Authorised Guide to the Tower of LondonLoftie, W. J. (William John)
History
Authorised Guide to the Tower of London
Loftie, W. J. (William John)
Tower of London (London, England) -- Guidebooks
Round the walls of the two rooms are arranged the various staff weapons
used in England and the continent. In the first enclosure on the left
are cases in which are ancient bronze tools, weapons, and ornaments from
various localities, stone implements and weapons, and a suit of bronze
armour from Cumæ, an ancient Greek settlement near Naples. In the centre
of the enclosure are grouped many varieties of staff weapons of the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Among them are boar
spears for the chase and for war, halberds, partizans, bills, glaives,
holy water sprinkles (a staff with a ball with spikes at its extremity),
and the 18 foot pikes of the Civil War period.
The first case on the left contains a fine archer's salade with its
original lining, from the de Cosson collection. A Venetian salade, with
the stamp of the maker of the Missaglia family, a heavy salade for
jousting, a combed morion and the tilting helmet of Sir Henry Lee, K.G.,
Master of the Armouries to Queen Elizabeth and James I. In the lower
case are finely engraved and parcel gilt chamfrons for horses' heads, a
gilt vamplate for the tilting lance belonging to Lord Chancellor Hatton,
an officer's gorget of the time of Queen Anne, and various pieces of
rich armour.
In the window recess behind are shields and horns. In the next enclosure
are three foot figures of the end of the fifteenth century and
commencement of the sixteenth century; the first holds a long-handled
axe as used for encounters on foot in _champ clos_. The second
holds a two-handled sword. The third suit is enriched with engraving,
and was formerly parcel gilt, but the helmet does not belong to the
suit.
In the centre of the room is an equestrian figure (III), the man wearing
a fine early sixteenth-century suit of armour, bearing the Nuremberg
stamp, and the horse protected by a barb richly repoussé, engraved, and
formerly silvered. The designs on this display the Burgundian cross
ragulé and the flint and steel. The steel or briquet is to be seen also
in the hinges and in the metal coverings for the reins. It will be
remembered that this design forms the _motif_ of the collar of the
Golden Fleece.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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