The armour that forms the main subject of this paper is perhaps the best known of the many historical harnesses preserved in the national armoury at the Tower of London (Inv. no. II. 5) (pls. i, ii, viii a, b, xv; figs. 3–10, pp. 45–50). An account of it—which must be the earliest study of a single armour in any European language—was published by Dr. (later Sir) Samuel Rush Meyrick as long ago as 1829, and since then it has figured prominently in many works on arms and armour. Though designed primarily for parade, it is basically a handsome field-armour of the second decade of the sixteenth century, but it is made particularly impressive by its long steel skirt, an imitation of one of the cloth bases worn with both the military and the civil dress of the period, and by the fact that it is completely covered with engraved decoration. Originally its surfaces were also entirely silvered and gilt, but much of the silver and all but a few traces of gold have disappeared.

One of the strangest and best-known pictures in the National Portrait Gallery is that of Sir Henry Unton. He is depicted seated in a richly upholstered chair while around him there are grouped many extraordinary and wondrous scenes. We see him as a baby nursed by his mother; as a soldier accompanied by the panoply of war with tents, horse, armour, and attendant squires; on horseback, sun-shade in hand, riding through Italy, or escorted by trumpeters and servants into France. There are other scenes of banqueting, masquing, and revelry; but the mirth of festival gives way to counsel with learned divines and the solitude of study. There are also more sombre tableaux: a death-bed surrounded by weeping and praying ser-vants and a hearse draped in black being jogged through the bleak English countryside, while beggar women and children, the blind and lame, sit, grief-stricken, watching a gaunt procession of black-clad mourners. These are making their way towards a steepled church to the left, where a large congregation listens attentively to a sermon and before which there stands a splendid tomb, gaily tricked out in scarlet, black, and gold, on which there lies the recumbent effigy of a knight presided over by a lady attired in widow's weeds. All these relate in some way to the subject of the picture, Sir Henry Unton; in correct sequence they form a selective visual biography, and in this way the picture has value not only as a record of the sitter's features but as a unique historical document (pl. xxvi).

L'étude sur les armes d'hast, dont le Bulletin de la Societé des Amis du Musée de l'Armée a commencé à Paris la publication en 1936, était le travail le plus vaste de tous ceux que mon père Charles Buttin avait entrepris. Parmi tous les thèmes qui s'étaient offerts à son attention, le champ de recherches que présentait cette branche négligépe de l'histoire de l'armement, l'avait de tous temps séduit.

The excavations at Cluny resulted from a project of 1926, sponsored by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, to make a series of cavalier restoration drawings of three great French monastic sites—Cluny, St. Martin at Tours, and St. Martial at Limoges. The great buildings at these sites needed to be restored to ‘visual history’ in order to give increased clarity to our understanding of medieval architecture. A cavalier study can never be more than a beginning, however; the finished study of a ruined site necessarily calls into play the refined techniques which classicists have developed in their work. A medieval monastic site may turn out to be as broad as Knossos, demanding a lifetime of investigation, because of the extent, the long history, and the varied influences represented in the architectural remains. This proved to be the case at Cluny, where the architectural remains span eleven centuries.