Henrician Period Although there were certainly English armourers at work before 1511, indeed they had their own
guild in London, it seems that they were both unable to cope with large volume orders, and not able to produce work of the finest quality, and in the latest styles, found in Europe. A payment to
Milanese armourers at Greenwich, of £6 2/3 and two
hogsheads of wine, was made in July 1511; they were under contract for two years from March 1511, and other payments record the setting-up of a mill and the purchase of tools.
Greenwich Palace was still an important royal residence, birthplace of both Henry and his two daughters. By 1515, there were six German master armourers, with (perhaps working separately from) two apparently Flemish masters, two polishers and an apprentice, all working under the English King's Armourer, John Blewbury, and a "Clerk of the Stable". All were given damask
livery clothes. In 1516, the workshop moved closer to London (but still outside the city itself, where guild regulation might have been an issue) to a mill in
Southwark, while construction of a new mill at Greenwich began. On completion of this in 1520 they returned to Greenwich. wearing an early Greenwich armour of 1532–33. The first Greenwich harnesses, created under Henry VIII, were typically of uniform colouration, either gilded or silvered all over and then etched with intricate motifs, often designed by
Hans Holbein. The lines of these armours were typically not much different from Northern German designs of the same time period; the decorations, though, were often more extravagant. A good example of this early sort of Greenwich style is the harness which is thought to have belonged to Galiot de Genouillac,
Constable of France, but was initially created for King Henry. The armour, currently on display at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York, has a specially designed
corset built into the
cuirass to support the weight of the burly king's large stomach. This harness also has very wide
sabatons in the
Maximilian style. Very similar in design, but ungilded, is another tournament harness made for Henry VIII which now resides at the
Tower of London and which is famous for its large
codpiece.
Golden Age , as depicted in the Jacob album After the reign of Henry VIII, the Greenwich armour began to evolve into a different and unique style. There were several defining characteristics of this second wave of armour. One was the mimicking of popular fashions of the time in the styles of the armour to reflect the individual wearer's taste in civilian clothing. From 1560 cuirasses were designed to imitate the curving "peascod" style of
doublet which was immensely popular among gentlemen during the reign of Elizabeth. This type of cuirass curved outwards in front at a steep angle which culminated at the groin, where it tapered into a small horn-like protrusion. All-over gilding or silvering was replaced by strips of blued or gilded steel, typically running horizontally across the
pauldrons at the edge of each lame, and vertically down the cuirass and
tassets, which emulated the strips of colourful embroidered cloth that were popular in civilian fashion. Some armours were provided with an extra pair of tassets for use at the barriers which were very wide, not unlike the form of a pair of trunkhose. The extant armours of
Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and that of
Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, currently display these tassets. The armour of
William Somerset, 3rd Earl of Worcester, is also similarly styled. , a young knight, in a partial Greenwich harness. Peascod shape is highly pronounced. Another defining characteristic of Elizabethan-era Greenwich armour is the extravagant use of colour in general to decorate the steel. Older styles of armour-making, such as
Maximilian and
Gothic, emphasized the shaping of the metal itself, such as fluting and roping, to create artistic designs in the armour, rather than using colour. The Greenwich style, however, came at a time when complicated decoration of the metal with colour, texture and embossed designs was fashionable across Europe. Greenwich did not produce the highly modelled figurative designs of some Continental centres, but specialised in bold designs using different colours to form vibrant, striking patterns. Colour contrast became extremely important, as it was in civilian fashion. The extent to which a suit of armour was decorated depended on the wealth of the buyer, and ranged from wildly elaborate and artistic pieces such as George Clifford's famous gilded garniture to relatively simple harnesses of "white armour" overlaid with intersecting patterns of darker-coloured strips. In either case, the use of contrasting colours became a hallmark of the Greenwich style. There were three main ways in which the steel of the armour was coloured: bluing, browning, and russeting. Bluing the steel gave it a deep, brilliant blue-black finish. Browning, as the name would suggest, coloured the steel a dark brown, which contrasted vividly with gilding as in the harness of
George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland. Finally, russeting imparted a dark-red or purple hue to the steel, which was also typically used in conjunction with gilding. All of these base colours would be applied uniformly to the steel of the armour, and then strips of differently coloured steel would be laid across to create patterns, or etched sections of the armour would be gilded. The Earl of Worcester's armour is one striking example of a scalloped design which was originally gilded over dark blued steel. The Greenwich helmet for the field and tilt has a distinctive form. The typical Greenwich helm is an
armet with a very high visor perforated on one or both sides by vertical slits, in the case of a field visor, or with small round holes in the case of a visor for the tilt (most Greenwich armours came with both types.) The rim of the upper bevor juts out forward gracefully, giving the helmet a characteristic "ship's prow" appearance. It also typically has a high raised comb from the rear of the skull extending up to the top of the visor, a feature influenced by the French style. Finally, Greenwich armours were often made in the form of a
garniture, which meant a large set of interchangeable armour pieces, referred to as
pieces of exchange, with the same design which could be arranged to form a suit for either mounted combat such as jousting, or combat on foot in the tournament. A garniture would typically include a full plate harness plus an extra visor specially meant for tilting; a
burgonet helmet which would be worn open-faced for a parade or ceremony, or with a removable "falling-buffe" visor for combat; a grandguard, which would reinforce the upper portion of the torso and neck for jousting; a passguard, which would reinforce the arm; and a manifer, a large gauntlet to protect the hand. It might also include a shaffron, which would cover the head of the knight's horse, and a set of decorated saddle steels.
Stuart Period (1599–1626) wearing a Greenwich armour given to him by
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales The Greenwich workshop continued producing armours into the reign of James I and Charles I, although the heyday of grand tournaments and exaggerated chivalric pageantry which characterized Elizabethan England had largely passed after the death of
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. This transition can be seen in the styling of the post-Jacobean Greenwich armour; gilded decoration and etching is now absent, and the steel is no longer russeted, polished "white" or boldly colored in any other way but is uniformly a simple blue-gray shade. and
Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine, in late Greenwich armours Tassets are now frequently knee-length, in the cuirassier fashion. Also, in keeping with innovations in the field of armouring, the inner elbows are often fully protected by articulated lames. Nevertheless, the Greenwich armours even into the period of the
English Civil War retained some of the distinctive touches of the last century; the breastplates were still shaped in the peascod fashion and the pauldrons had the same graceful and rounded curves (while those of Continental armours tended towards square shapes). The "ship's prow" form of the close helmet also remained, and can be seen in many portraits of important military figures from the English Civil War. == The Jacob Album ==