[Brian Hook]

Tomas that’s the same munitions beast plate that I am getting except mine is unpolished and left black from the forge, but the thing is a breast plate like that isn't what a man-at-arms would wear it's more what a solider would, in England during the 15th century it was common for a solider to wear a jack with a simple breast plate like that one over it, The breast plate is perfectly safe to wear however. I personally suggest you buy the Osprey book English Medieval Knight 1400-1500 to get you grounded to give you a good started point on what to aim for, as I stated before rather then email everybody the pics I just put then on my webhosting which is here
http://www.zornhau.com/Orignal.rar
But the images are mostly of German harnesses, most English wore English and Italian export harness, which is a different animal all together.

[Tomas Z.]

Thank you Brian. I started downloading it. So, you think that this kind of breastplate is too "cheap" for a man-in-arms? I might buy the book, but do you have some pictures of man-at-arms?

[Randall Moffett]

Not to start a semantic arguement on the term men at arms but in England a Men at Arms only had to have 5 pounds annual income so I do not think this breastplate would be outside their range of equipment (to give a rough idea I think the king made 35k pounds a year, most earls about 1-2k-but usually closer to 2k, knights around 40 pounds etc). It would be a basic one but I do not think it outside possibility that someone in the 5 pound range of gentry owned used one like it. Often townsmen from butchers to bakers had to serve as men at arms, clearly not all were in the high quality suits as I am sure applied to some of the larger bodies of men at arms from lesser means of the gentry. Now keep in mind they would be required to own a full suits basically and weapons befitting themselves and the horse as well but as far as I know not assize of arms requires a specific type of breastplate either in the 15th. Much would be what social rung you were in, the more wealthy the better arms and armour as well as a bigger retinue, non noble or knightly men at arms or just parish gentry would do with far less.

RPM

[Tomas Z.]

Thank you and sorry for the late answer. I will make a new thread concerning man-at-arms because I probably know less about them than I should .