The seventh grade took a fieldtrip to the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts.  The Higgins Armory Museum holds one of the best collections of historic arms and armors in the world.  At the museum, we learned the history of armory, knights, weapons, interesting styles, and more.  Mr. Higgins collected armor from long ago which is displayed in the museum.  We took fascinating notes and facts in our research journals as we toured the museum.  Throughout this essay, you will learn about the collections inside of the Higgins Armory Museum.

There are three major periods of armor; one of them is parade armor.  Parade armor is worn to show people that you have money and are wealthy.  People would wear it at special occasions, and just if they want to show off.  The parade armor is like a party suit, and it has a unique face.  The face of the armor has a wide mouth, stubby nose, and big eyes.  The parade armor was very expensive to get, and sometimes unnecessary to buy.  It was usually too weak to deflect weapons or too awkward to wear in the battle and it weighed around thirty to eighty pounds.

Another type of armor is the tournament armor.  That armor weighed about ninety pounds.  The helmet of the tournament armor has holes at the eyes so that they could see what they were doing.  But the armor did not permit much freedom of moving.  The knights would wear the armor for protection when they are jousting.  Jousting is when there are two knights on horses charging at each other with spears.  The joust ends when one of them gets knocked off, or down.

The last type of important and major pieces of armor is the combat armor.  The combat armor was a piece that was made for war and was very strong.  It has joints in the armor so that you could move with it.  The joints would let you run, jump, walk, and practically let you do anything in the armor.  It is a very important piece of armor because it lets you move and run with the joints.  It also has smooth, glancing surfaces to deflect the weapons.  The combat armor was relatively lightweight weighing around forty five to seventy pounds.

You just learned about the three major periods of armor including parade, tournament, and combat.  Those were just the major pieces, and there are many others in the Higgins Museum and all around the world.  They differ in why you wear them up to what you can do in them.  Hopefully you can pass along this history of armor and visit the Higgins Armory Museum.