Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/202

 *ment; for Sir St. John Hope recognizes in the arms upon it, described by Dart, those of Stewart of Davington, and thinks that it was a coffin cloth used at the interment of Ludovic Stewart, second Duke of Lennox, who was buried in the Abbey Church of Westminster in 1623-4. However, by 1796, the saddle-cover and the caparison-cloth had disappeared; for Gough in his "Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain," published at that date, says: "The saddle, once of blue velvet powdered with fleur-de-lis, or, is now reduced to bare wood, and the first covering of buckram on the seat. It is twenty-seven inches long, fifteen high before, and thirteen behind, the length of the buckle from whence hung the stirrups is four inches and a half, and the breadth two." The helm and its probable source we have described in vol. ii, pp. 99 et seqq., and Figs. 449, a, b; the shield in the same volume, p. 230, Figs. 595, a, b, and 596. Now in the Castle of Milan Of saddles in the bill for the expenses of King Henry's funeral there is only one mention:  ''Item de Willelmo Caudewell IV selle bastarde cum hernesio precium pecie xxvjs viijd. xxvjs viijd.''

So the saddle, now to be seen hanging above the tomb, must be either one of these bastard saddles, which became the perquisite of the Abbey after the funeral of King Henry, or the saddle used by the Earl who rode, fully armed in "cote armor," before the standard in the procession, and whose entire accoutrements were delivered to the Sacrist. We can find no other allusion to saddles in the few contemporary accounts of the funeral. So, much as we should like to accept Keepe's romantic account of this relic—"The saddle which this heroick Prince used in the wars in France"—we fear we should be nearer the truth if we considered it as merely part of the contemporary furnishing of the great funeral pageant.

The reader is referred to the will of Robert, Lord Willoughby de