The ornamentation of armour with gilding had obtained such a firm hold that in the seventeenth century James II was obliged to make an exception in its favour in his proclamation against the use of “gold and silver foliate,” an extract of which is given in Appendix I, page 187. In discussing the craft of the armourer it should be remembered that we can only base our conclusions on the scattered entries of payments, inventories, and other documents in State or private collections, and by examination of suits which have been preserved in the armouries and collections of Europe and England. These suits represent but a very small percentage of the large stores of armour of all kinds which must have been in existence at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and it is only the fine and exceptional examples which have survived. The material was so costly in the making that it was made and remade over and over again; which will account for the absence of complete suits of the fourteenth century and the scarcity of those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries now in existence. Occasionally we have local collections which give us a suggestion of what the standing armoury must have been, such as the armour stores at Gratz, Zurich, the collection of helmets and armour found in the castle of Chalcis,[4] and village armouries like that at Mendlesham, Suffolk. Two examples of the treatment of armour must suffice. In the Inventory of the Tower, taken in 33 Hen. VI, 1455, is the entry: “Item viij habergeons some of Meleyn and some of Westewale of the which v of Melyn were delyv’ed to the College of Eyton and iij broken to make slewys and voyders and ye’s.” Here clearly the hauberk is cut up and used to make sleeves and gussets, which were more useful when the complete plate body-defences had come into fashion than the shirt of mail. This is also another example of the competition between Milan and Germany (Westphalia) in the matter of armour-making. As an example of the other reason for the absence of armour in national and private collections in any great quantities, we may cite Hearne’s account of his visit to Ditchley, given in his _Remains_ under the date 1718. He says: “In one of the outhouses I saw strange armour which belonged to the ancestors[5] of the Earl of Litchfield, some of the armour very old.” In the steward’s accounts of but a few weeks later Viscount Dillon has discovered an entry, “received of Mr. Mott, the brazier for the old armour wayed 14 cwt. 1 qr. 21 lb. at 10s. the cwt. £7. 4. 6.” The saddles had been previously cut up to nail up the fruit trees.[6] From the weight of armour sold there were probably about twenty suits, some of which must certainly have been of value, possibly one or more of the missing suits designed by Topf for Sir Henry Lee and illustrated in the _Almain Armourer’s Album_ now in the South Kensington Art Library. It can be readily understood that when the historic or artistic value of armour was not appreciated