In the preface he writes: “In war the nimble avoydance of a man’s horse if wounded or killed under him, and in like manner the ready ascent into his enemies saddle if it be his hap to unhorse him, and much more which the experienced souldier shall find.” There is an engraving on Plate I of the work showing a cuirassier in half-armour about to vault into the saddle without stirrups. Stokes occasionally breaks out into verse as follows:-- Here’s that will make a stubborne armour weare Gentle as Persian silks and light as air, which refers to the ease of mounting which his prescribed exercises ensured. On the subject of the wearing of armour we have much valuable information from the works of the great military reformer of the sixteenth century, Sir John Smith, who, as has been stated previously, suffered imprisonment for his opinions. In his _Instructions and Observations and Orders Militarie_, 1591-5, he writes:-- Page 183. “No man can be conveniently armed unlesse he be first fitly apparelled.” He states that at Tilbury he saw “but very few of that army that had any convenience of apparel and chieflie of doublets to arme upon, whereof it came to passe that the most of them did weare their armors verie uncomelie and uneasilie.... But because the collars of their armours doe beare the chief waight of all the rest of the armour, I would wish that the souldiers ... should have under Collars of Fustian convenientlie bombasted to defende the heveth weight, and poise of their armours from the paining or hurting of their shouldiers.” On page 193 he writes: “Also I would have them to have pouldrons of a good compasse and size, and vambraces both joined together, and not asunder, because that the poise of the pouldrons and vambraces, hanging upon the pinnes and springes of their collars, they doe not weigh so much, nor are not so wearisome as when they are separated; and that they weare their vambraces tied with points to their doublets under their pouldrons.” Here the author, who was pre-eminently a practical soldier, saw the discomfort and inconvenience caused by the drag of the arming-point on the sleeve and wisely considered that the whole arm-defence should hang from a pin or strap from the gorget or cuirass, so that the weight might be on the shoulders and not on the arms. The armour for the joust in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was far too heavy to allow of such vagaries. Pluvinel in his _Maneige Royale_, 1625, gives an imaginary conversation between himself and the King which bears upon the subject:-- The King. It seems to me that such a man would have difficulty in getting on his horse and being on to help himself. Pluvinel.