Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/351

 of that collection was wrongly described as Italian of the XVIth century (Fig. 1384). An English portrait of about the year 1620 represents Sir Francis Leigh wearing a sword with just such a hilt (Fig. 1385). The scheme of the enrichment is on the principle which we have outlined in dealing with the sword and rapier hilts already described. Many such swords are to be found in English collections. A good display of them, chosen from the collection of the late Mr. Waring Faulder, is to be seen illustrated in Mr. Egerton Castle's work, "Schools and Masters of the Fence." As in the case of every group of hilt, individual eccentricities of form are to be noted. There is a reputed historical weapon (Fig. 1386) in the Wallace Collection (No. 666) which is an eccentric example of the group with which we are dealing. This is said to be one of the swords that belonged to Henry, Prince of Wales, elder son of King James I, and to have been sent in 1607 to the Prince as part of a gift from Louis the Dauphin, son of Henri IV of France; for the gift comprised: "a suit of armour well gilt and enamelled, together with pistols and a sword of the same kind and armour for a horse" (see vol. iii, p. 299).

The hilt is encrusted with silver. The blade is of French origin. The sword is reputed to have belonged to Henry, Prince of Wales. Wallace Collection (Laking Catalogue, No. 666)

This interesting tradition gains support from a comparison of the gilt decoration on the blade, which comprises the monogram H^o surmounted by a crown, and laurel foliage, with that seen on the Henri IV dagger (Fig. 1376) already referred to. For although the dagger blade was made by the well-known swordsmith Clemens Horn of Solingen, it was undoubtedly decorated by the same hand that was responsible for the ornamentation of the Henri IV sword in the Musée d'Artillerie (Fig. 1375), to which it is en suite. Since we feel convinced that the Henri IV sword is of French, that is to say of Parisian, workmanship, we attribute to the sword of Henry, Prince of Wales, the same provenance. The hilt of the sword (Fig. 1386) is remarkable for its extreme primitiveness of form; it possesses just the simple straight quillons met with on a sword of the XVth century. The pommel