Armour & Weapons

52 THE WEARING OF ARMOUR CHAP. HI passe-guard is quite another portion of the armour. In the Tower Inventory of 1697 appears the entry, ‘ One Armour cap-a-pe Engraven with a Ragged Staffe, made for ye Earle of Leisester, a Mainfere, Passguard and Maineguard and Gantlett.’ Now it is hardly reasonable to suppose that this ridge on the pauldron should be specially mentioned as the Passe-guard without any notice of the pauldron itself. In the Additional Notes to the above article Viscount Dillon gives, from a List of Payments made in connexion with jousts held on October 20,1519, ‘9 yards of Cheshire cotton at 7^. for lining the king’s pasguard.’ That the neck- guard to which we refer should need lining on the inside, where it did not even touch the helmet, we may dismiss at once ; and that the lining should be on the outside is of course absurd. As far as can be gathered from recent research the passe-guard is a reinforcing piece for the right elbow, used for jousting. It was lined to protect the ordinary arm defence underneath from being scratched, and also to lessen the shock to the wearer if it were struck. It is to be hoped, from this reiteration of Viscount Dillon’s researches, that at any rate one of the many errors of nomenclature in armour may be corrected. With regard to the thickness of plate armour, we should remem- ber that it was forged from the solid ingot, and was not rolled in sheets as is the material of to-day from which so many forgeries are manufactured. The armourer was therefore able to graduate the thickness of his material, increasing it where it was most needed, and lessening it in those parts which were less exposed. With regard to the proving of armour an article in Archaeologia, vol. li, also by Viscount Dillon, is of great interest as showing the indifferent skill of the English ironsmiths of the sixteenth century. In 1590 a discussion arose as to the quality of the English iron found in Shropshire as compared to the ‘ Hungere ’ iron which came from Innsbruck. After some delay Sir Henry Lee, Master of the Tower Armouries, arranged a test, and two breastplates were prepared, of equal make and weight. Two pistol charges of equal power were fired at the test breastplates, with the result