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G. Turner does a good job capturing that flair, i just picked up Gravet & Turner's two new books from Osprey, Towton & Tewkesbury, for a little summer reading. also there's an article by Thom Richardson in Blood Red Roses that goes into amour detail that i can foward some exerpts to you later this week.

daniel

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Db

How much plate armour was actually produced in England, of a high quality is a question that is out there. The problem is there is not a lot of positive evidence for local production, and a preponderance of evidence exists to the comissioning and importation of armour.

There is one example I have researched of an aristocrat (the last Mowbray Duke of Norfolk - !st Duke of Norfolk) ordering an expensive armour from an English armourer - and to the best of my current knowledge, only that one example. In 1460-1, we know there was one armourer operating in London, who was a platener, considered good enough for the Duke of Norfolk to buy a suit from.

Really, when we are discussing English Armour (in reference to an entire hosting harnesss of plate, and of quality) - in largest part we are discussing Armour made elsewhere for English clients. I know it is popular in the RA nowadays to lable Western European Armour (not of Italian or German origin), as "possibly English", but there isn't a lot of documentation to support the concept.

I would say an English style existed - slightly distinctive from the Western European style seen in Flemish and Northern French art, but I would have to say that the bulk of the evidence regarding armour production would seem to indicate that these armours were produced for English clients, to suit their taste, in Flanders and other Northern European locations. (Even if a very few local armours produced quality armour for a wealthy clientel - it is even possible that such people were foriegners working in England - akin to the colonies of Italian armourers settled in Flanders by Philip the Good, or in Tours by Charles VII). That the product of English armourers was considered to be very second-rate by the early Tudor monarchy is both well-documented, and indisputable.

What there is a lot of documentation for being produced in England by English armorers is brigandines, mail, and padded armours.

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The best information that will come to light soon will be Toby Capwell's doctoral thesis on English plate armours represented in effigies. He's written over 1000 pages and it's in submission to the university awaiting acceptance and subsequent publication. When he informs me of its availability, I'll post that on this board.

Toby's feeling as he's explained it to me is that England did not necessarily follow the trends of the continent, but rather set trends that continental armourers may have incorporated into their work afterward. When looking at the chronology of English effigial armour vs. German extant pieces, I support his hypothesis, as the English fluted examples pre-date the German by sometimes as much as 50 years.

I'm sure Toby's thesis will be worth the read, even at that length. Let's hope it comes out soon, as it will shed a lot of light on mid-late 15th century armour.

thanks for the info Bob. I dont have a wide veriety of effigies in the books at home. know of any web sources that I could look over?

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have you had a chance to read the article by Richardson in Blood Red Roses? i remember that he had a couple of style specific points deferentiating the armour made for the english market from other regions. this was read a while ago and i never bothered to ask if it was a load of bunk since my interest laid elsewhere. but since we've been talking about a similar topic down here i was curious about your two cents.

ok just got the book back. Richardson's article . goes into english specif charisteristic of armour during the War of the Roses. the material he uses for refernce are brasses and effigies since he states that there are almost no surviving materials left.

he compares the armour with its continental countepart and the style worn in england before 1450. that year marked a change in style.

here's a summary of points:
most brasses and effigies show a sallet used as the war helmet. there are some that exibit the italian characterictic of having the asymetrical couter configuration, however, huge symetrical wing couters attached in the german fashion appear to be favoured. plus symetrical pauldrons aswell. this may be due to the characterics of english unhorsed fighting? the fauld and culet become shorter in comparison to earlier example in england yet they don't become as short as the continental example. a unique feature is the attaching of the tasset high on the fauld. cusped edges and fluting abound.

he goes a bit into the armour for the duke of Norfolk, and a english production of Jousting helms. but the majority of the armour was indeed imported as indicated by the italian marks on the surviving helmets which formed part of funerary achievements.

thanks

daniel

[ 04-21-2004: Message edited by: LHF ]

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Db

The only problem with Toby gaining general acceptance with his feeling regarding English fashion influencing the Continent is that there is a distinct paucity of the sorts of images he uses to establish a general English style (which he will have no trouble doing) in the Low Countries and Northern France - due to the devestations of the French Revolution, and World Wars I & II.

It is hard to say with certainty in an academic paper that one locale is the trend setter for another, when most of the comparitive evidence in the second locale is no longer extant. I would say this is doubly so, when the second local is known to be a center of armour manufacturing, for export (amongst other locations) to the primary location. Not that it isn't possible, but proving the point is a shakey case.

Vis-a-vis his dissertation - last I talked to him, he doubted it could be published. The University holds propritary rights (according to him), and the mass of illustrations would make such a project unfeasable due to what a publisher would have to charge to make a profit on a book which would have a small circulation.

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"Of course I am going to try to publish the thing. I don't know what the exact form will be, since it will have to be a bit different than the PhD itself. Nevertheless I would very much like to get the info out there somehow."

On another level, I'm absolutely astonished that you can be so dismissive of someone's doctoral thesis.

I heard there was a discussion going on in regard to armour in C15th England, and since my name and my work came up, I thought I would jump in a make a few comments.

It is great to hear that there is so much interest in 'English' armour of the fifteenth century. I thought I was a lone nut for a while. Wolfman, I encourage you in your interest; the more armour of these weirder styles people build and play around with, the more we will learn.

I should also clarify that my recently completed and submitted PhD deals with the evolution of armour styles and design in England, 1400-1500. It is not about English armourers or the English armour-making community. It is simply a collection and analysis of the evidence for the appearance and construction of plate armour in England during the C15th. I am not too bothered about where specifically it was made. That is somebody else's PhD. Any C15th armourer worth his salt, whatever his origin, would have been aware of and literate in all of the going styles of his day, and many undoubtedly had personal takes on the various fashions. We know for example that Martin Rondelle, in a letter to John Paston, offered to make his client an armour in any style he required:

'...let me know the pieces you wish to have, and the fashion...'

('vous plaira lesiem savoir queles piesses que vous voles avoir, et la faisson')

We know that the enterprising Italians were making stylistically distinct armour for the Spanish, German, and Western European markets. So it also seems reasonable to suggest that Liege armourers were making English armour, English armourers were making Italian armour, German armourers were making Flemish armours, etc. Style itself is no indicator of the cultural identity of the maker.

So I was simply interested in what the English appear to have been wearing, from a stylistic point of view. It appears that there was an English style, based on the evidence available to me. Why do I think it is English?

- Over 4 and a half years I gathered as much specifically English evidence as I could find(185 effigies + 200 brasses + various other sculptures, wall paintings, alabaster panels, stained glass windows, woodcuts, MS illustrations, etc). I put it in a pile and sorted it by decade, and then wrote up what it appeared to show.

- A clear and very detailed evolution of one primary style appeared in this material, a style that is different in many respects to what appears to have been going on on the continent.

- There is some evidence of other styles in this same body of material; it is however distinct and clearly different. These other styles, primarily Italian and Flemish, are however in the minority, and exist outside of the main developmental paths.

Ultimately it is extremely difficult to be sure of anything. I tend to be wary of people who are sure of too much. We who are interested in the C15th should be satisfied to deal in likelihoods and probabilities, especially in regard to something as variable and ever-changing as armour. My points Jeff mentioned about trend-setting versus trend-following are ideas, suggestions, things to consider. It seems fairly clear that, by the early C15th, the English had developed effective and distinct tactics and methods of deployment in regard to their fully-armed warriors. If they were so original in their applications, it seemed to me that they would also have developed their own varied armour technology, technology that was more suitable for the way in which they chose to use it. We should remember that the Burgundians revered and emulated English fighting methods, particularly in the way that they placed their men-at-arms on foot and sometimes internmingled them with the archers and common foot-soldiers. Phillipe de Commines talks about the imitating of English tactics for example. The English armoured warrior was a formidable opponent. Take the battle of Verneuil for example. Despite their archers being smashed up and routed by Lombard mercenary cavalry in the service of the French, the English still managed to win, purely through bitter, hard-fighting of the men-at-arms. So my starting point for my PhD, not to to digress, was simply the idea that elite warriors such as these, having such specific and effective ideas about how best to fight while fully-armoured, must also have had a very specific equipment requirements, requirements that might have been quite different in some ways from their Italian counterparts, for example.

I am sure that my study would be well-complimented by a similar survey of the surviving material on the continent. A lot has undoubtedly been destroyed, as Bob points out, but I think there is also probably still a lot to be discovered or re-discovered. I found two effigies during my study that were documented as having been destroyed. They had seen better days (before the C16th no doubt), but they were still very much in existence. Unfortunately I also found (or rather didn't find) two effigies that were thought to have survived but that were in fact gone.

I think there is probably more left than we think. Another PhD for another day.

Yet we cannot ignore the English evidence because of evidence that might have existed but was destroyed. We have to work with what we have. If all the evidence for this style is English, and it is different from all the other available evidence, then we have to assume an English origin for the style until somebody demonstrates otherwise. I think I have collected a lot of new information, and hopefully I may have suggested a few new points.

I will endeavour to publish the thing as soon as I can. I want it to get a reasonable distribution; I spent many thousands of pounds on this project, and I need to make sure I publish it the right way.

If anybody is building an 'English' style armour, please tell me about it! I am building one right now, Graham Turner is building one, Jeff is thinking about building one (right Jeff?) and the more we work from the effigies the more we will find out.

Unfortunately I do not have the time or energy to keep up with all that is going on on these boards, fascinating though it all is. If anybody has an armour-related question or comment, please write to me at:

tobias.capwell@cls.glasgow.gov.uk

Play nice,

quote:

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Originally posted by Ginevra:
The points about the armour aside (since I don't know anything about armour), I just received this from Toby-

"Of course I am going to try to publish the thing. I don't know what the exact form will be, since it will have to be a bit different than the PhD itself. Nevertheless I would very much like to get the info out there somehow."

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That is excellent news. Given the bulk of the illustrations and photographs required to make his point, to publish such a work in book form would place it on the order of magnitude of cost as the Churburg catalog, if not a little bit more. (From earlier queries)

What I hope to see is it published in a series of lengthy articles in a respected journal of Arms and Armour, as probably being the most practical method. It is great to know that he *can* publish it for consumption eventually.

quote:

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On another level, I'm absolutely astonished that you can be so dismissive of someone's doctoral thesis.

Gwen

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I don't think you understand properly what I wrote. I pointed out a weakness in proving the theory - Toby wrote his dissertation expecting to defend it to a panel of PHD's, he would hardly be offended by my pointing out the obvious (to him) since he is preparing to defend it.

It is by the process of people asking informed questions, and investigating new angles a scholar might not have considered that new insights are gained into a area of study. Scholars talk to one another, and share information, and review one anothers work, which is how theories are determined to be sound.

As you can see, Tobias is perfectly capable of defending his theories on his own. Since I support the bulk of his theories that I have 'heard' him expound, and I am investigiating a similar topic (Western European Armour) from another angle, and I haven't read his dissertation yet, I can hardly be described as 'dismissive' of his dissertation.

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As has been mentioned before, it's important to remember that a job title does not necesarily tell us much of what a person actually did. There are certainly references to armourers in England ... but to use an example from Chancery ... (this is the doc summary for C 1/67/145

Thomas Grafton, merchant of the Staple of Calais, at Calais in the king's service. v. The mayor and aldermen of London.: Action of account brought by John Smyth, of London, armourer, relative to 100 Milan harness bought by complainant in Flanders, and sold to the king.

(dated in PRO as 1386-1486 ... Thomas Grafton, merchant of the Staple of Calais appears in another doc dated to 1 Ed V (1483) and by the Tudor period there are refs to his heir ... so c.1480's seems reasonable

"armourer for dressing a sword 4d"

I wouldn't expect to see an armourer dressing swords.

If I mistook your meaning Bob, than I apologize. I am no scholar so I guess I should stick to what I know. I have been duly chastized on this end for spending my time posting on boards rather than making things or working on my own research. My apologies.

And I thought I was the only sad anorak who read the Patent Rolls for fun!

I tried to get a copy of the Chancery account I mentioned but the PRO don't see to want to provide a copy .... oh well ... now I'll just have to chase down your ref instead ;-)

Maybe another day.

So far I have white linen shirt and braise, black wool hosen, brown leather turn shoe, blue woolen kirtle, riveted iron hauberk, visorless bascinet, brass dome mounted leather belt, 7lb greatsword with brass pommel and quillions.

The padded coat turned out more 15thc with a small standing collar. Would the standard buckler been all iron or wood and iron?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Woodcrafter:
As I am putting together a south east England harness of 1372, what details would make it 'of the English fashion?'

So far I have white linen shirt and braise, black wool hosen, brown leather turn shoe, blue woolen kirtle, riveted iron hauberk, visorless bascinet, brass dome mounted leather belt, 7lb greatsword with brass pommel and quillions.

The padded coat turned out more 15thc with a small standing collar. Would the standard buckler been all iron or wood and iron?

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Hi Dan,

Without question, the fellow to ask would be Tobias Capwell, as he has had more contact with and study of English effigies over the past few years than anyone else I can think of, working on his doctoral thesis.

That said, most scholars still refer to the time in question as the 'International Era' of armour, prior to distinctive regional types emerging. Many people are of the opinion however, that certain combinations of equipment and mode of dress would certainly give a viewer of the era a good idea of the region a man at arms was from - discerning (and even proving there were such things) the differences are some of the greatest challenges facing armour scholars of today.

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