Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/256

 state not only of the Tower but of antiquarian knowledge in those days, was published the same year in Paris, and is printed in Grove's "Antiquarian Repertory," iv, 569.

"The great Arsenal consists of several great halls, and magazines filled with arms of all sorts sufficient to equip an army of a hundred thousand men. Our conductor showed us a great hall, hung with casques and cuirasses for arming both infantry and cavalry; among others were some which had been worn by different Kings of England during their wars; they were all gilded and engraved in the utmost perfection. We saw the armour of William the Conqueror, with his great sword; and the armour of his Jester, to whose casque was fixed horns; he had, it is said, a handsome wife Moreover, they showed us a cuirass made with cloves, another of mother-of-pearl; these two were locked up in a separate closet. We passed into another hall, and there was nothing but muskets, pistols, musketoons, bandeliers, swords, pikes, and halberds, arranged in a very handsome order, so as to represent figures of many sorts. We saw William the Conqueror's musket, which is of such length and thickness that it is as much as a man can do to carry it on his shoulders. We descended from this room into another place where there are the magazines of cannons, bullets, powder and match, and other machines of war, each in its particular place. But after all, this is nothing when compared to that of Venice. It is true that I saw in a cabinet in the King's Palace, many arms, which, for their beauty and exquisite workmanship, surpassed the rarest in the Arsenal of Venice. This was by the permission of Monsieur de la Mare, the King's Armourer."

In the XVIIIth century the Tower of London was considered to be the most important of London's show-places. After the Restoration the armaments were furbished up, Grinling Gibbons himself being entrusted with the task of giving an appropriate setting to the then much depleted armoury; even to-day Gibbons's handiwork is manifest in two of the wooden horses on which certain of the figures are placed. Sir Samuel Meyrick states that the figures of Charles I and his horse and of Charles II and his horse were actually carved by Grinling Gibbons in 1686; which, however, were mysteriously changed into the likeness of James II. One king's face and horse were carved by William Morgan in 1688; in the same year John Nort and Thomas Quillans were each responsible for one, while Marmaduke Townson carved two. Again, in the year 1690, John Nort carved five other faces, while the face of William III was carved by a certain Alcock in 1702. Mistakes as absurd as those of which