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Show King's Iron Pants j Now Back in Tower Solves 400-Year-Old Mystery; Found in Castle. . LONDON. Tha missing Iron pants of King Henry VIII are now back In the tower of London, and a 400-year-old royal mystery is solved. ( For centuries, the custodians of the royal armor had searched in vain for the bottom half of one of the marrying monarch's favorite fighting ensembles. They knew it 'existed because it was listed in the royal inventory of 1547 and the top halt was in the tower. Tower officials recently revealed that the long search was over. Trustees of the estate of the hereditary hered-itary King's Champion, Frank Seaman Sea-man Dymoke, found the missing armor in the dim halls of Scrivelsby court, a moated castle in Lincolnshire. Lincoln-shire. I The explanation was simple. Henry's Hen-ry's pants had been accidentally joined to the top of a less distinguished distin-guished suit of armor and thus escaped es-caped notice for generations. The complete reunited suit, as It now stands in the tower, is a long-skirted long-skirted model designed for fighting on foot. Henry VIII, equally formidable formi-dable in war and matrimony, frequently fre-quently participated in court jousts both on horseback and on foot, i Measurements of this suit show that Henry, in his prime, was a fine figure of a man, six feet tall and with a 34-inch waist. The popular conception of Henry as a fat man results from Holbein's portrait painted in Henry's declining years. The Dymokes of Scrivelsby held the office of King's Champion for 700 years. Until 1821 the head of the family rode in full armor to each coronation ceremony where he ilunj a gauntlet before the assembly in a challenge on behalf of the king, i In payment, the King's Champion received from the monarch a gold up and a suit or armor. |
