157 THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BUFF-COAT BY KEITH DOWEN It is intended that subsequent articles on the subject of buff-coats will cover detailed case-studies of extant examples from collections in Britain, Europe and the United States. Introduction Unlike plate armour, padded jacks, brigandines and arming doublets, which have had much scholarly attention lavished upon them, the buff-coat of the seventeenth century has often been neglected. Considering that the buff-coat became one of the most widely worn forms of body-defence, certainly amongst the cavalry of many European nations in the seventeenth century, it is somewhat surprising that comparatively little time has been spent on their study. Indeed, some arms and armour books devote less than a paragraph to them. The absence of literature on leather as a form of defence, at least until relatively recently, is particularly surprising considering the leather industry in England came only second or third in importance to the manufacture of woollen cloth. 1 A buff-coat may be defined as a as an oil-tanned, leather garment, typically with thigh to knee-length skirts used in place of, or in conjunction with, plate armour in the seventeenth and 18 th centuries. Two other leather manufacturing processes existed up until the last decade of the 19 th century; vegetable tanning and alum tanning, the latter used to produce white leather for the military. However, these were not used in the production of seventeenth century buff-leather.The subject of buff-coats and leather in seventeenth century Europe is a huge field. This first article will deal with the history and design of the buff-coat, whilst subsequent articles will present case-studies of coats which the author has examined in detail. In truth, what had originally started out as a general investigation into buff- coats as part of a much more detailed study into seventeenth century plate armour (the results of which, it is hoped, will appear in future editions of the journal), has resulted in this author coming to realise that the buff-coat deserves thorough study in its own right. This article will be a start. The Origin of the Buff-coat From the evidence examined it would appear that the fully developed buff-coat (i.e. with mid-thigh or knee length skirts) was not much in existence before about.1600 and is not commonly encountered in art or in the literary sources until the second decade of the seventeenth century. The first reference the author has found so far in English sources, to what might be a “true” buff-coat as opposed to a leather jerkin, appears in the