# Armor Garniture of George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland > Jacob Halder, Master Workman of the Royal Almain Armoury at Greenwich - 1586 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/jacob-halder/clifford-armor-garniture-greenwich-met/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Jacob Halder, Master Workman of the Royal Almain Armoury at Greenwich - **Date:** 1586 - **Medium:** Steel, blued (russeted) and etched, with gilt decoration; gold; leather straps and lining; textile - **Dimensions:** Overall height as mounted 176.5 cm (69.5 in); weight approximately 27.2 kg (60 lb) - **Object type:** Arms and armour - **Period:** English, Elizabethan, 16th century - **Current location:** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Department of Arms and Armor, Gallery 371 - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A field-and-tournament garniture made in 1586 at the royal workshops at Greenwich for George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, a courtier who became Queen Elizabeth I's official Champion of the Accession Day tilts in 1590. It is decorated overall with Tudor roses, fleur-de-lis and the Queen's own cipher worked into love-knots, a program of loyalty rather than heraldry, and it survives more complete than almost any other product of the Greenwich armoury.The garniture descended through Clifford's daughter, the diarist Lady Anne Clifford, into the Tufton family, Earls of Thanet and later Barons Hothfield, who held it at Appleby Castle in Westmorland into the twentieth century. It passed at an unrecorded date into the collection of the American financier Clarence Mackay, and the Metropolitan Museum bought it from the Munsey Fund in 1932. A companion piece, the terminal lame of the garniture's grand guard, followed in 1936 under a separate accession number.This is a different object from the Museum's other Greenwich garniture, accession 19.131.1, probably made for Henry VIII around 1527: different owner, different reign, different decade of the Greenwich workshop's history, and a different, firmer chain of attribution. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1586-1605** George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland `[documented]` (commission and ownership) Made to Clifford's commission at the royal Almain Armoury, Greenwich, under Jacob Halder; used by Clifford during his years as a court jouster and, from 1590, as Queen Elizabeth I's Champion of the Accession Day tilts. - **1605-1676** Lady Anne Clifford, later Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery `[documented]` (inheritance) Clifford's only surviving child. His will left his northern estates to his brother, but the armor itself is recorded in family papers as passing to Anne, who is stated to have kept and later bequeathed it. - **1676** Anne Clifford's two daughters `[documented]` (bequest) Anne Clifford's own family record states that she bequeathed the armor to her two daughters. Which daughter received which pieces, and how the garniture was later reunited, is not stated in the sources consulted. - **-1885** Unknown, then the Tufton family, Earls of Thanet and Barons Hothfield `[unknown]` (gap) Anne Clifford's daughter Margaret married into the Tufton family, later Earls of Thanet, who inherited the Clifford barony through her and held Appleby Castle in Westmorland. No source consulted documents the armor's specific custody across this roughly two-century span; by 1885 it is recorded in print as being at Appleby Castle in the possession of Lord Hothfield. - **1885** Lord Hothfield, Appleby Castle, Westmorland `[documented]` (documented possession) Recorded in print in 1885 as the property of Lord Hothfield at Appleby Castle. - **-1932** Clarence Hungerford Mackay, Harbor Hill, Roslyn, New York `[unknown]` (unrecorded transfer, then sale) The armor entered Mackay's collection, at the time the most valuable privately held collection of Renaissance arms and armor in North America, at an unrecorded date and by an unrecorded mechanism. No dealer, agent, date or price for the transfer from Hothfield was found in the sources consulted. - **1932-present** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York `[documented]` (purchase) Purchased from Clarence Mackay in 1932 using the Munsey Fund, established from publisher Frank A. Munsey's 1925 bequest to the Museum. The terminal lame of the grand guard, accession 36.98.1, followed separately via the Rogers Fund in 1936. Purchase price not published in the sources consulted. ## Exhibitions - On permanent view, Department of Arms and Armor, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gallery 371, 1932-present ## Open questions - How and when did the armor pass from the Hothfield family at Appleby Castle into Clarence Mackay's collection? No source consulted names a date, a dealer, an agent or a price for this transfer. - What price did the Metropolitan Museum pay Mackay in 1932? Not published in the sources consulted. - When, by whom, and under what circumstances was the left gauntlet from a later Greenwich suit substituted for the original? The mismatch is documented; its history is not. - Exactly how did the armor move within the Tufton/Thanet family between Anne Clifford's bequest to her two daughters in the late seventeenth century and its documented presence at Appleby Castle by 1885? The chain across roughly two centuries is not established in the sources consulted. - Is there documented evidence, beyond the mismatched gauntlet, of decorative rework, re-etching or re-gilding at any point in the object's history? The sources consulted for this record establish the gauntlet substitution but do not document a broader nineteenth-century reworking of the decoration; that absence is recorded here rather than assumed to mean none occurred. - Was this garniture worn at any specific, individually documented Accession Day tilt, as against the general and visual case made by the Hilliard portrait? A dated eyewitness or account-book record naming this armor at a named tilt was not found. ## Sources - [1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for 'Armor Garniture of George Clifford (1558-1605), Third Earl of Cumberland,' accession 32.130.6a-y (object 23939). - [2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Collection API, object record 23939 (public domain status, dimensions, credit line, gallery location). - [3] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, entry on the Cumberland armor. - [4] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for 'Terminal Lame of a Grand Guard from the Armor Garniture of George Clifford,' accession 36.98.1 (object 24612). - [5] Williamson, George C., 'George, Third Earl of Cumberland (1558-1605): His Life and His Voyages, A Study from Original Documents' (1920), for the descent of the armor to Anne Clifford and her bequest to her two daughters, and for Clifford's debts, marriage, and death. - [6] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MetKids, 'Armor of George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland,' for the mismatched left gauntlet. - [7] Victoria and Albert Museum, 'The Almain Armourers' Album,' for Halder's career, the album's compilation, contents and acquisition, and the Clifford design specifically. - [8] Victoria and Albert Museum collections record, 'The Almain Armourer's Album,' museum number D.586&A-1894 (Earl of Rutland design, for album format, dimensions and acquisition history), cross-referenced with the Clifford design D.605&A-1894. - [9] Wikimedia Commons, File:Al_Thani_Renaissance046.jpg, photograph of the Halder design for Clifford's garniture, Victoria and Albert Museum D.605&A-1894, taken at the exhibition 'Le Gout de la Renaissance,' Hotel de la Marine, Paris, 2024. - [10] Wikimedia Commons, File:Armor Garniture of George Clifford (1558-1605), Third Earl of Cumberland MET DP295743.jpg, for license (CC0) and credit. - [11] The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, catalogue entry for Nicholas Hilliard's portrait of George Clifford. - [12] Wikipedia, 'George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry. - [13] Wikipedia, 'Accession Day tilt.' Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with Frances Yates's or Roy Strong's scholarship on the tilts. - [14] Wikipedia, 'Greenwich armour,' for the count and locations of surviving complete Greenwich garnitures. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a published arms-and-armor survey such as Blackmore's or the Royal Armouries' own catalogues. - [15] Internet Archive, full text of 'The Armor of Sir James Scudamore' (Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin), for the comparanda case of the Scudamore garniture's 1909 discovery and 1915 restoration by Daniel Tachaux. - [16] Wikidata, item Q116726649, 'Armor Garniture of George Clifford (1558-1605), Third Earl of Cumberland,' for cross-referenced inventory numbers and Museum object ID. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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