The English style : armour design in England, 1400-1500

This work traces the evolution of plate armour in England during the fifteenth century, and explores the possibility of the existence ofa unique English style of armour design during that time. This style may have been developed because of functional requirements and aesthetic sensibilities particular to the English warrior elite, and therefore may have assumed forms quite different from the prevailing Italian and German styles advanced by the armourers of Milan, Brescia, Augsburg, Innsbruck and the other famous continental centres. Almost no English fifteenth-century armour survives. This work is therefore based primarily on a comprehensive study of the surviving English military funerary monuments, many of which are for the most part unknown and that generally represent the armour and weapons of their subject persons with startling accuracy and attention to detail. The evidence embodied by these effigies of men in armour is compared and contrasted to contemporary developments on the continent, the progression of which is also examined in detail.