Tobias Capwell

Tobias Emanuel ("Toby") Capwell FSA (born c. 1973) is an American historian who lives and works in London.

[1] Capwell's interest in chivalric combat was aroused when he visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York at the age of four or five, and was so impressed by an exhibit of a man in plate armour on horseback that he knew that that was what he wanted to be when he grew up.

That year, he won the 'Scottish Sword of Chivalry' in a three-week tournament held by the National Trust for Scotland and the Royal Armouries.

In 2008, he won a competition held at the Bern Historical Museum in Switzerland designed to reproduce a 15th-century pas d'armes; during which, over eleven days, he defended the field against three opponents; running 132 joust passes ('courses') on horseback and fighting 22 longsword combats on foot.

He therefore based his researches not only on those, but also on Continental armour of the time, documentary sources, illustrations, artworks, and especially English monumental brasses and funerary sculptures, the last of which often have highly accurate detail.

[5] In 2012, archaeologists discovered the burial place of King Richard III of England (1452–1485), who had been killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field.