passed in the first half of the XVIIth century, recorded, for it would not seem likely that the writer of the Table of Contents was someone unconnected with the Greenwich workshops which were closed in 1644. It is needless to say that none of the designs bear the smallest trace of Holbein's art. True it is that there is a decoration of slashing on some of the suits, but although slashing is Holbeinesque, this decoration is represented rather in the character of an historical survival than of the real slashing decoration of Holbein's period. We surmise that when Henry VIII was living he had employed Holbein to design armours, and in the early days of the Greenwich workshops armours may have been made from Holbein's design. Some of the drawings are recorded as being of suits of the time of Mary, the letters "M.R." appearing in the corners of the drawings; others are noted with the letters "E.R." (Elizabeth Regina), while the last eleven drawings have neither "M.R." nor "E.R." upon them. In all cases the letters "M.R." and "E.R." are in the handwriting of the person who wrote the names on the drawings.
But as the drawings, as we think, were executed some time after, at all events, the first thirteen suits were made, too much stress cannot be laid on the letters "E.R." (letters which also stand for Edwardus Rex, i.e., Edward VI), and it is curious to note that there are in the Tower "portions of a crupper with vertical flutings and simulated slashings"[1] as their decoration, which the author considered to be of the period of Henry VIII. The Duke of Norfolk suit, made at Greenwich, is seen in the drawing to have had a slashed decoration; it is no longer in existence, and it may be, as the author thought, that these portions of a crupper were part of the complete armour which went with this suit; this slight evidence lends some support to the Holbein tradition, which is not the less tenable in view of the fact that Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was born in 1536 and beheaded in 1572. As we have said, the draughtsman used in all his drawings a common form for all the suits in which he depicted the different decorations, but it does not follow that all the suits were of the same form, and it is not unfair to assume that over the period which these harnesses covered some were of an earlier form.—C.-D.]
On each of the drawings is the name of a person for whom the suit was made. In the first eighteen drawings the writing is in the same hand, and on two of these drawings the same writer made additional notes. On No. "13," representing the suit of the Earl of Worcester, there is this
- ↑ C. ffoulkes, "The Armouries of the Tower of London," vol. i, p. 207 (Class VI, No. 85).
