Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/223

 "Itm and a Murion  of Stele enneled blewe.

"Itm xvj blacke Murrions.

"Itm ix white Murrions."

The head-piece we know to-day as a cabasset is more cap-like in form, the brim being straight and flat, and failing to show that arch-like profile which is generally seen in the morion; indeed it reproduces in the medium of metal what in textile material was the ordinary headwear of the third quarter of the XVIth century. The two late XVIth century hats of morion or cabasset form which we illustrate are chosen from examples in the London Museum (Figs. 1270 and 1271). The "Murrion heddes, covered w^t vellet, & passemayne of Golde," in the 1547 inventory were probably of this type, though doubtless made upon a foundation of iron.

Late XVIth century London Museum

Late XVIth or early XVIIth centuries London Museum

In the 1660 inventory of the Tower of London we find the word "murrion" is still used, and we believe in application to the actual morion illustrated on page 41, Fig. 1121d. The morion is the more interesting type of head-piece, and one which, from its greater variety of form, we shall more fully describe. The next helmet we illustrate will be that of an example in the Wallace Collection, which is more the prototype of the cabasset than of the morion; we refer to the remarkably interesting head-piece illustrated in Fig. 1272, a helmet that is of North Italian—probably Venetian—workmanship of the middle of the XVIth century. The skull-piece is almost hemispherical, with a very slight ridge running down the centre. The short brim slopes somewhat downwards, the extreme edge being turned under to a semicircular section. Round the base of the skull is a series of rivets with