highest pitch of exuberant elaboration in Stuart and early Georgian times. Side by side with this over-elaboration came the revulsion to a Puritan simplicity of taste which is to be found in other manifestations of art at the same time, and which made itself evident in heraldic decoration by the use as mantling of the plain uncut cloth suspended behind the shield. Originating in Elizabethan days, this plain cloth was much made use of, but towards the end of the Stuart period came that curious evolution of British heraldry which is peculiar to these countries alone. That is the entire omission of both helmet and mantling. How it originated it is difficult to understand, unless it be due to the fact that a large number, in fact a large proportion, of English families possessed a shield only and neither claimed nor used a crest, and that consequently a large number of heraldic representations give the shield only. It is rare indeed to find a shield surmounted by helmet and mantling when the former is not required to support a crest. At the same time we find, among the official records of the period, that the documents of chief importance were the Visitation Books. In these, probably from motives of economy or to save needless draughtsmanship, the trouble of depicting the helmet and mantling was dispensed with, and the crest is almost universally found depicted on the wreath, which is made to rest upon the shield, the helmet being omitted. That being an accepted official way of representing an achievement, small wonder that the public followed, and we find as a consequence that a large proportion of the bookplates during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had no helmet or mantling at all, the elaboration of the edges of the shield, together with the addition of decorative and needless accessories bearing no relation to the arms, fulfilling all purposes of decorative design. It should also be remembered that from towards the close of the Stuart period onward, England was taking her art and decoration almost entirely from Continental sources, chiefly French and Italian. In both the countries the use of crests was very limited indeed in extent, and the elimination of the helmet and mantling, and the elaboration in their stead of the edges of the shield, we probably owe to the effort to assimilate French and Italian forms of decoration to English arms. So obsolete had become the use of helmet and mantling that it is difficult to come across examples that one can put forward as mantlings typical of the period.
Helmets and mantlings were of course painted upon grants and upon the Stall plates of the knights of the various orders, but whilst the helmets became weak, of a pattern impossible to wear, and small in size, the mantling became of a stereotyped pattern, and of a design poor and wooden according to our present ideas.
Unofficial heraldry had sunk to an even lower style of art, and
