Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 5).djvu/26

 except in cases in which we find it necessary to make comparisons. In the Tower of London and at Windsor Castle such suits are accessible to all armour students who wish to examine them. We shall describe these suits and discuss the question of their probable makers, and we shall hope to show that their attribution to the ownership of monarchs and princes of the time may be generally accepted as accurate.

Before, however, we allude to any of the suits at Windsor Castle, for there are many there to be recorded, let us first of all endeavour to ascertain why they are now at Windsor and not at our national armoury, the Tower of London. In attempting to account for the fact that parts of the same suits are to be found both in the Tower of London Armoury and at Windsor Castle, we once held the view that nearly all the armour of importance to be seen to-day at Windsor Castle was brought there from the Tower of London about the year 1830, to decorate the Guard Chamber, subsequent to the elaborate restorations made by Sir Jeffrey Wyatville. No record, however, exists in the Tower Armoury Issue Book of armour having been sent to Windsor about that time; so we must attempt to solve the question in some other way. Dismissing from consideration, then, the ordinary breast- and backplates, helmets, pikes, muskets, bandoleers, and pistols, arranged in trophies, such as are to be seen to-day at Hampton Court, and such as, we know, previous to the general rearrangement at Windsor, decorated the walls of the old Guard Room in the Round Tower, and the King's Guard Chamber in the Castle itself, let us endeavour to trace what suits there were actually at the Castle previous to the general restoration of 1824. The first description of the interior of Windsor Castle, and of the objects contained therein, that has any bearing on the question, takes us back to the middle of the XVIIIth century, about which time—1742—George Bickham, junior, brought out his Deliciae Britanniae; or the curiosities of Hampton Court and Windsor Castle delineated, a volume in which he describes at length the pictures, painted ceilings, etc., but which only contains two references to armour. The first mention of it occurs in the account of the Guard Room of the Round Tower, where, after speaking of the trophies of pikes, muskets, drums, etc., he goes on to say: " over the doorway going to the Dining Room are two coats of mail, belonging formerly to two warlike princes (but to whom in particular I cannot say) inlaid with gold; with horse armour, gauntlets, and other accoutrements." The next allusion turns up in his description of the King's Guard Chamber, which is as follows: "The room is decorated all round with a vast number of pikes, carbines, and other implements of