[Ben Mowbray]

Is anyone aware of a good source that lists historical weight and price of tudor period (late renaissance) arms and armour, preferably a compilation of some sort? Surely there must be some sort of documentation available somewhere, right?

Basically, I'm looking for historical weights and contemporary prices (if at all possible) for various components of plate armour, arquebuses, pole arms, you name it, and I'd love to see lists for other common items as well. I don't have a huge amount of money to blow on books, so I'd love to see something difinitive, and I'm hoping the combined knowledge of these forums will produce some workable suggestions.

Also, secondly, in the 1540 price lists for the Royal Armoury at Greenwich, it mentions a £4 'Coat of plates'. As far as I know, a 'Coat of plates' is similar to brigandine armour, only I was under the impression that it was phased out by 1540 (probably much earlier). This could be a different reference, does anyone know what it is?

[Artis Aboltins]

As far as I know sometimes the terms "coat of plates" and "brigandine" are used interexchangiably - while generally COP refers to the armour consisting of larger plates and used in earlier period (like the famed finds at the site of battle of Visby), and brigandine - to the later version consisting of more and smaller plates.

[William Knight]

In modern terminology, the coat of plates was almost (if not entirely gone) by 1380, let alone 1540. The modern term refers to several large plates used in the later 13th and earlier 14th centuries. It is not a very shapely garment, being basically a straightish tunic with plates rivetted to it's inside. A brigandine, on the other hand, is an armour of (typically) the 15th or 16th century made of many small plates and shaped like a doublet-both the cloth and the metal are tailored to be quite shapely.

I would not be shocked if a 16th century inventory referred to the latter as a 'coat of plates' but it's possibly that it refers to a different sort of garment, like the latter 16th century jack of plates, but I don't know when that came into use exactly.