In the warrant of Charles II it is directed that all the coronets shall be worn over a cap of crimson velvet lined with ermine, and having a tassel of gold at the top. This cap, however, is not an essential part of the coronet, although a head covering of considerable distinction in itself. During the greater part of the Middle Ages the temporal peerage consisted principally of earls and barons, the former distinguished by the circlet of gold, which was variously decorated, and the latter by a cap of crimson lined with fur. For military purposes, the coronet was fixed to the helmet, and at other times it was placed, for practical reasons of comfort among others, round the cap which formed part of contemporary costume, as may be seen in many of the beautiful French and Italian medals of the fifteenth century, notably in one of Louis XII at the end of that period. Fig. 143. In another composition of about the same time, a head of King Herod has a crown which encircles a cap of the shape usually ascribed, in modern times, to a Cap of Maintenance. The last-named head covering is one of much interest as an early subject of privilege, although but little appears to be known about it. Its shape was obviously not its distinctive quality, and it must therefore have been the material or colour which constituted its especial value; and having regard to the sumptuary restrictions concerning the wearing of ermine, among other things, it seems probable that its lining of this fur was its distinctive quality, and that being prohibited to those of inferior rank, it would naturally be the cap that would be associated with a coronet when it was actually worn. Thus was formed the prototype of the coronets as described in the warrants of the end of the seventeenth century, when caps of this character had ceased to be part of the ordinary costume of people of position. The cap is therefore a means of wearing the coronet and no indication of definite rank and may certainly be omitted in heraldic design, since it adds nothing to what is signified by the coronet itself and is not an essential part of it. This view would appear to have been the contemporary official one, for many of the Garter plates subsequent to the warrant of Charles II have no caps to the coronets, and that of John, Duke of Argyle, 1700, may be cited as an example, among others. By the before-mentioned warrant, the use of the ermine-lined caps was extended to barons equally with other ranks of the peerage.