Armour & Weapons

98 THE DECADENCE CHAP. VI we learn that a penny a day was allowed to each soldier in 1590, over and above his pay, for the wearing and carriage of his armour, because it had become the custom for the troops to give their accoutrements to the baggage-carriers when on the march : * a matter both unseemly for soldiers and also very hurtful unto the armour by bruising and breaking thereof, whereby it becometh unserviceable.’ In Cruso’s Militarie Instructions for the Cavallric (1632), we find that the arquebusiers had wholly left off their armour in favour of buff coats. Turner’s Pallas Armata (1670) mentions the armour of officers as ‘ a headpiece, a corslet and a gorget, the captain having a plume of feathers in his helmet, the lieutenant not Further on we read, ‘ now the feathers you may peradventure find, but the headpiece for the most part is laid aside.’ Fig. 45 shows that half armour was still worn during the Commonwealth, but by the Restoration very little was retained except for ceremonial use. As far as can be gleaned from contemporary letters and histories, Charles I never wore either the somewhat cumbrous gilt suit which is shown at the Tower or the more graceful half suit of Fig. 45. Cromwellian blued steel in which Vandyke represented him in pikeman. Tower, his equestrian portrait. All the metal defence we can be sure he actually wore is a steel broad-brimmed hat covered with velvet. The headpiece used by the cavalry during the Civil War is of the same type as No. 11 on Plate IV, a variety of the burgonet with a movable nasal. The breastplate continued to be worn during the wars of Marlborough, but that, too, was discarded when the efficacy of the musket proved its uselessness. The last survival of plate armour is to be found in the gorget. I his became smaller as the uniform was changed, and in the end was simply a small crescent of brass hung at the neck. It was worn by infantry officers up to the year 1830, at which date it was given up in England.