It is somewhat difficult to treat distinctly of the mantlings prevailing since the beginning of the sixteenth century; but as they afford indirect evidence of date, I venture to draw up the following short description of their variations; and I do so with some diffidence, in the hope that fellow-students may add to my feeble effort, and that thus we may presently arrive at a perfect and dated scheme of these changes.
I am obliged to treat seals separately from drawings and stone carvings, because the circumscribed space in a seal seems to have prevented some of the variations noticed in the others. At the same time, several characteristic changes are found to occur, and at tolerably distinct dates; and so it is possible to lay down very clearly, as to seals, the current of progressive change.
By far the greater number of heraldic Seals at the beginning of the sixteenth century have no mantling, but display only a bare shield, without ornament—unless some scroll-work or architectural lines, to fill up the space within the dotted or plain circles. Such seals occur constantly till the end of the seventeenth century.
About 1550 helmets with mantlings, open and rather sparse, and kept high up on the top of the shield, appear. These mantlings are rather flat, so that a good space is left for the crest, which thus stands out distinctly. As a specimen, see Wm. Lambarde's seal, 1552 (Archæologia Cantiana, vol. v, p. 256).
Although a good many seals continue still with the mantlings kept up about the top of the shield (while sometimes a motto, &c., is introduced below), it is observed that a little after this date mantlings gradually creep downwards, perhaps to two-thirds of the depth of the shield. See a seal of the Throckmorton family, 1576 (Visitation of Warwick, 1619, Harl. Soc.); also those of Lord Chancellor Bromley, 1581 (Herald and Genealogist, vol. v, p. 5); John Ogle, 1597 (Mascy Charters, plate C, Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for 1887); and Edward Osborne, 1618 (Herald and Genealogist, vol. iv, p. 241; also Archæologia Cantiana, vol. v, p. 234).
This is the character of many examples occurring down to about the year 1650, when a greater profusion of mantling began to be shown: of this the seal of Sir Edward Nicholas, engraved on p. 45, is a good example; and it is the first instance I have noticed in which the folds of the mantling come out from behind the shield, thus marring its distinctness. Usually, although the volume of foldings increases, they are kept away from it, so as to leave the impression of the shield standing out and quite clear. In this, too, the folds extend higher up on either side of the crest than is usual in earlier examples.
It may be interesting here to note that of the fifty-nine seals attached to the death warrant of Charles I., in 1648-9—following the very accurate engraving in Monumenta Vetusta, vol. ii,—twenty-one show mantlings, eleven are distinctly without, ten are doubtful, and the remaining seventeen seals are quite illegible.
From about 1650 many beautifully cut signets are found—the arms, with helmets, crests, and mantlings, the points of which rise up on either side of the crest, thus filling up that empty space. The seal of the Cordwainers of Oxford, made in 1680, is a favourable example of the date (Arch. Journal, vol. vi, pp. 159 and 279).
About 1680 I have observed tassels sometimes appear as a finish to the lower ends of mantlings, as in the seal of Thomas Bate, engraved on p. 45; also in a signet of 1683, in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica for 1886, p. 143; and elsewhere.