A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

THE TORSE, OR WREATH The actual helmet, from the very _earliest_ heraldic representations which have come down to us, would sometimes appear not to have had any mantling, the crest being affixed direct to the (then) flat top of the helmet in use. But occasional crests appear very early in the existence of "ordered" armory, and at much about the same time we find the "textile" covering of the helmet coming into heraldic use. In the earliest times we find that frequently the crest itself was continued into the mantling. But where this was not possible, the attaching of the crest to the helmet when the mantling intervened left an unsightly joining. The unsightliness very soon called forth a remedy. At first this remedy took the form of a coronet or a plain fillet or ribbon round the point of juncture, sometimes with and sometimes without the ends being visible. If the ends were shown they were represented as floating behind, sometimes with and sometimes without a representation of the bow or knot in which they were tied. The plain fillet still continued to be used long after the torse had come into recognised use. The consideration of crest coronets has been already included, but with regard to the wreath an analysis of the Plantagenet Garter plates will afford some definite basis from which to start deduction. Of the eighty-six achievements reproduced in Mr. St. John Hope's book, five have no crest. Consequently we have eighty-one examples to analyse. Of these there are ten in which the crest is not attached to the lambrequin and helmet by anything perceptible, eight are attached with fillets of varying widths, twenty-one crests are upon chapeaux, and twenty-nine issue from coronets. But at no period governed by the series is it possible that either fillet, torse, chapeau, or coronet was in use to the exclusion of another form. This remark applies more particularly to the fillet and torse (the latter of which undoubtedly at a later date superseded the former), for both at the beginning and at the end of the series referred to we find the fillet and the wreath or torse, and at both periods we find crests without either coronet, torse, chapeau, or fillet. The fillet must soon afterwards (in the fifteenth century) have completely fallen into desuetude. {403} The torse was so small and unimportant a matter that upon seals it would probably equally escape the attention of the engraver and the observer, and probably there would be little to be gained by a systematic hunt through early seals to discover the date of its