Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/41

 speaks of the letter as referring to a trial of iron made some years previously. But Sir Henry speaks of the matter as one of present interest, and as if the trial might have taken place a few months before; but there is not the slightest ground for supposing that it took place several years before. Boeheim could adduce no evidence to show where Topf worked from 1562 to 1575. He merely jumped to the conclusion that he might be the Greenwich Jacobe, a conclusion which the author considers to be erroneous.

[It is fair to note that the drawing of Sir Henry Lee's first suit (No. 14) bears what we have called the Greenwich style of decoration, and that it was made "beyond see," but it is not unreasonable to infer that the suit was decorated in the manner desired by Sir H. Lee, and that his order passed through the master armourer at Greenwich. Of the form of the actual suit we have no evidence, as it no longer exists.] One or two suits of armour at Vienna are attributed by Boeheim, and probably rightly so, to Topf; but they do not present any resemblance in general character and decoration to those which we call Greenwich suits, of which a sufficient number remain for us easily to recognize their characteristic style.

[It cannot be said that we know much about this Greenwich school of armourers, but there can be little doubt that in the Record Office is stored much documentary evidence with regard to the yet but little studied history of the armour made at the Greenwich State workshops, in which Henry VIII and the great nobles of the time took such a deep interest. When the reader has read this account of the Greenwich armour, he may well ask: "Where are all the armours which were made at these workshops from the year 1511, when Henry VIII founded it, down to the period of the fine decorated suits, which still exist, and which we can identify as the productions of the work-*shops between the third quarter of the XVIth century and the end of the first quarter of the XVIIth century? We know that the Greenwich armourers used no mark, but are we not almost forced to assume that amongst other harnesses from Greenwich some must have been fine suits made for Henry VIII? The author has dealt at length with the double suit of Henry (Vol. iii, Figs. 1023 and 1024), and, in his natural endeavour to attribute this suit to a school, has given his reasons for suggesting that it was perhaps made in France and presented to Henry VIII by Francis I (vol. iii, page 230). The expert is asked to reconsider this attribution. Its quality is of the finest, so is that of all the Greenwich suits which we can identify; its general form is to be compared with the earliest of the Greenwich suits; the elbow-cops of two pieces are equally characteristic, so are the close helmet