This is the armour of Henry VIII, one of the most iconic and famous kings of England.
Much more than a portrait, we've got a '3D vision' of Henry,
and it shows you some surprising things about his physique.
As a young man Henry, over six foot tall, was quite an imposing figure.
He was a very good sportsman; at his first tournament he was 15 years old.
The tournament was the practice for war,
but in the sixteenth century it had become both a political and diplomatic showground.
Henry was very keen to be a central figure in Europe,
he was in competition with Maximilian I.
Henry had a jousting accident in 1536 which put paid to his sporting activities.
Around the age of 50 he had a renewed vigour for life;
got up early, did lots of riding, and was very much back in the saddle.
We think this armour was made in about 1540 for his marriage to Anne of Cleves
in his workshops at Greenwich under the master workman, Erasmus Kyrkenar.
He imported foreign craftsmen into London forming the Greenwich school,
which is now known as the English school of armour,
of which this armour is one of the greatest examples.
This armour is known as a garniture because it's a field armour, so it's an armour for
battle or horsemen
but it also has extra pieces that can be added to it to perform in the tournament.
And over here we have the extra pieces of the garniture:
the grandguard, pasguard and manifer.
Manifer is from medieval French 'main de fer', so 'hand of iron'.
The lance is always going to, hopefully, strike you on the left,
so you can see everything to do with the left of the armour is just a wall of steel.
On the right, where you're much less likely to be hit, are ventilation and vision slots.
There are lots of amazing technical features to this Greenwich armour.
It's got this very interesting extension plate just below the elbow,
what that does is an innovative Greenwich idea which stops your arm being over-flexed
when you hit your opponent.
These bolts and pins attach the extra pieces that are specifically worn for the tilt.
These haute-pieces on the shoulders are removable,
but they're again an idea to stop sword cuts sliding up the arm and going towards the head.
We've also got the sabatons, which are the height of fashion -'bear paw'- of the time:
you wouldn't have an armour with unfashionable shoes.
Henry had a substantial waistline of about 138 centimetres.
On top of that the back and breast has two sets of hasps at the waist
with three settings so it can be extended or contracted,
and then two roughly five centimetre plates have been added to the back plate,
so it tells you he was a substantial man.
This armour weights 39.1 kilos without the tilt pieces.
That sounds a lot, but it isn't if you think about
that you practise from childhood wearing armour,
you have special tailored clothes underneath the armour to help the weight of it be distributed
all over your body.
In comparison, I understand
the modern military are carrying between forty and fifty kilos of
ammunition and armour,
and of course Henry also had the advantage of being able to ride on a horse.
One of the really fascinating things about all armour is what it's made of.
We've looked at this armour by taking minute samples from seven areas on it,
ranging from the greaves to the helmet, and you can see the crystal structure,
and from that we've found out that this armour is heat-treated in various ways.
The Greenwich armourers were trying to experiment and improve not only the form
of their armour but what it was made of.
If they got it right, they could make it four or five times harder.
As part of the conservation research programme,
this armour has been studied and conserved and re-mounted,
so the 1914 pose has gone and been replaced by a new armature,
mimicking the famous Holbein portrait of Henry VIII
for a new catalogue that's coming out on European armour in The Royal Collection.
We've been to The Tower of London and had a cast copy made of the carved wooden head
that represents Henry VIII.
In this film we've removed the visor from the helmet so you get an exciting and vivid
impression of what it would have been like to see Henry VIII in his armour.