that it is rather large for a Prince only thirteen years old; but we see a likeness in the gold damascened work to that upon the sword now in the Musée d'Artillerie, and to that on a dagger in the Wallace Collection, both of which were made for Henri IV in Paris, and presented to him by the citizens of his capital on the occasion of his wedding to Marie de Médicis in 1599.
Might this and not the one sent by the Ambassador of Savoy be the suit in question made in Paris and sent to Henry, Prince of Wales? And if it was made in Paris, was it founded on the model of the Armure aux Lions, which, though collected from the gallery of the Sedan, may have been in the French capital early in the XVIIth century? This would to a certain extent explain its anomalies in shape and decoration. We put this second proposition forward merely with a view of helping to explain the existence of the one example of embossed armour in the Tower of London. It might be argued that the small suit in the Windsor Armoury, No. 574 in the catalogue of 1904, could as readily answer the description of "a suit of armour well gilt and enamelled"; but we distinctly recognize a certain French influence in the make of the Tower suit which is not to be discerned in that of the little suit at Windsor, which is essentially Italian. Whatever its history is, the "lion" suit at the Tower of London speaks for itself as a finely artistic production, influenced by a classical feeling as to form and decoration, though of a somewhat decadent type.
Sir Samuel Meyrick, in his "Antient Armour" (1842, vol. iii, page 112), states that when he was called up to rearrange the Tower Armoury this suit was described as that of Charles II. All the Tower guide-books of the second half of the XVIIIth century say that this—the so-called Charles II—suit was used for the Westminster Hall challenging ceremony at the Coronation of George I or George II. But the suit issued for that purpose is described in the Armoury Issue Book as being "white and gold"; these records are, however, very loosely worded. Certainly Meyrick saw it only forty years after the last guide-book was written, and none of the other suits seem to have been changed. Hewitt (1841) gives the Greenwich "Smith" suit (Vol. iv, Fig. 1119) as the champion's suit worn at the coronation ceremony of George II; but there is no evidence whatever to support this claim. The pictures of the coronation banquet all show plain early XVIIth century armour; but these are evidently done from imagination, being repeated in each succeeding coronation record.
In the first half of the XVIIIth century the "lion" suit at the Tower
