A Complete Guide to Heraldry

by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

CREST CORONETS AND CHAPEAUX

The present official rules are that crests must be upon, or must issue from, a wreath (or torse), a coronet, or a chapeau. It is not at the pleasure of the wearer to choose which he will, one or other being specified and included in the terms of the grant. If the crest have a lawful existence, one or other of them will unchangeably belong to the crest, of which it now is considered to be an integral part.

In Scotland and Ireland, Lyon King of Arms and Ulster King of Arms have always been considered to have, and still retain, the right to grant crests upon a chapeau or issuing from a crest. But the power is (very properly) exceedingly sparingly used; and, except in the cases of arms and crests matriculated in Lyon Register as of ancient origin and in use before 1672, or "confirmed" on the strength of user by Ulster King of Arms, the ordinary ducal crest coronet and the chapeau are not now considered proper to be granted in ordinary cases.

Since about the beginning of the nineteenth century the rules which follow have been very definite, and have been very rigidly adhered to in the English College of Arms.

Crests issuing from the ordinary "ducal crest coronet" are not now granted under any circumstances. The chapeau is only granted in the case of a grant of arms to a peer, a mural coronet is only granted to officers in the army of the rank of general or above, and the naval coronet is only granted to officers in his Majesty's Royal Navy of the rank of admiral and above. An Eastern coronet is now only granted in the case of those of high position in one or other of the Imperial Services, who have served in India and the East.

The granting of crests issuing from the other forms of crest coronets, the "crown-vallary" and the "crown palisado," is always discouraged, but no rule exists denying them to applicants, and they are to be obtained if the expectant grantee is sufficiently patient, importunate, and pertinacious. Neither form is, however, particularly ornamental, and both are of modern origin.

There is still yet another coronet, the "celestial coronet". This is not unusual as a charge, but as a coronet from which a crest issues I know of no instance, nor am I aware of what rules, if any, govern the granting of it.

Definite rank coronets have been in times past granted for use as crest coronets, but this practice, the propriety of which cannot be considered as other than highly questionable, has only been pursued, even in the more lax days which are past, on rare and very exceptional occasions, and has long since been definitely abandoned as improper.

In considering the question of crest coronets, the presumption that they originated from coronets of rank at once jumps to the mind. This is by no means a foregone conclusion. It is difficult to say what is the earliest instance of the use of a coronet in this country as a coronet of rank. When it is remembered that the coronet of a baron had no existence whatever until it was called into being by a warrant of Charles II. after the Restoration, and that differentiated coronets for the several ranks in the Peerage are not greatly anterior in date, the question becomes distinctly complicated. From certainly the reign of Edward the Confessor the kings of England had worn crowns, and the great territorial earls, who it must be remembered occupied a position akin to that of a petty sovereign (far beyond the mere high dignity of a great noble at the present day), from an early period wore crowns or coronets not greatly differing in appearance from the crown of the king. But the Peerage as such certainly neither had nor claimed the technical right to a coronet as a mark of their rank, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But coronets of a kind were used, as can be seen from early effigies, long before the use of crests became general. But these coronets were merely in the nature of a species of decoration for the helmet, many of them far more closely resembling a jewelled torse than a coronet. Parker in his "Glossary of Terms used in Heraldry" probably correctly represents the case when he states: "From the reign of Edward III. coronets of various forms were worn (as it seems indiscriminately) by princes, dukes, earls, and even knights, but apparently rather by way of ornament than distinction, or if for distinction, only (like the collar of SS) as a mark of gentility. The helmet of Edward the Black Prince, upon his effigy at Canterbury, is surrounded with a coronet totally different from that subsequently assigned to his rank."