by James, account for none of the known chef-d'oeuvre suits being made for English wearers. Such extraordinary and magnificent armour was meet for none but the high-spirited and rival princes of Europe, and no king distinguished for valour occupied the throne of England during the period when enriched armour reached its culminating point of grandeur. [Illustration: FIG. 30.--_Part of a suit made for Sir Christopher Hatton._ From the Spitzer collection, and now in the possession of Mr. Charles Davis. This is No. 15 in the Armourers' Album in the South Kensington Museum, reproduced in our Plate III.] There are, however, a certain number of richly engraved and gilt suits which have been in the possession of English families from time immemorial, and the fortunate acquisition for the South Kensington Museum Art Library of an Armourers' Album of the time of Elizabeth, has enabled many of the original wearers of them to be identified. This MS., as Lord Dillon relates, was in the possession, in 1790, of the Duchess of Portland, daughter of Harley, Earl of Oxford, who permitted Pennant to engrave from it a suit of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, for his account of London; while Strutt was allowed to reproduce that of George, Earl of Cumberland, for his work on dresses and costumes. The book undoubtedly once formed part of the great Harleian Library, but was lost until seen in Paris some years ago by Baron de Cosson. It was sold at the Spitzer sale, acquired by M. Stein, and offered to the Kensington Museum, by whom it was wisely purchased. The drawings are in pen and ink and water-colours and represent twenty-nine full suits, besides the extra pieces for tilting. Some of them are inscribed "Made by me Jacobe," the name of the master armourer at Greenwich during part of Elizabeth's reign, and mentioned by Sir Henry Lee, the Master of the Armoury, in a letter to the Lord Treasurer, dated 12th October 1590, published by Lord Dillon in the fifty-first volume of _Archæologia_. Wendelin Böheim, the curator of the Imperial collections of armour at Vienna, has recently identified this Jacobe with Jacob Topf, one of three brothers, natives of Innsbrück or its vicinity, and who suddenly appears as court armourer in 1575. This post he seems to have retained and worked at Schloss Ambras till his death in 1597. Suits made by him during this period for the Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol and Archduke Charles of Styria certainly bear some resemblance to those in the Album. Böheim infers from the Italian influence seen in his work, especially in the ornament, that Topf must have proceeded from the atelier of Jörg Seusenhofer to Milan or Brescia, about the year 1558, and taken up his abode in England between 1562 and 1575.