The chief work of the armourer was the beating out of plates from the solid ingot of metal and therefore we find that all illustrations dealing with this craft show the workmen engaged in this operation. When once the rough shape of the piece was obtained a great deal of the work was done when the metal was cold, as will be seen from examination of the illustrations. When the craft of the armourer became important and when a large trade was done in these munitions of war, it was found more convenient to have the plates beaten out in special mills before they were handed over to the armourer to make up into armour. These battering-mills are noticed on pages 35, 188. In many instances they were probably owned by the armourers and were often under the same roof; but the fact that we find hammermen, millmen, platers, and armourers mentioned together in records and bills of payment to armouries seems to suggest that they had different duties assigned to them. That the work of the plater was quite distinct from that of the armourer in the sixteenth century we gather from entries in the State Papers Domestic, and in the reign of James I, which will be discussed more fully farther on in this chapter. The earliest European illustration of an armourer at work at present known is to be found in the thirteenth-century _Aeneid_ of Heinrich von Waldec (codex MS. Germ. fol. 282, p. 79) in the Königl. Bib. Berlin (Plate IV). From the fact that the armourer (Vulcan) is holding the helm with pincers we may infer that he is working it hot. The anvil as shown in this miniature (Plate IV) is square and of primitive form and would seem to be quite useless for the work, but this may be due to the inexperience of the artist. The hammer, however, is carefully drawn and is evidently from some real example in which the face is rounded in a slightly convex form and the toe ends in a small blunted point which may be for riveting small objects or for making small bosses. [Illustration: FIG. 15. The Mail-maker (from Jost Amman’s _Stände und Handwerker_), _circ._ 1590.]