The Tower Armoury in the Fourteenth Century

The documents surviving from the privy wardrobe, the department which administrated the Tower armoury under Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV, provide a unique insight into the use of arms and armour in England as the Hundred Years War unfolded. Here, Thom Richardson expertly brings these documents to life. He answers many long-standing questions and challenges a number of assumptions, notably about the use of the longbow and the wearing of armour during that formative period of English history. Richardson shows how the previously peripatetic armoury became established in the Tower of London at the outbreak of the Hundred Years War, and grew into the national arsenal which today forms the basis of the Royal Armouries, the national museum of arms and armour.