Germany, and it is quite impossible to say which of the two was the
superior from the craftsman’s point of view. If anything, perhaps
the German school favoured a rather heavier type of equipment, due,
no doubt, to the natural characteristics of the race as compared
with the Italian, and also, when the decadence of armour began,
perhaps the German armourer of the Renaissance erred more in
respect of useless and florid ornamentation than did his Italian
rival. But even here the types are so similar that it is almost
impossible to discriminate. France produced no great armourers,
at least we have no records of craft-princes such as the Colmans,
the Seusenhofers, the Missaglias, or the Negrolis, and the same
may be said of England. We have isolated examples here and there
of English and French work, but we have no records of great
schools in either country like those of Milan, Brescia, Nuremberg,
Augsburg, and Innsbruck. A few scattered entries from state or
civic documents will be found under the various headings of this
work and portions of regulations respecting the trade; but of the
lives of the craftsmen we know but little. At a time when personal
safety in the field was of the utmost importance, it can be easily
understood that the patron would take no risks, but would employ
for choice those craftsmen who held the highest repute for their
work, just as till recently the prospective motorist or airman
would not risk a home-made machine, but patronized French makers.
It may seem strange that the local craftsmen did not attempt to
improve their work when examples of foreign skill were imported
in great quantities; but against this we must set the fact that
the detail of the first importance in the craft of the armourer
was the tempering of the metal and this the craftsman kept a close
secret. We have various accounts of secret processes, miraculous
springs of water, poisoned ores, and such-like which were employed,
fabulously no doubt, to attain fine temper for the metal, but no
details are given. It may be that the metal itself was superior in
some districts, as witness the Trial of Armour given on page 66.
Seusenhofer when provided with inferior metal from the mines by
Kugler suggested that it should be classed as “Milanese,” a clear
proof that the German craftsmen, at any rate, considered the
Italian material to be inferior to their own. Little is known as
to the production of the Florentine armourers. Mr. Staley in his
_Guilds of Florence_ has unfortunately found little of importance
under this heading in the civic records of the city.
[Illustration: FIG. 8. Arms of the Armourers’ Gild, from the church
of Or San Michele, Florence.]
The “Corazzi e spadai” of Florence will, however, be always known
by their patron S. George, whose statue by Donatello stood outside
the gild church of Or San Michele. At the base of the niche in
which it stood are carved the arms given in Fig. 8.
[Illustration: FIG. 9. S. George, by Hans Multscher, 1458,
Augsburg.]
Armourers were imported by sovereigns and princes to produce
armour for their personal use and thus to avoid the difficulties
of transit, but they seem to have kept their craft to themselves
and to have founded no school. Henry VIII brought over the “Almain
Armourers” to Greenwich at the beginning of his reign, but most
of them went back in time to their own country, and few took out
denization papers. In 1624 we find that only one of the descendants
of these foreigners was left and he resolutely refused to teach any
one the “mysterie of plating” (page 188). A colony of armourers
migrated from Milan to Arbois towards the end of the fifteenth
century, but no celebrated craftsmen seem to have joined them
except the Merate brothers, who worked for Maximilian and Mary of
Burgundy. It is difficult, in fact impossible, to say which country
led in the beginnings of the armourer’s craft. We have the suit
of Roberto di Sanseverino (Vienna, Waffensammlung, No. 3) signed
with the mark of Antonio Missaglia, _circ._ 1470, and we also have
a statuette by Hans Multscher at Augsburg, _circ._ 1458, which
represents S. George in a suit of armour of precisely the same
design (Fig. 9). It should be noted, however, that the treatment of
this figure shows a strong Italian influence. In European history
of the fifteenth century we have few records of German armourers
being employed, during the first half, at any rate, by the rulers
of other states. We know that Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick,
travelled in Italy and wore armour of a distinctly Italian style,
for it is depicted in the _Beauchamp Pageants_ (Fig. 10) and
is also shown on his magnificent monument in S. Mary’s Church,
Warwick. The likeness of the armour on this monument to that shown
in the picture of S. George, by Mantegna, in the Accademia, Venice,
is so striking that we are bound to admit that the two suits must
have been produced by the same master, and on comparison with the
suit in Vienna above alluded to, that master must have been one of
the Missaglia family. The Earl of Warwick died in 1439 and Mantegna
was born about 1431, so that it is quite possible that the former
purchased a suit of the very latest fashion when in Italy, and that
the latter, realizing the beauty of work produced when he was but a
boy, used a similar suit as a model for his picture (Plate II). As
early as 1398 the Earl of Derby had armour brought over to England
by Milanese armourers, and by the year 1427 Milan had become such
an important factory town that it supplied in a few days armour for
4000 cavalry and 2000 infantry.
[Illustration: FIG. 10. Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (Cot.
Jul. E, IV, F, 12 b).]
The impetus given to the craft in Germany was due to the interest
of the young Emperor Maximilian, who encouraged not only the
armourer, but every other craftsman and artist in his dominions.
In the _Weisz Künig_ we find him teaching the masters of all
crafts how best to do their own work, though this is probably an
exaggeration of the sycophantic author and illustrator. Still
we are forced to admit that the crafts in Germany attained to a
very high level during his reign. In the description of his visit
to Conrad Seusenhofer, the armourer, it is recorded that the
latter wished to employ certain devices of his own in the making
of armour, to which the young Emperor replied, “Arm me according
to my own wish, for it is I and not you who will take part in the
tournament.” From Germany came armour presented by the Emperor to
Henry VIII, and it is clear that such a master as Seusenhofer,
working so near the Italian frontier as Innsbruck, must have
influenced the Milanese work, just as the Milanese in the first
instance influenced the German craftsmen. With the succession of
Charles V to the thrones of Spain and Germany we find a new impetus
given to German armourers. In Spain there seems to have been a
strong feeling in favour of Milanese work, and the contest between
the two schools of craftsmen was bitter in the extreme. So personal
did this feud become that we find Desiderius Colman in 1552 making
a shield for Charles V on which the maker is represented as a bull
charging a Roman soldier on whose shield is the word “Negrol,”
a reference to the rivalry between the Colmans and the Negrolis
of Milan (Plate XXIV). With the demand for decorated armour the
rivalry between the two centres of trade increased, and there
is little to choose between the works of the German and Italian
craftsmen, either in the riotous incoherence of design or in the
extraordinary skill with which it was produced and finished.
[Illustration: _PLATE IV_
ARMOURERS AT WORK. XV CENT.
BRIT. MUS. ROY. MS. 16, G. V, FOL. II
WOODCARVING OF DUKE WILLIAM OF AQUITAINE
AND HIS ARMOURER. XV CENT.
VENUS AND VULCAN. XIII CENT.
BERLIN, KÖNIGL. BIB. CODEX MS. GERM. 282, 79]
From entries in the State Papers preserved in the Record Office,
it would seem that Milanese armourers were employed by Henry VIII
during the first years of his reign. By the year 1515 the Almain
or German armourers from Brussels had evidently taken their place,
for they are entered as king’s servants with liveries. Only one
Milanese name is found in the list of armourers, Baltesar Bullato,
1532, so that it is clear that Henry, owing, no doubt, to the
influence of Maximilian, had definitely committed himself to German
armour as opposed to Italian. England seems to have remained
faithful to this German influence, but her rulers and nobles never
indulged in the exaggerated and over-elaborate productions which
held favour in Spain and Germany, a fact which is noticeable even
at the present day, when the so-called “Art Nouveau” disfigures
many German and Italian cities but has never obtained a serious
foothold in England. Simplicity and practicality were always the
chief features in English armour. The few known specimens of
English work of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,
the jousting-helms at Westminster, Woolwich, Ashford, Petworth,
and the Wallace Collection, are examples of this, and the armour
of later years has the same qualification (Figs. 11-14). Even the
suits of Topf, who worked in England at the end of the sixteenth
century and produced the magnificent work that is shown at the
Tower, Windsor, and elsewhere, the designs for which are contained
in an album in the Art Library at South Kensington, are marked
by a restraint which is not found in the works of Piccinino
and Peffenhauser. The decoration never impairs the utility of
the armour, and the designs are always those suitable for work
in tempered steel, and are not in any way suggestive of the
goldsmith’s work of his foreign contemporaries. In the English
national collections we have but little eccentric armour, which is
so common in Continental museums; all is severe and yet graceful,
practical even if decorated, a tribute to the characteristics of
the English race of fighting men.
[Illustration: FIG. 11. The Westminster Helm, _circ._ 1500.
Westminster Abbey. 17 lb. 12 oz.
FIG. 12. The Brocas Helm, Rotunda, Woolwich. 22 lb. 8 oz.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13. The Fogge Helm, Ashford, Sussex. 24 lb.
FIG. 14. The Barendyne Helm, Great Haseley, Oxon. 13 lb. 8 oz.]
The ornamentation of armour with gilding had obtained such a firm
hold that in the seventeenth century James II was obliged to make
an exception in its favour in his proclamation against the use of
“gold and silver foliate,” an extract of which is given in Appendix
I, page 187. In discussing the craft of the armourer it should be
remembered that we can only base our conclusions on the scattered
entries of payments, inventories, and other documents in State or
private collections, and by examination of suits which have been
preserved in the armouries and collections of Europe and England.
These suits represent but a very small percentage of the large
stores of armour of all kinds which must have been in existence
at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and it is only the
fine and exceptional examples which have survived. The material
was so costly in the making that it was made and remade over and
over again; which will account for the absence of complete suits of
the fourteenth century and the scarcity of those of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries now in existence. Occasionally we have
local collections which give us a suggestion of what the standing
armoury must have been, such as the armour stores at Gratz,
Zurich, the collection of helmets and armour found in the castle
of Chalcis,[4] and village armouries like that at Mendlesham,
Suffolk. Two examples of the treatment of armour must suffice.
In the Inventory of the Tower, taken in 33 Hen. VI, 1455, is the
entry: “Item viij habergeons some of Meleyn and some of Westewale
of the which v of Melyn were delyv’ed to the College of Eyton and
iij broken to make slewys and voyders and ye’s.” Here clearly the
hauberk is cut up and used to make sleeves and gussets, which
were more useful when the complete plate body-defences had come
into fashion than the shirt of mail. This is also another example
of the competition between Milan and Germany (Westphalia) in the
matter of armour-making. As an example of the other reason for the
absence of armour in national and private collections in any great
quantities, we may cite Hearne’s account of his visit to Ditchley,
given in his _Remains_ under the date 1718. He says: “In one of the
outhouses I saw strange armour which belonged to the ancestors[5]
of the Earl of Litchfield, some of the armour very old.” In the
steward’s accounts of but a few weeks later Viscount Dillon has
discovered an entry, “received of Mr. Mott, the brazier for the old
armour wayed 14 cwt. 1 qr. 21 lb. at 10s. the cwt. £7. 4. 6.” The
saddles had been previously cut up to nail up the fruit trees.[6]
From the weight of armour sold there were probably about twenty
suits, some of which must certainly have been of value, possibly
one or more of the missing suits designed by Topf for Sir Henry
Lee and illustrated in the _Almain Armourer’s Album_ now in the
South Kensington Art Library. It can be readily understood that
when the historic or artistic value of armour was not appreciated
it was a cumbrous and useless possession, which soon deteriorated
if not kept clean and bright, and therefore it was melted down just
as are the broken stoves and domestic ironmongery which litter
the rubbish-heaps to-day. We find interesting examples of the
application of munitions of war to peaceful purposes in the use of
sword-pommels as weights for steelyards, helmets for buckets and
scale-bowls, and portions of body armour cut up and fashioned into
lock-covers in the Stibbert Museum, Florence, in the collection
of the Marchese Peruzzi, and elsewhere.[7] Even as late as the
year 1887 the value of armour was not realized, for in that year
two half-suits, stamped with the college mark, were sold from
New College, Oxford, as old iron (_Arms and Armour in Oxford_, C.
ffoulkes).
State and civic records have frequent entries of regulations and
disputes connected with the various craft-gilds, and the armourers
were no exception. The right of search was a privilege jealously
guarded, for it prevented the competition of those outside the gild
and was also a check against foreign competition, which was always
a thorn in the side of the armourer. Every country enacted laws
against importation of arms, and yet for really fine work every
country had to look to Italy or Germany. But this was probably the
case only among the richest, and it is the elaborate workmanship
on the armour which has ensured the survival of many suits of this
type. The ordinary hosting or war-harness was made quite as well
in England as elsewhere; just as the Englishwoman of to-day can be
dressed as well in London as in Paris; but, if she can afford it,
elects to pay large sums for the _cachet_ of the Parisian name.
With regard to the documents bearing on the life of individual
armourers, we have such records as wills, registers of baptisms
and marriages, and also trade accounts and bills. In the latter
the armourer seems to have been no better off than the painter
or sculptor of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He was always in
financial difficulties and was ceaselessly pressing his patron for
payment. An example of this is given on page 59, where we find
that W. Pickering was paid £200 in 1614, the balance of his bill
for £340, for a suit made for Henry, Prince of Wales, who died in
1612; so that he had to wait at least two years before he received
the whole amount. Conrad Seusenhofer suffered in the same way and
his life was one long struggle with Maximilian and the Diet for
payments for his work. The armourer, however, had the advantage
over his fellow-craftsmen; for when a war or a tournament was
imminent he made his own terms and refused delivery till he had
received payment.
[Illustration: _PLATE V_
ARMOURER’S ANVIL AND PINCERS. XVI CENT.
BRITISH MUSEUM, BURGES BEQUEST
ANVIL. XIV CENT.
IN THE POSSESSION OF MME. BELLON, AVIGNON]
The craft of the armourer merits far more study than has hitherto
been bestowed upon it, for in its finest examples it fulfils
all the essential laws of good craftsmanship to the uttermost.
Added to this the works of the armourer have what may be called a
double personal interest. In the first place, they are the actual
wearing apparel of kings, princes, and other persons of note,
made to their measure and often exhibiting some peculiarity of
their owner. Owing to the perishable nature of fabrics but little
of wearing apparel has survived to us of the periods anterior
to the seventeenth century, and therefore the suit of armour is
most valuable as an historical record, especially when taken in
conjunction with portraits, historical paintings, and sculpture. In
addition to this we have the personality of the maker. The boldly
grooved breast-plate, the pauldrons, and the wide elbow-cops of the
Missaglia, the distinctive hook for the armet which appears only
on Topf suits can be recognized at once, and besides this we have
the _poinçon_ or signature of the craftsman, which it is almost
impossible to imitate, and which at once proclaims the authorship
of the armour.
The whole subject of the armourer and his craft, his limitations,
his success at his best period, and his decadence in later years
can be best summed up in the illustration given on Plate III. Here
we have the graceful and light yet serviceable suit of Sigismond of
Tirol, made by an unknown armourer about the year 1470, placed side
by side with the cumbrous defence made for Louis XIV by Garbagnus
of Brescia in 1668. Though this craftsman must have had fine work
by his forefathers at hand to study, and though the other arts and
crafts were tending towards a light and flowing, if meaningless,
style of design, the craft of the armourer had by this time reached
a depth of sheer utilitarian ugliness which was never equalled even
in the most primitive years of its history.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Regulations of the “Heaumers,” Appendix B, p. 171.
[2] _Vetusta Monumenta_, VI, and _Armour and Weapons_, p. 88, C.
ffoulkes.
[3] Haute Savoye, near Aix-les-Bains.
[4] Charles ffoulkes “Italian Armour at Chalcis,” _Archæologia_,
LXII.
[5] Sir Henry Lee.
[6] _Arch. Journ._, June, 1895.
[7] Sir Thomas Gresham’s steelyard in the London Museum is
decorated with portions of sword hilts.
TOOLS, APPLIANCES, ETC.
The tools used by the armourers of all nations differ but little
from the implements of the blacksmith and, as will be seen in
considering the various inventories that survive, these have
scarcely varied in form during the centuries. When once invented
the hammer, the anvil, the vice, the chisel, and the pincers are
open to but few improvements, and even with the advent of steam and
mechanical power, the functions of the tool remain and are simply
guided by a machine instead of by the hand.
The chief work of the armourer was the beating out of plates
from the solid ingot of metal and therefore we find that all
illustrations dealing with this craft show the workmen engaged in
this operation. When once the rough shape of the piece was obtained
a great deal of the work was done when the metal was cold, as will
be seen from examination of the illustrations.
When the craft of the armourer became important and when a large
trade was done in these munitions of war, it was found more
convenient to have the plates beaten out in special mills before
they were handed over to the armourer to make up into armour. These
battering-mills are noticed on pages 35, 188.
In many instances they were probably owned by the armourers
and were often under the same roof; but the fact that we find
hammermen, millmen, platers, and armourers mentioned together in
records and bills of payment to armouries seems to suggest that
they had different duties assigned to them.
That the work of the plater was quite distinct from that of the
armourer in the sixteenth century we gather from entries in the
State Papers Domestic, and in the reign of James I, which will be
discussed more fully farther on in this chapter.
The earliest European illustration of an armourer at work at
present known is to be found in the thirteenth-century _Aeneid_
of Heinrich von Waldec (codex MS. Germ. fol. 282, p. 79) in the
Königl. Bib. Berlin (Plate IV). From the fact that the armourer
(Vulcan) is holding the helm with pincers we may infer that he is
working it hot. The anvil as shown in this miniature (Plate IV) is
square and of primitive form and would seem to be quite useless for
the work, but this may be due to the inexperience of the artist.
The hammer, however, is carefully drawn and is evidently from some
real example in which the face is rounded in a slightly convex form
and the toe ends in a small blunted point which may be for riveting
small objects or for making small bosses.
[Illustration: FIG. 15. The Mail-maker (from Jost Amman’s _Stände
und Handwerker_), _circ._ 1590.]
In the fifteenth century we find more care as to details and more
operations shown in the illustration on the same plate, taken
from a miniature by Boccace in _Les Clercs et Nobles Femmes_
(Bib. Reg. 16, G, v. fol. II) in the British Museum. Here we have
several men at work under the superintendence of a lady who is
generally supposed to be the Countess Matilda, while their labours
are enlivened by a flute-player. The man at the bench appears
to be putting together a defence composed of circular plates
laced to a leather or linen foundation which strongly resembles
the culet of so-called “penny plate” armour in the Tower (III,
358). The helm-smith is working on a bascinet which he holds with
pincers, but he is using the toe of the hammer and not the face,
which hardly seems a likely operation. He holds the helmet on a
helmet-stake which probably has a rounded surface for finishing
off the curves. The seated man is perhaps the most interesting
figure, for he is a rare example of a mail-maker at work, closing
up the rings with a pair of pincers. Up to the present we have no
definite idea as to how the intricate operation of mail-making
was accomplished so as to turn out rapidly coats of mail. It is
probable that some form of pincer was used which pierced the
flattened ends of the ring and closed up the rivet when inserted.
Possibly investigations in the East, where mail is still made, may
throw some light upon the subject.[8] The illustration by Jost
Amman (Fig. 15) certainly shows the craftsman using a punch and
hammer for his work and the only other tool shown is a pair of
shears. Mail was in use up to the first years of the seventeenth
century, so we may be sure the artist drew his figure from life.
[Illustration: FIG. 16. The Armourer (from the same source as Fig.
15).]
Few of the actual tools of the armourer survive to us at the
present day. In the Burges Bequest in the British Museum is a fine
anvil decorated with figures of saints in relief of the sixteenth
century, which appears to have been used by a craftsman dealing
with metal in plates or sheets, for the face of the anvil is burred
over in a manner that would not be the case if the smith had
worked with bars or rods, the usual materials of the blacksmith.
In the same case is a pair of armourer’s pincers which resemble
the _multum in parvo_ tools of to-day, for they include hammer,
wire-cutter, nail-drawer, and turnscrew (Plate V). A similar pair
of pincers exists in the Rotunda Museum, Woolwich (XVI, 200). In
the Wallace Collection (No. 88) is an armourer’s hammer of the
sixteenth century with a faceted copper head, the reason for which
was probably the need for avoiding scratching the surface when
finishing a piece. In the same collection is a finely decorated
farrier’s hammer (1002), which also includes a nail-drawer and
turn-nut. The handle is inlaid with brass and mother-of-pearl and
is decorated with engravings of S. George and a musketeer of about
1640. A decorated anvil and vice which were catalogued as those of
an armourer, the property of Mr. Ambrose Morell, were exhibited
in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in 1911, but from the form
and size of the tools they would appear to have been rather those
of the silversmith than of the armourer. Jost Amman’s “Armourer”
(Fig. 16) calls for no special notice, as no tools are shown in the
workshop, and is merely of interest as being included in this _Book
of Trades_, published in 1590.
[Illustration: _PLATE VI_
MAXIMILIAN AND HIS ARMOURER, CONRAD SEUSENHOFER
FROM THE WEISZ KÜNIG]
The earliest inventory containing armourers’ tools is found in the
archives of the city of Lille. It is dated 1302 and refers to the
effects of the Constable de Nesle in the Hôtel de Soissons,
Paris. The inventory is a long one and includes many interesting
details of furniture, fabrics, and armour. That portion relating to
the tools runs as follows:--
_Arch. Dept. du Nord. Fonds de la Chambre des Comptes de Lille,
No. 4401._
Une englume et fos a souffler lx s.
Unes tenailes bicournes, i martel et menus instruments de forge
xiii s. vi d.
Item unes venterieres v s.
” xxxviii fers faites xii s. viii d.
” sas a cleus, tenons environs v sommes xxi l. v s.
” xiii douzaines de fer de Bourgoyne xxii s. vi d.