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 {380} the crown of the sovereign and in the coronet of a peer is the survival of the old cap of dignity there can be no doubt. This is perhaps even more apparent in Fig. 662, which shows the crown of King Charles II., than in the representations of the Royal crown which we are more accustomed to see. The present form of a peer's coronet is undoubtedly the conjoining of two separate emblems of his rank. The cap of maintenance or dignity, however, as represented above the arms of a baron, as above referred to, was not of this high, conical shape. It was much flatter. The high, conical, original shape is, however, preserved in many of the early heraldic representations of the chapeau, as will be noticed from an examination of the ancient Garter plates or from a reference to Fig. 271, which shows the helmet with its chapeau-borne crest of Edward the Black Prince. [Illustration: FIG. 663.--The Chapeau.]