or "visored" helmet. The latter was the helmet used by the newly ennobled, the former by the older families of higher position, it being originally held that only those families whose birth qualified them to tilt were permitted to use this buckled helmet. Tournaments were of course always conducted on very strict lines. Woodward reprints in his "Treatise on Heraldry" the "Tourney Regulations for the Exposure of Arms and Crest, drawn up by René, Duke of Anjou, King of Sicily and Jerusalem," from Menêtrier's L'Origin des Armoiries. The rules to be complied with are there set out. Fig. 12 herein is a representation of a "Helmschau," where the examination of the crests is being carried on. It is interesting to notice therein that the whole of the helmets without exception have the grilles. Germany was perhaps the earliest country to fall from grace in the matter, for towards the end of the fifteenth century the buckled helmet is found with the arms of the lower Briefadels (those ennobled by patent), and the practice continued despite the violent protests of the tournament families, who considered their prerogative had been infringed. The closed helmet consequently sank gradually in Germany to the grade of a mere burgess's helmet, and as such became of little account, although in former times it had been borne by the proudest houses.
Similarly in France the "buckled" helmet was considered to be reserved for the military noblesse, and newly ennobled families were denied its use until the third generation, when they became bons gentilhommes. Woodward states that when "in 1372 Charles V. conferred on the bourgeoisie of Paris the right to use armorial bearings, it was strenuously denied that they could use the timbred helm. In 1568 an edict of Charles IX. prohibited the use of armoiries timbrées to any who were not noble by birth." The grilles of the helmet produced with the old French heralds the opportunity of a minutiæ of rule which, considering the multitude of rules fathered, rightly or wrongly, upon British heraldry, we may be devoutly happy never reached our shores. They assigned different numbers of grilles to different ranks, but as the writers differ as to the varying numbers, it is probable that such rules were never officially accepted even in that country. In France the rule was much as in this country, a gold helmet for the Sovereign, silver for princes and great nobles, steel for the remainder. It is curious that though the timbred helm was of course known in England whilst the controversy as to its heraldic use was raging in France and Germany, no heraldic use of it whatever occurs till the beginning of the seventeenth century. From Royalty to the humblest gentleman, all used for heraldic purposes the closed or visored helms.
The present rules concerning helmets which hold in Great Britain are that the helmet of the Sovereign and the Royal princes of this
