in German heraldry, though seldom adopted in England, certainly had some weight in English heraldry. In the recently published reproductions of the Plantagenet Garter plates eighty-seven armorial achievements are included. Of these, in ten instances the mantlings are plainly continuations of the crests, being "feathered" or in unison. Fifteen of the mantlings have both the outside and the inside of the principal colour and of the principal metal of the arms they accompany, though in a few cases, contrary to the present practice, the metal is outside, the lining being of the colour. Nineteen more of the mantlings are of the principal colour of the arms, the majority (eighteen) of these being lined with ermine. No less than forty-nine are of some colour lined with ermine, but thirty-four of these are of gules lined ermine, and in the large majority of cases in these thirty-four instances neither the gules nor the ermine are in conformity with the principal colour and metal (what we now term the "livery colours") of the arms. In some cases the colours of the mantling agree with the colours of the crest, a rule which will usually be found to hold good in German heraldry. The constant occurrence of gules and ermine incline one much to believe that the colours of the mantling were not decided by haphazard fancy, but that there was some law—possibly in some way connected with the sumptuary laws of the period—which governed the matter, or, at any rate, which greatly limited the range of selection. Of the eighty-seven mantlings, excluding those which are gules lined ermine, there are four only the colours of which apparently bear no relation whatever to the colours of the arms or the crests appearing upon the same Stall plate. In some number of the plates the colours certainly are taken from a quartering other than the first one, and in one at least of the four exceptions the mantling (one of the most curious examples) is plainly derived from a quartering inherited by the knight in question though not shown upon the Stall plate. Probably a closer examination of the remaining three instances would reveal a similar reason in each case. That any law concerning the colours of their mantlings was enforced upon those concerned would be an unwarrantable deduction not justified by the instances under examination, but one is clearly justified in drawing from these cases some deductions as to the practice pursued. It is evident that unless one was authorised by the rule or reason governing the matter—whatever such rule or reason may have been—in using a mantling of gules and ermine, the dominating colour (not as a rule the metal) of the coat of arms (or of one of the quarterings), or sometimes of the crest if the tinctures of arms and crest were not in unison, decided the colour of the mantling. That there was some meaning behind the mantlings of gules lined with ermine there can be little doubt, for it is noticeable that in a case in
