Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 5).djvu/28

 Now, W. H. Pyne in his "History of the Royal Residences," published in 1819, gives the following description of the contents of the King's Guard Chamber. "The walls of the King's Guard Chamber are decorated with warlike instruments, ingeniously disposed in columns, pillars, circles, shields and other devices: there are some specimens of ancient armour for horse and foot, interspersed in the arrangement, and among these is a curious coat of mail said to have been worn by Edward, the Black Prince." From this we may surmise that the "Black Prince coat of mail" must have been the Worcester suit; as the label accompanying the fragment of the Worcester helmet recently discovered bears a date only twenty years later than that of Pyne's description of the King's Guard Chamber. Now, as the arrangement of the King's Guard Chamber remained undisturbed from the year 1742 until Pyne's time, the Worcester suit must obviously have been one of the five referred to by George Bickham as "Five pieces of armour complete, and disposed at equal distances in the King's Guard Chamber"; though Bickham, unlike Pyne, attributes none of them to a great personage of the past.

Though we have absolutely no evidence to help us to distinguish the other four suits mentioned by Bickham as being in the King's Guard Chamber, we are probably correct in imagining that these four pieces of "armour complete" must have been those we have referred to under Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5; for, as we have said, there is no record of any other armour having been received at Windsor Castle from 1742 until Pyne's time, and certainly no record of any having been received after the Wyatville restorations. In numbers at least the sets of armour correctly correspond.

We have now only to account for the two other full suits, to establish the identity of the sets of armour found at Windsor Castle in 1742 with those there in 1901. The two full suits in question are Nos. 6 and 7, that of Henry, Prince of Wales, with its tilt-pieces and chanfron, decorated with a thistle and fleur-de-lis, and the suit, supposed to have belonged to Charles, Prince of Wales, which also has its tilt-pieces and chanfron, engraved and gilt.

These suits, in the author's opinion, can be identified. Bearing in mind Bickham's reference (ante, page 2), the reference in Pyne, however, enables us to speak with greater certainty. In speaking of the Guard Chamber in the Round Tower, he says: "The Tower has an open court in the centre, an armoury on the west side thereof a dining-room on the south, over the entrance to which are two coats of mail, curiously inlaid with gold; one with fleur-de-lys, which is said to have belonged to John, King of France, and the other with thistles, to David, King of Scotland, both of whom were prisoners in the Castle."