Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/178

 13th day of February in the first year of King Henry ye VIII in honor of his queen Katherin upon the Birth of their eldest son Prince Henry 1510." These helms are of very simple construction; indeed, they show no advance from the point of protection upon the English helms of nearly half a century earlier. They certainly belong to the first quarter of the XVIth century; and so reference to them now places them in their correct chronological order. We can record four examples of such English helms at present known to us:—

A helm in Haseley Church, Oxfordshire.

A helm in the Wallace Collection.

A helm in the Bargello, Florence, and

A helm hanging by the site of the tomb of King Edward IV in St. George's Chapel, Windsor.

Showing the elaborate attachment of the interior quilted cap by means of straps and aiglettes fastened on the exterior

To Mr. Alfred Billson must be given the credit of the discovery of the helm in Haseley Church, Oxfordshire, where it hangs over the tomb of Sir William Barentyn, who was High Sheriff of that county in the reign of King Henry VIII. In the present writer's opinion this is one of the cases in which the head-piece may well have belonged to the owner of the tomb over which it is now suspended. The Barentyn helm (Fig. 478) consists of four plates, the front piece, the back piece, the domed crown piece, and a broad band encircling the lower part. It has been fully described by Mr. Billson in the