Part 42 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 600.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 601.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 602.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 603.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 604.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 605.]
During this century the ”morion,” really an improved ”chapelle-de-fer,” was much in use. It had a curved top, surmounted by a comb, and a broad, turned-up brim, and was often elaborately engraved and gilt. The ”caba.s.set”
was a similar head-piece, but had a peaked top, surmounted by a small spike turned backwards, and generally a flatter, narrower brim than the morion.
These three forms of helmet were all called casques.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 606.--”Grid-iron” Helmet (fifteenth century).]
The barred or grilled helmet owed its introduction to tournaments with swords and clubs, which necessitated better opportunities of vision than the earlier tilting-helm afforded, sufficient though that was for encounters with the tilting-spear. The earliest form of this type of helmet will be seen in Fig. 606, which is termed a ”grid-iron” helmet, developing shortly afterwards into the form of Fig. 607, which has a lattice-work visor. The former figure, the ”grid-iron” helmet, is a {316} representation taken from an original now in the possession of Count Hans Wilczek, of Vienna. Fig. 607, the helmet with the latticed visor, is from an example in the German National Museum at Nurnberg. Neither of these types of helmet appears to have been regularly adopted into heraldic art. Indeed they are seldom, if ever, to be found in heraldic emblazonment. For pictorial and artistic purposes they seem to be entirely supplanted in paintings, in seals, and in sculpture by the ”grilled” helmet or ”buckler.” Whether this helmet, as we find it depicted in paintings or on seals, was ever really worn in battle or tournament seems very doubtful, and no actual instance appears to have been preserved. On the other hand, the so-called ”Prankhelme” (pageant helmet) bucklers, frequently made of gilded leather and other materials, are extant in some number. It is evident from their nature, however, that they can only have been used for ceremonial or decorative purposes.
Fig. 608 shows one of these buckled ”pageant” helmets surmounted by the crest of the Margraviate of Burgau. Fig. 609 shows another of these pageant helmets, with the crest of Austria (ancient) or of Tyrol. These were borne, with many others of the same character, in the pageant of the funeral procession of the Emperor Frederick III. (IV.) in 1493. The helmets were made of leather, and gilded, the two crests being carved out of boards and painted. The Burgau wings, which are inclined very far forward, are: ”Bendy of six argent and gules, charged with a pale or.” In their normal position the wings are borne upright. The second crest, which is 86 cm. in height, is black, and adorned on the outside with eared pegs 4 cm. long, from which gold linden-leaves hang. These helmets and crests, which were formerly in St. Stephen's Cathedral, are now in the Vienna Historical Museum.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century the workmans.h.i.+p became inferior, and beauty of line was no longer sought after. Shortly afterwards helmets ceased to be worn outside the regular army, and with the subsequent evolution of military head coverings heraldry has no concern.
As a part of a heraldic achievement the helmet is not so old as the s.h.i.+eld.
It was not until the introduction of the crest that any one thought of depicting a helmet with a s.h.i.+eld.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 599.--Schallern (end of fifteenth century).]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 607.--Helmet, with Latticed Visor (end of fifteenth century).]
A careful and attentive examination of the early ”Rolls of Arms,” and of seals and other ancient examples of heraldic art and handicraft, will at once make it plainly apparent that the helmets then heraldically depicted were in close keeping and of the style actually in use for warfare, joust, or tournament at the period. This is particularly noticeable in the helmets on the stall plates of the Knights of the Garter in St. George's Chapel at Windsor. The helms on the early {317} stall plates, though far from being identical in shape, all appear to be of the same cla.s.s or type of tilting-helm drawn in profile. Amongst the early plates only one instance (Richard, Duke of Gloucester, elected 1475) can be found of the barred helmet. This is the period when helmets actually existed in fact, and were actually used, but at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, when the helmet was being fast relegated to ceremonial usage and pictorial emblazonment, ingenious heralds began to evolve the system by which rank and degree were indicated by the helmet.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 608.--Pageant Helmet, with the Crest of Burgau.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 609.--Pageant Helmet, with the Crest of Austria (ancient) or Tyrol.]
Before proceeding to consider British rules concerning the heraldic helmet, it may be well to note those which have been accepted abroad. In Germany heraldry has known but two cla.s.ses of helmet, the open helmet guarded by bars (otherwise buckles or grilles), and the closed {318} or ”visored”
helmet. The latter was the helmet used by the newly enn.o.bled, the former by the older families of higher position, it being originally held that only those families whose birth qualified them to tilt were permitted to use this buckled helmet. Tournaments were of course always conducted on very strict lines. Woodward reprints in his ”Treatise on Heraldry” the ”Tourney Regulations for the Exposure of Arms and Crest, drawn up by Rene, Duke of Anjou, King of Sicily and Jerusalem,” from Menetrier's _L'Origin des Armoiries_. The rules to be complied with are there set out. Fig. 12 herein is a representation of a ”Helmschau,” where the examination of the crests is being carried on. It is interesting to notice therein that the whole of the helmets without exception have the grilles. Germany was perhaps the earliest country to fall from grace in the matter, for towards the end of the fifteenth century the buckled helmet is found with the arms of the lower Briefadels (those enn.o.bled by patent), and the practice continued despite the violent protests of the tournament families, who considered their prerogative had been infringed. The closed helmet consequently sank gradually in Germany to the grade of a mere burgess's helmet, and as such became of little account, although in former times it had been borne by the proudest houses.
Similarly in France the ”buckled” helmet was considered to be reserved for the military n.o.blesse, and newly enn.o.bled families were denied its use until the third generation, when they became _bons gentilhommes_. Woodward states that when ”in 1372 Charles V. conferred on the bourgeoisie of Paris the right to use armorial bearings, it was strenuously denied that they could use the timbred helm. In 1568 an edict of Charles IX. prohibited the use of _armoiries timbrees_ to any who were not n.o.ble by birth.” The grilles of the helmet produced with the old French heralds the opportunity of a minutiae of rule which, considering the mult.i.tude of rules fathered, rightly or wrongly, upon British heraldry, we may be devoutly happy never reached our sh.o.r.es. They a.s.signed different numbers of grilles to different ranks, but as the writers differ as to the varying numbers, it is probable that such rules were never officially accepted even in that country. In France the rule was much as in this country, a gold helmet for the Sovereign, silver for princes and great n.o.bles, steel for the remainder. It is curious that though the timbred helm was of course known in England whilst the controversy as to its heraldic use was raging in France and Germany, no heraldic use of it whatever occurs till the beginning of the seventeenth century. From Royalty to the humblest gentleman, all used for heraldic purposes the closed or visored helms.
The present rules concerning helmets which hold in Great Britain are that the helmet of the Sovereign and the Royal princes of this {319} country shall be of gold, placed in an affronte position, and shall have grilles.
The helmet of a peer shall be of silver, shall be placed in profile, and shall have golden grilles, frequently stated to be five in number, a detail not stringently adhered to. The helmet of a knight or baronet shall be of steel, placed full-faced, and shall be open; whilst the helmet of an esquire or gentleman shall be of steel and in profile, with the visor closed. Within these limits considerable lat.i.tude is allowed, and even in official grants of arms, which, as far as emblazonment goes, are very much of a stereotyped style, actual unvarying adherence to a particular pattern is not insisted upon.
The earliest instance amongst the Garter plates in which a helmet with grilles is used to denote the rank of a peer is the stall plate of Lord Knollys in 1615. In the Visitations but few instances can be found in which the arms of peers are included. Peers were not compelled to attend and enter their arms and pedigrees at Visitations, doubtless owing to the fact that no Garter King of Arms ever made a Visitation, whilst it has been the long-a.s.serted prerogative of Garter to deal with peers and their arms by himself. At the same time, however, there are some number of instances of peers' arms and pedigrees in the Visitation Books, several occurring in the 1587 Visitation of Yorks.h.i.+re. In these cases the arms of peers are set out with supporters and mottoes, but there is no difference between their helmets and what we should now term the helmet of an esquire or gentleman.
This is all the more curious because neither helmet nor motto is found in the tricks given of the arms of commoners. Consequently one may with certainty date the introduction of the helmet with grilles as the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of a peer in this country between the years 1587 and 1615. The introduction of the open full-faced helmet as indicative of knight or baronet is known to date from about the period of the Restoration.
Whilst these fixed rules as to helmets are still scrupulously adhered to by English heralds, Lyon King of Arms would seem to be inclined to let them quietly lapse into desuetude, and the emblazonment of the arms of Sir George Duff-Sutherland-Dunbar, Bart., in the Lyon Register at the recent rematriculation of his arms, affords an instance in which the rules have been ignored.