one another, since they vary but slightly in the arrangement of their border ornament, has led the author to consider them to be one complete suit, with interchangeable parts.
Now as to the nationality of this double suit and the armourer who produced them. Here we are in the region of conjecture, for we have no record of them save in the 1660 inventory, which may or may not refer to them. They do not appear to be the work of the Almaine or German armourers in the employ of the King; for the fashion of the various plates and the method of their etched and gilt enrichment inclines to be Italian. Yet they are not wholly in accordance with Italian harnesses. Can they be French? And may they not have been presented to Henry VIII by Francis I? For if, as is attested by the Comptes des Bâtiments, the French monarch ordered fighting harnesses made by the French armourers René de Champ-*damour, Laurnes Senet, and Loys Merveilles, to be sent as gifts to the Duc de Guise, to Cardinal de Lorraine, and to the Constable of France, may he not have ordered one as a similar token of friendship to be sent to the King of England?
The author hazards this surmise after the personal examination of a very famous suit which he had the opportunity of examining, though, unfortunately, not very thoroughly, a suit until recently in the Château de Bonnelle, and the property of the Duchesse d'Uzès, and now in the Riggs Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (Fig. 1021). Now the tradition, attaching to this suit, which is dated in the ornamentation in four places, 1527, is that it belonged to Sieur Jacques Gourdon de Genouilhac or "Galiot," born 1466, died 1546, a distinguished warrior at the court of Louis XII and Francis I, in whose latter reign he held the office of Grand Master of Artillery. Dr. Bashford Dean has given his reasons for corroborating this tradition (Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, vol. xiv, No. 10), but states that at present no documentary evidence is forthcoming to prove it.
What is certain is that the Genouilhac suit must have been made by the same armourer who produced the great double suit in the Tower of London with which we are dealing. Allowing for the differences in decoration due to the personal preferences of the wearers, they correspond plate for plate in construction. The Tower suits are cleaned and polished down to a plane far below the original surface level; although, considering the harassing times through which they have passed, they are fairly sound—thanks to their original thick and heavy make. But the Genouilhac suit is even to-day in almost its pristine
