It is impossible to discover what size the “plates” were made before they were handed over to the armourers. The largest single plate in the Tower is a portion of the horse-armour of II, 5, known as the “Engraved Suit.” This piece measures 27½ in. at top and 28½ in. at bottom by 17 in. and 18½ in. high, or roughly speaking 28½ in. by 18½ in., about 1/16 in. thick, weighing about 6 lb. 4 oz. If the numbers given on page 41 represent plates and not hundredweights, each plate 1/16 in. thick would be 6 in. by 11 in., and this is obviously absurd. It is more likely that, with the crude appliances in use, an ingot of metal was beaten out into such a plate as the weight of the ingot might give, larger or smaller as the case might be, and not standardized in any way. Dud Dudley writing in 1665 describes the methods of ironworkers before his introduction of sea-coal. “They could make but one little lump or bloom of Iron in a day, not 100 weight and that not fusible, nor fined, or malliable, until it were long burned and wrought under hammers.”[65] FOOTNOTES: [61] The quotation continues: “a sword of Spain.” We find many Solingen and Passau blades bearing the marks of Spanish sword-smiths. [62] This would be a piece about 2 ft. by 3½ in. by 3½ in. [63] Large plates of horse-armour are about 1/16 in. thick. [64] For particulars of “lance-armour” see Appendix I. [65] _Metallum Martis_, p. 37. THE CRAFT OF THE ARMOURER The actual craft-work of the armourer differed but little from that of the smith, but there are some details which the armourer had to consider which were not part of ordinary blacksmith’s work. There are no contemporary works of a technical nature, and our investigations can only be based on actual examination of suits, assisted by scattered extracts from authorities who mention the subject in military works. In 1649 J. Cramer printed a work, _De Armorum Fabricatione_, but it throws no light upon the subject and quotes from Roman authorities. In the first place, the making of mail was a distinct craft which had no counterpart in other branches of smithing. At first the wire had to be beaten out from the solid, and thus the few fragments which remain to us of early mail show a rough, uneven ring of wire, clumsily fashioned and thicker than that of later dates. The invention of wire-drawing is generally ascribed to Rudolph of Nuremberg, about the middle of the fourteenth century,[66] but there were two corporations of wire-drawers in Paris in the thirteenth century mentioned in Étienne Boileau’s _Livre des Métiers_, written about 1260. [Illustration: _PLATE XI_ BRIGANDINE, OUTSIDE AND INSIDE. XV CENT. BREASTPLATE FOR BRIGANDINE, 1470, SHOWING ARMOURER’S MARK RIGHT CUISSE OF ARMOUR FOR BARRIERS SHOWING ARMOURER’S MARK]