Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/134

of these two helmets (Fig. 445 J) is still in St. Peter's Church, Stourton; but the first (Fig. 445 I), which lacks its visor, is now in the collection of Sir Edward Barry of Ockwells Manor. The painted surface of this last-mentioned helmet makes us confident that it must originally have hung in some English church.

Fig. 446. A typical English armet

About 1520-30. Eye Church, Suffolk

(a) Profile view, the visor raised; (b) Profile view, the visor closed

Finally, we will turn to the German make of the armet head-piece. These helmets appear to have been characterized by no particular originality of form, the great German armourers of the early years of the XVIth century contenting themselves with copying the best model of the head-piece procurable, namely, the north Italian type of the closing years of the XVth century. As we have said, the armet head-piece found little favour in Germany, and though we are able to give illustrations of two which are the work of perhaps the most famous of all the German armourers, we know that both were made to be sent to other countries, the first to England, the second to Spain.

The armet (Fig. 447) made by Conrad Seusenhofer of Innsbrück, which goes with the suit (Fig. 1016) given by the Emperor Maximilian to King Henry VIII, is a proof of the German armourer's custom of producing a faithful copy of the absolutely Milanese form of armet. Had the head-piece lacked its Germanic enrichment and the armourer's mark adopted by Seusenhofer, we should without hesitation have pronounced it to be Italian both in form and workmanship, which latter is of the finest, even excelling that of any Milanese armet with which we are acquainted. The large wrapper or buffe which reinforces the chin-piece is attached by a simple strap. Of its surface enrichment we have spoken when we described the suit