Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 5).djvu/47

 of Henry, Prince of Wales, with several other examples of armour from the Windsor Armoury, to be exhibited at an exhibition of the art of metal work held at the old Westminster Aquarium. While it was at the Aquarium it was photographed in order to furnish a frontispiece illustration to a monograph on armour written by Mr. Starkie Gardner. We mention this fact, because in that illustration the suit is shown as it then was, badly strapped and leathered, its original blued surface burnished so as to look like a mirror, and its regilt bands or ornamentation appearing as though they were fresh from the hands of the restorer. These defects, which might have been serious, were during the rearrangement of the Armoury in 1902 happily overcome; for his late Majesty, King Edward VII, desiring, if possible, that the surface of the suit should be brought back to its original blue-black colour, as represented in the Vandyck portrait, commanded that the suit should be carefully taken to pieces and its surface re-blued. This renovation was successfully accomplished, an operation during which much of the new gilding came away, disclosing the original gold beneath; moreover, all the straps were velvet-covered in accordance, as far as possible, with the suggestions given by the Vandyck portrait. In 1910 the suit with its tilting-pieces in position was set upon a horse. This restoration has presented this beautiful little harness in a proper manner; its present blued surface not only has the merit of representing the armour as it was originally, but also helps to protect it from the effects of our ever changing climate. The additional tilt-pieces at Windsor (Fig. 1440) belonging to this suit are: another form of close helmet, the grand-guard, the reinforcing plate for the left elbow, the chanfron, a protective chin-piece and the gorget plates, a reinforcing bevor to a helmet, and two lance vamplates. A third vamplate for the lance was formerly in the Tower of London, but was removed thence to Windsor Castle by command of His Majesty the King in September 1914.

There is in the Tower of London yet another suit which, if the tradition attaching to it be true, was also one made for Henry, Prince of Wales. To this suit is attached the story that it was presented to Prince Henry by the Prince de Joinville; but this story, unfortunately, lacks corroboration, for the only allusion to a gift of the Prince de Joinville in connection with any suit figuring in the old inventories of Greenwich, appears in the 1629 inventory of "the greate chamber late Mr. Pickeringes": "One small feild armo^r guilte graven and enamelled given by Prince John Voile [Joinville] to Prince Henry." This allusion is so general that the suit now in the Tower might just as well be one of the other three suits mentioned in the 1629 inventory as having belonged to Prince Henry as being the particular harness