The average Englishman is probably more unacquainted with arms and armour than any other technical subject. Beyond a general idea that the Crusaders fought in mail, and the Wars of the Roses were waged by warriors clad in plate, his knowledge does not extend, and he consequently witnesses many startling incongruities upon the stage of a theatre, or the arena of a pageant, with the most profound indifference. He will perceive Richard III. in a camail and Ivanhoe in a salade with the utmost complacency. The pity of it is that those who are responsible for the historical inaccuracies should be so ignorant, for no effort ought to be spared in endeavouring to educate the nation, and especially the youth of it, in the fundamental principles of rigid historical truthfulness. In our theatres recently we have witnessed Bolingbroke in a fifteenth century tabard, a waist-belt, and round-toed sabbatons, with the Duke of Norfolk in an almost equally grotesque parody of the Camail and Jupon Period; Pistol with a basket-hilted rapier; Henry V. in a camail, late fifteenth century gauntlets, twentieth century boots, and vambraces covering parts of his coudières. Upon the arena knights of Richard II.’s period have appeared in full plate armour of 1470; at Queen Eleanor’s funeral without ailettes; while bear’s-paw sabbatons have figured conspicuously in many scenes previous to 1480. These are elementary details which even a cursory knowledge of military equipment could avoid, but in the illustrations of historical scenes in books and magazines equal ignorance prevails, and a knight in pure mail and a surcoat, making love to a maiden in a reticulated head-dress seated under a two-centred Tudor archway, is only an example of the incongruities which almost every day insult the intelligence and offend the eyesight of the educated reader. Unfortunately many illustrators go to the works of Sir Walter Scott for details of mediæval military equipment, and are thereby led hopelessly astray.