~ The Greenwich Field Armour of Lord Buckhurst

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Field Armour, c. 1587
Steel, leather, brass and gold; wt 32.03 kg (36.70 kg with the reinforcing breast plate)
Aquired by Sir Richard Wallace in 1872

This war armour (c. 1587) was produced at the royal armour workshop at Greenwich. It has extra pieces designed to convert it for different combat roles. Its design is recorded in a contemporary album preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where it is identified as having been made for ´Lord Bucarte´, that is, Sir Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, later Earl of Dorset (1536 – 1608). Jacob Halder, master armourer of the workshop from 1576 until his death in 1608, probably worked on this commission himself. It may have been ordered in expectation of the invasion of the Spanish Armada in 1588. ~