Item ref: 4159
Associated by tradition with Jacob Astley of Melton Constable, First Baron Astley of Reading, Sergeant Major General of the Foot for Charles I from Edgehill to Naseby (1579–1652).
The fashion for defences of buff leather has a relatively short vogue, in Britain and, to a lesser extent, in Europe in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. The most commonly encountered form of such defences is the buff coat, a doublet of buff leather often worn under a plate cuirass, mostly by cavalry. These harquebusier’s armours, for by this time almost all the cavalry in northwest Europe at least were using the short-barrelled carbine or harquebus as their principal weapon, were often accompanied by a single gauntlet for the left or bridle arm in addition to their open-faced helmet or pot. Most of the extant bridle gauntlets, which are themselves very poorly understood as they seldom if ever bear an identifying maker’s, guild or arsenal mark, are made of iron. However, a very few were made of buff leather, matching the buff coats.
The pair of buff gauntlets presented here are a rare transitional form between the buff bridle gauntlets and the conventional gauntlets of the Littlecote type. Like the first their cuffs are protected by strips of thick buff leather cut to form scales and linked around the edges, and like the second their gloves are unprotected. The cuffs open at the underside, where they are fastened by four buff leather loops and buttons. At the wrist and edeges of the cuff are strips of buff leather cut into small scales and sewn onto the cuffs as reinforcement. They are associated by tradition with Jacob Astley of Melton Constable, First Baron Astley of Reading, Sergeant Major General of the Foot for Charles I from Edgehill to Naseby (1579–1652), source of the famous prayer before battle ‘Oh Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not thou forget me’. Astley’s buff coat also survives, preserved in the collection of the National Trust at Seaton Delavel House, Northumberland.