Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/72

 de Dino to the Metropolitan Museum of New York, recognized it as the missing "guilte Targett" belonging to the Sir John Smithe suit.

From 1708 to 1827 the Sir John Smithe suit figured as the armour of King Henry IV in the line of kings. From 1827 to 1895 it was known as the armour of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, for which attribution, we need hardly say, there was no authority. It was only through its identification with the suit represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum MS. of drawings that it was at last credited to the ownership of its original wearer. According to Hewitt it was the suit worn in the Westminster Hall ceremony at the coronation of King George II (cf. vol. iii, p. 300).

The second suit of Sir Henry Lee, K.G., Master of the Armouries (1530-97). Of this armour are preserved in the Tower of London the helmet (Fig. 1123), the right-hand locking gauntlet, the property of the Armourers' and Brasiers' Company (Fig. 1124), the burgonet (Fig. 1125), the buffe (Fig. 1126), the chanfron (Fig. 1127), and the leg armour in the Lifrust-Kammer, Stockholm (Fig. 1128). The drawing of the suit and extra pieces in the Jacobe MS. is numbered 20 (Figs. 1129 and 1130).

This suit, which is perhaps one of the most sumptuous of this series of armours, was originally russet coloured and gilt, with broad slightly recessed bands of ornaments connected by a kind of slashed decoration reminiscent of some earlier style. In the Jacobe drawing we see in the centre of the breastplate the design of a bird standing on the Staffordshire knot. Viscount Dillon states that there is no doubt that the MS. "imperfectly shows the crest of Sir Henry Lee as used by him before 1597; it is a laneret preying on the leg of a heron." The most important of the extant pieces of the second Lee suit is the close helmet, which in form exactly resembles that on the Hatton suit. In Grose's "Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons," published in 1785, two views of this helmet are engraved on plate 10. It was then the property of a Mr. Rawle. It weighs 8 lb., and still retains much of its original lining. This helmet was purchased by the Tower authorities at the Bernal Sale in 1855 (Lot 2701) for the sum of £28. The gauntlet for the tilt, in the possession of the Armourers' and Brasiers' Company, was, together with the other Lee suit (Fig. 1141), presented to that Company in 1768 by Mr. William Carter, a member of the Court. The gauntlet, which unfortunately has been subjected to very rigorous overcleaning, is ornamented like the rest of the second Lee suit. Its extreme length when open is 13-1/2 inches, the width across the opening for the hand is 5-3/4 inches. When the gauntlet is closed