Page:A Complete Guide to Heraldry.djvu/425

Rh lambrequin developed. The curious evolution of the chapeau from the "capelot," which is so marked and usual in Germany, is the tall conical hat, often surmounted by a tuft or larger plume of feathers, and usually employed in German heraldry as an opportunity for the repetition of the livery colours, or a part of, and often the whole design of, the arms. But it should at the same time be noticed that this tall, conical hat is much more closely allied to the real cap of maintenance than our present crest "chapeau."

Exactly what purpose the real cap of maintenance served, or of what it was a symbol, remains to a certain extent a matter of mystery. The "Cap of Maintenance"—a part of the regalia borne before the sovereign at the State opening of Parliament (but not at a coronation) by the Marquesses of Winchester, the hereditary bearers of the cap of maintenance—bears, in its shape, no relation to the heraldic chapeau. The only similarity is its crimson colour and its lining of ermine. It is a tall, conical cap and is carried on a short staff.



Whilst crest coronets in early days appear to have had little or no relation to titular rank, there is no doubt whatever that caps of dignity had. Long before, a coronet was assigned to the rank of baron in the reign of Charles II.; all barons had their caps of dignity, of scarlet lined with white fur; and in the old pedigrees a scarlet cap with a gold tuft or tassel on top and a lining of fur will be found painted above the arms of a baron. This fact, the fact that until after Stuart days the chapeau does not appear to have been allowed or granted to others than peers, the fact that it is now reserved for the crests granted to peers, the fact that the velvet cap is a later addition both to the sovereign's crown and to the coronet of a peer, and finally the fact that the cap of maintenance is borne before the sovereign only in the precincts of Parliament, would seem to indubitably indicate that the cap of maintenance was inseparably connected with the lordship and overlordship of Parliament vested in peers and in the sovereign. In the crumpled and tasselled top of the velvet cap, and in the ermine border visible below the rim, the high conical form of the cap of maintenance proper can be still traced in the cap of a peer's coronet, and that the velvet cap contained in