Returning to the White Tower and its memories, the changes and revolutions that its massive walls have witnessed, rise before the mind. Merely glancing at the changes of fashion, as seen in the suits of armour in its armoury, one is carried back to the Middle Ages. And although the armour is all of a later time, the Norman barons in their steel-ringed surcoats and pointed helmets, as they are pourtrayed on the Bayeux tapestry, have been seen here. All the chivalry of England, from the time of the Normans down to our present Guardsmen with their bearskin head-dresses, are closely bound up with the old Norman fortress, and it should be remembered that from the end of the eleventh century up to the present day the Tower has always retained the rank and position of chief fortress and depository of arms in the realm, and so may still be regarded as the “Arx Palatina” of the British Empire.
The oldest armour in the Tower are some “bassinets” of the second half of the fourteenth century. Until the death of Henry VIII., the royal collection of armour was kept in the Palace at Greenwich, and the possessions of that monarch now form by far the finest portion of the Tower Armoury, consisting of several splendid suits of armour given him by the Emperor Maximilian. The best armour was made in Italy and Germany, and Henry, who loved a fine suit of armour almost as much as a handsome woman, had a number of skilled armourers sent to England to work for him. As we see by Hentzner’s narrative, foreigners of distinction were shown the collection of armour in the Tower as one of the principal sights of London. During the Civil War a great deal of the armour was carried away from the Tower, and but little of it was returned, even when the Restoration had become an accomplished fact.
[Illustration: _Nurembery Armour (XVIᵗʰ. Century.)_]
The collection now occupies the two upper floors of the White Tower. On the lower floor are kept the more modern weapons and the Oriental armour, of which there is a great quantity. On the upper floor the far more interesting of the earlier weapons, and all the suits of foot and horse armour, are ranged along the walls and in rows down the middle of the hall, making an imposing show of mounted and unmounted mail-clad figures of men and horses.