Towards the beginning of the sixteenth century knightly armour underwent some profound modifications. The exaggerated elbow-guards and shoulder-pieces were reduced, the tuilles, the laminated corselets with their handsome flutings and indented margins, and the pointed sollerets were either modified or seen no more; and with them disappear much of the angulated, defensive mannerism, and the grace peculiar to the armour of the third quarter of the fifteenth century. That which followed appears smoother, rounder, and heavier, less mobile, and less apt for real campaigning. The modifications tending to this result may have been in a large degree due to the personal tastes of the three great monarchs of Europe. Maximilian and Henry VIII. preferred at heart the pomp and pageantry to the realities of war; while the classic bias of Francis I. banished all Gothic feeling so far as his personal influence extended. The short-waisted, podgy, globular breastplate, the stolid limb-pieces, rounded knee-caps and strikingly splay-footed sollerets, appear as if invented to altogether banish the very idea of agility, if not of movement; and contrast in the strongest manner with the lithe and supple-looking armour of the Beauchamp effigy. The Tower collection, so relatively poor in Gothic armour, is fortunately extremely rich in that of the period of Henry VIII., containing four or five suits actually made for his personal use. One of the finest of these, and an admirably perfect suit, is shown in our illustration (Fig. 28). Though without any decoration or marks, it was undoubtedly made expressly for the king, and is a chef-d'oeuvre of the armourer's craft, being formed, according to Lord Dillon, of no less than 235 separate pieces, which are used about one half below and the rest above the waist. The principal pieces are fitted with a hollow groove along the inferior margin, and overlap others provided with a corresponding ridge: so that the whole suit thus interlocks, and the plates cannot be separated or the armour taken apart except by removing the helmet and beginning at the neck-pieces. To the left shoulder-piece or pauldron one of the upright neck-guards is still fixed by rivets. The breastplate is globose, and has a central ridge called the tapul. The arms are sheathed in rigid plates, separated by a series of narrow laminar plates, by which power of movement is obtained. The elbows are guarded by not inelegant caps, and the gauntlets are miton-fashioned, of eleven small plates, and very flexible. The leg-armour is in large pieces ridged down the centre, similarly to the breastplate, except above and below the knee-cap, and at the ankle, where laminar plates give the necessary play. The sollerets being made, like the gauntlets, each of thirteen pieces, are also extremely flexible, and reproduce in an exaggerated way the great broad toes of the civil dress. Like the helm, already noticed, the suit is intended for combats on foot