of defensive armour seems to have been used as a target, as several musket balls were found in it, as well as traces of lead on its surface (Fig. 452, a, b, c).

We will now consider a series of tilting helms, apparently all of the same style and English in form. We can enumerate five, all constructed on the same plan, and possibly by the same maker, and all dating from the third quarter of the XVth century. In all these English made helms which are unmarked, but we think the work of the same armourer, we notice a slight resemblance in their construction and outline to a fine helm in the Porte de Hal, Brussels (Fig. 453). This helm, according to the late Herr Wendelin Boeheim, bears a mark which he attributed to Jacques Voys, an armourer of Brussels who worked for Philip the Fair. We only say that we see a resemblance between this helm and the English made helms, and do not suggest that head-pieces so insular in style could have possibly come from the hand of Jacques Voys, or even from abroad. It is possible, however, that a tournament head-piece from the hand of Voys might have constituted the original model for this particular group of English made helms. The first of them, which was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries, is in the collection of Captain H. Lindsay, who received it from a friend, with a history wonderful and inaccurate, in which its use as an instrument of torture and the story of the Spanish Armada figured. The second is in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, a helm hanging by the site of the tomb of King Henry VI, though for no valid reason. The third, which is in the Pyx Chapel of the Abbey Church of Westminster, is a helm discovered in 1869 in the triforium of the Abbey, where it had probably remained since the days when, as Hall and other chroniclers put it, so many "solemn justs" were held in the vicinity of Westminster. The fourth, the helm of Sir John Fogge, is in Ashford Church, Kent. The fifth is included in Mr. W. H. Riggs's bequest to the Metropolitan Museum of New York. In describing one we describe all of the same family; for they vary very slightly. So we cannot do better than quote Viscount Dillon's admirable account of the Lindsay helm: "Like other helms of this class," says the Viscount, "it was originally composed of three pieces; a flattish crown with a slight ridge extending from the apex to the front; and with its hinder margin riveted to the back piece by some eleven rivets. In front, on either side, it was riveted to the front portion by three rivets—now lost. These rivets passed through the top piece, and the two turned over side portions of the