technique are so similar, they were probably all done within a comparatively short period. From the fact that the first Hatton suit, which is extant, the drawing of which is numbered "16," bears the date "1585," fifteen of the drawings were presumably made after that date, for the presumption is strong that the date on this suit is the date of its make. The drawings are certainly not the work of an artist: the suits are stiffly drawn, all more or less from one set pattern. Sometimes they are turned to the left, more often to the right; but the attitude is always the same. Like the paintings of the ancient Egyptians, the head is invariably in profile, and the body almost full front. Nor are the drawings designs for the making of armour; they are rather representations of suits already in existence, as obviously must be the case of the design of the one which came from abroad. These drawings, then, are the work of a man who wished clearly to show the decoration of each suit, the pieces and extra pieces of which it was composed, and who was therefore in all probability a skilled craftsman.
Our inference is that the designs of the forms of the armours were not taken from those of the suits.
[The manuscript is now bound in calf, and this binding must be, as we have said, the second binding, for many of the drawings are cut. On page 1 the Table of Contents is written in a hand of the XVIIth century. This Table was written after the second binding, for there is no sign of the cutting affecting the writing. The table is headed: "These are the original drawings of Hans Holbein of suits of armour for the great tournament of King Henry the Eighth," and then follows a list of suits copied more or less exactly from the descriptions on the drawings. The writer has omitted to mention some of the suits, but as the last suit which he indexes is that of "My Lord Bucarte, His Countenance," the writer had the completed volume before him, and his omissions are evidently due to carelessness. The slight differences in spelling of the names on the drawings and in the Table call for no comment. On five of the drawings of the suits are painted faces to the figures, all of the same character, and perhaps later than the designs of the armours, but not later than the writing of the Table of Contents, for the writer of the table calls attention to these heads by noting after the names of the suits of the Earl of Worcester, Lord Compton, and Lord Buckhurst the words "His Countenance." The only point of interest in this Table of Contents is the heading attributing the designs to Holbein, from which we suggest that there was in the first half of the XVIIth century a tradition still prevalent that Holbein was the designer of the suits which the person at Greenwich, into whose keeping the volume
