therefore failed to realize a high price, rarely turned his attention in this direction. In England there is one exception to this rule, and that is the half armour worn by the pikemen, an armament that has always made a special appeal to English collectors, who take a sentimental interest in the armaments worn in the Parliamentary and Royalist struggles of the XVIIth century. Very many real pikemen suits of this period are in existence; but there were not enough to meet the demand, with the result that many forgeries have been made, we believe exclusively in England.
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Fig. 1549. English forgeries of the mid-XIXth century
(a) Solleret of the third quarter of the XVth century, recently on sale again in London as from the collection of two ladies living in the country.
(b) Solleret of the third quarter of the XVth century, now in the Armoury of the Tower of London.
From the complete suits we will turn to individual pieces of faked armour. The early helmets of English origin we will deal with by giving a number of illustrations of those ridiculous head-pieces chosen from the Tower and elsewhere (Figs. 1545, a-g, and 1546, nos. 1-16). Alongside of these we will put the individual items of so-called Gothic armour that emanate from the same source: leg-pieces (with and without history) (Fig. 1547, a and b), gauntlet (Fig. 1548), and the long-toed sollerets, for which, as we have already said, our mid-Victorian English forger was especially famous (Fig. 1549). Miserable forgeries of embossed pageant shields exist—some of them
