unmutilated cloth, suspended from and displayed behind the armorial bearings and tied at the upper corners. In all probability the robes of estate of the higher nobility, no less than the then existing and peremptorily enforced sumptuary laws, may have led to the desire and to the attempt, at a period when the actual lambrequin was fast disappearing from general knowledge, to display arms upon something which should represent either the parliamentary robes of estate of a peer, or the garments of rich fabric which the sumptuary laws forbade to those of humble degree. To this period undoubtedly belongs the term "mantling," which is so much more frequently employed than the word lambrequin, which is really--from the armorial point of view--the older term. The heraldic mantling was, of course, originally the representation of the actual "capeline" or textile covering worn upon the helmet, but many early heraldic representations are of mantlings which are of skin, fur, or feathers, being in such cases invariably a continuation of the crest drawn out and represented as the lambrequin. When the crest was a part of the human figure, the habit in which that figure was arrayed is almost invariably found to have been so employed. The Garter plate of Sir Ralph Bassett, one of the Founder Knights, shows the crest as a black boar's head, the skin being continued as the sable mantling. Some Sclavonic families have mantlings of fur only, that of the Hungarian family of Chorinski is a bear skin, and countless other instances can be found of the use by German families of a continuation of the crest for a mantling. This practice affords instances of many curious mantlings, this in one case in the Zurich _Wappenrolle_ being the scaly skin of a salmon. The mane of the lion, the crest of Mertz, and the hair and beard of the crests of Bohn and Landschaden, are similarly continued to do duty for the mantling. This practice has never found great favour in England, the cases amongst the early Garter plates where it has been followed standing almost alone. In a {385} manuscript (M. 3, 67_b_) of the reign of Henry VII., now in the College of Arms, probably dating from about 1506, an instance of this character can be found, however. It is a representation of the crest of Stourton (Fig. 664) as it was borne at that date, and was a black Benedictine demi-monk proper holding erect in his dexter hand a scourge. Here the proper black Benedictine habit (it has of later years been corrupted into the russet habit of a friar) is continued to form the mantling. PLATE VII. [Illustration] [Illustration: FIG. 664.--The Crest of Stourton.]