Genre:

Serial, Essay, Drollery

Subjects:

Military Technology, War, Invention, Progress, Patronage

    Notes the lack of 'novelty' in 'military equipment' during the reigns of King Henry VII and King Henry IV. Explains that Henry VII's reign witnessed the use of fluted armour and 'passe-gardes' (armour for protecting the wearer against lances), helmets 'provided with flexible and overlapping plates or ribs of steel', and other additions to the armour. (248) Later notes that this period also witnessed the introduction of the 'arquebus', a form of hand-cannon having a 'lock with a cock to hold the match', which was slow to be adopted—a feature suggesting that 'the military authorities were not much quicker then than now in adopting innovations'. Explains that the first Yeomen of the Guard were armed with bows and firearms, a situation which Punch thinks resembles the present army's use of rifles and the Brown Bess, although admitting that fifteenth-century firearms were 'scarcely an improvement on the bow'.