Henry, Prince of Wales's Armour: A Masterpiece of Greenwich

In the state entrance of Windsor Castle is the armour of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. Henry Prince of Wales was the eldest son of James I and Anne of Denmark. Born in 1594, he died of typhoid fever in 1612 at the age of 18, leaving his younger brother Charles to succeed in 1625. So this armour is from the Royal Workshop at Greenwich, it was made in about 1608 under the master workman Jacob Holder, and it's one of the latest but also finest and complete Greenwich armours to survive. This armour was a gift from Sir Henry Lee, who was Elizabeth I's champion. It cost £200 and was delivered to Henry, Prince of Wales on 21 July 1608. By the beginning of the 17th century, Greenwich had perfected a lot of special techniques and so this armour, as well as being extremely decorated, is also the peak of the technology. It's made of a medium carbon steel, but the crucial thing that Greenwich had learnt to do is to heat treat it, so it's a hardened and tempered steel, making it five times tougher than regular armour. This armour is a garniture, it has different elements that can be taken on and off because it was used in a tournament which had different challenges to undertake. The whole point of tournaments is to practise wearing armour for war, but it became highly sophisticated and a political spectacle. The gauntlet you can see here on the armour is the tournée gauntlet, so part of the garniture when Henry's configured for the mock battle tournée. This part here is the lance rest, it's an essential part of the armour for jousting because it stops your lance shooting back behind you when you strike your opponent. Because the impact is great, it's about 60 miles an hour when two horses and riders meet each other. Henry's armour may look quite small, but what you've got to remember is he was 15, so he's about 5'3 or 5'4, I'm 5'11. We're also often asked how much armour weighed. This one weighs about 20 kilos. When you add the tournament pieces to it, it weighs about 25 kilos, but then you'd be on horseback. That might sound like quite a lot, but the tournament is a practise for war, so it's spread all over your body, it's made to fit you and you're used to wearing it. 25 kilos is a lot less than the modern military are carrying in the field today. Henry was renowned for being good at tournaments and military and sporting activities. It was said he was second to no prince in Christendom at the ring and the till and had great military prowess. We can't say for certain that this helmet, which would have been used at the tournée, which is the mock battle, does have some sword cuts or cuts at the back. I can't prove it, but those might be indications of him using the helmet. You can see how incredibly skilled and talented the Greenwich armourers were by, if you take this piece off, it's only held in by its own tension and a spring and one hook, but when I take it off, you can see here the breaths of the visor, which are used not only to get more air, but also you can see out of these when you're fighting and it also has this extra lower reinforcing beaver, which is connected by two hooks and hasps, which I can take off and give you a better view of the helmet and also then the prince would have more manoeuvrability. This is a field helmet of the armour, these are all called close helmets and the reason perhaps they're called close helmets is they fit very closely on your head. You need to manoeuvre several catches to get out of the helmet. The first one raises the visor. Greenwich have this lovely little detail that a stud pops out to hold your visor up. A lot of helmets don't have this feature. You would then move this hook and the two wings, as it were, surrounding your chin would open up so you could take the helmet off. It's also connected on this rope to the collar, giving you anchor points so the helmet cannot be knocked off your head. This armour has also been fantastically decorated with four different types of decoration. You can see here the embossed thistles, fleur-de-lis and roses, so those have been sunken into the armour and then it's been etched with all this fantastic strap work, including HP for Henry Prince. It's then also been mercury amalgam gilded, so mercury and gold mixed together and then painted onto the surface and then the armour is heated, driving off the mercury, leaving this beautiful gold. And then finally the armour has been blued. It's a really technical and difficult process, but the armour would have been heated up to around 295 degrees C, which causes an interference oxidation layer on the surface, making it go this lovely blue colour. Originally this might have been a brighter peacock blue, but over the years it's dulled slightly, but you can still see how spectacular the Prince must have been riding through Whitehall to a tournament.