12. An uncommon piece of arms, being a pistol in a shield, so contrived that the pistol might be fired, and the body covered at the same time. It is to be fired by a match-lock, and the sight of the enemy taken through a little grate in the shield, which is pistol proof. 13. The Spanish rançeur, made in different forms, and intended either to kill the men on horseback, or to pull them off their horses. At the back is a spike, which your attendants say, was to pick the roast beef out of the Englishmen’s teeth. And on one of them is a piece of silver coin, which they intended to make current in England. On this coin are three heads, suppos’d to be the Pope’s, Philip the II’s and Queen Mary’s.——This is a curiosity which most Spaniards who arrive in London come to see. 14. The Spanish officers lances finely engraved. These were formerly gilt, but the gilding is now almost worn off with cleaning. ’Tis said, that when Don Pedro de Valdez, a captain of one of the Spanish ships that was taken, passed his examination before Lord Burleigh, he told his Lordship, that those fine polish’d lances were put on board to bleed the English with; to which that Nobleman, merrily replied, that, if he were not mistaken, the English had performed that operation better on their good friends the Spaniards with worse instruments. 15. The common soldiers pikes eighteen feet in length, pointed with long sharp spikes, and shod with iron; designed to keep off the horse, to facilitate the landing of their foot. 16. The last thing shewn of these memorable spoils, is the Spanish General’s shield, not worn by him; but carried before him as an ensign of honour. Upon it are depicted in most curious workmanship, some of the labours of Hercules, and other allegories which seem to throw a shade upon the boasted skill of modern artists. This was made near an hundred years before the art of printing was known in England: and upon it is the following inscription in Roman characters, ADVLTERIO DEIANIRA CONSPURCANS OCCIDITR CACVS AB HERCVL. OPPRIMITVR 1379. 17. The other curiosities deposited here, are Danish and Saxon clubs, weapons which each of those people are said to have used in their conquest of England. These are, perhaps, curiosities of the greatest antiquity of any in the Tower, they having lain there above 850 years. The warders call them the Womens weapons, because, say they, “the British women made prize of them, when, in one night, they all conspired together, and cut the throats, of 35,000 Danes; the greatest piece of secrecy the English women ever kept, for which they have ever since been honoured with the right-hand of the man, the upper end of the table, and the first cut of every dish of victuals they happen to like best.” The massacre of the Danes, was not however performed by the women alone, but by the private orders of Ethelred II. who in 1012, privately commanded his officers to extirpate those cruel and tirannical invaders.