Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/30

 is rectangular, but the most unmistakable features of a Greenwich suit are the formation of the elbow-cop of two pieces, an interior piece protecting the inside of the elbow joint, and an exterior piece guarding the outside (a construction which is never found in any elbow-cops of fine quality of any other school of armour), and the formation of the grand-guard in two parts. The style of decoration is quite different from any known Italian, German, or French design. Documentary evidence as to nearly all the harnesses in existence, which we are almost certain were made at the Greenwich Armoury, rests upon that furnished by a manuscript in the South Kensington Museum, in which mention is made of an armourer named "Jacobe," who is, we think, the same person referred to by Sir Henry Lee in a document of the year 1590 under the name of "Jacobi, M^r workman of Grenewyche." In January 1723 a certain Mr. Virtue exhibited this manuscript at the Society of Antiquaries in London. In the year 1790 it was in the possession of the Duchess of Portland, a daughter of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford; a circumstance which makes it possible that it once formed part of the Harleian Library. On the Table of Contents at the commencement of the manuscript the name "Mr. Wray" appears, and on page 3 are written the name and date "1754 J. West"; presumably these were the names of two of the early possessors of the manuscript. In 1790 Pennant must have used it for his engraving of the second suit of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in his "Account of London," and similarly Strutt's engraving of the suit of the Earl of Cumberland (Vol. 2, Plate 161) must have been made from it, although he made a mistake in describing the suit as that of the Earl of Essex. The library of the Duchess of Portland was sold in 1799. Subsequently the manuscript was lost sight of for nearly one hundred years, and it was only in the year 1894, at the sale of the Spitzer collection, that it reappeared, when it was bought by Monsieur Stein of Paris, from whom, on the advice of Viscount Dillon, it was acquired for the English nation. Viscount Dillon has reproduced in his "An Almain Armourer's Album" thirty-one of the drawings to which he has written most interesting notes. The MS. is now in the Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

[A scrutiny of the MS. shows that it is made up of single sheets in folio, which were bound up in book form when the draughtsman began his record. He left page 1 blank, which was subsequently used for a Table of Contents