Armour began from about the accession of Edward VI. to cease to be a military necessity, and those engaged in practical warfare were more ready to dispense with its doubtful protection than to encumber themselves with its certain disadvantages. Excuses were found for appearing in the field without armour, or with an imperfect equipment, and punishments were inflicted in the vain attempt to stem the tide of change. Those who served on foot had naturally the strongest objection to bearing its weight, since when opposed to firearms it ceased to have any practical utility. A battle-scene at Hampton Court, the battle of Forty by Snayers, furnishes the strongest justification for its disuse among men-at-arms. It represents a number of mounted men in complete armour, who discharge horse-pistols point blank at each other's breastplates, the individual struck falling in every case dead or wounded from his horse. The wheel-lock pistol, the arm of the German Reiters, who wore black armour, mail sleeves, and a visored morion, was in the field in 1512. From this time, therefore, armour was worn rather for display than service, and the purchaser came to value its defensive qualities far less than the magnificence of its decoration. Nor was ostentation in arms confined to the noble or knight alone. Brantôme says that among the pikemen and musketeers of Strozzi, De Brissac, and the Duc de Guise, thousands of gilt and engraved morions and corselets were to be seen on parade days, and the armour worn by the picked force of Spaniards and Italians sent by Philip of Spain to occupy the Netherlands was a splendid sight. The great and wealthy have seldom cared to stint in matters of personal adornment, and in days when there were fewer ways in which a taste for extravagant expenditure could be combined with a high appreciation of art, fortunes were spent upon the coverings of the body. Nothing more sumptuous in applied art exists, in regard either to design or execution, than the work lavished on the armour produced for the French, Spanish, and other monarchs in the second half of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Among this the most exquisitely beautiful is the damascened work, scattered over Europe, persistently though erroneously attributed to Cellini, of which, perhaps, one of the finest examples is the target at Windsor. It is no exaggeration to say that neither chiselling, embossing, nor damascening on metal has ever rivalled or even approached that bestowed at this time upon royal arms and armour. The chief seats of production were in Germany and Italy, at Milan above all, then Innsbrück, Augsburg, Nuremberg; and in a less degree Florence, Brescia and Venice. It is singular that few fine suits can be attributed to France, and fewer still either to Spain, the Netherlands, or England. The youth of Edward, the fact that female sovereigns succeeded, and finally, the timidity and horror of war felt