Links and bibliography for heraldry

For a brief guide to heraldry, click here

Heraldry is a vast subject in itself, and many sources of information about it are available, both on the internet and in print. This listing covers a few of the most useful of these, and I hope to add more in future (any suggestions will be welcome!). I have also tried to include web sites containing significant source material on medieval English heraldry, although at present little is available online.

The best starting point to find more material on the internet is James P. Wolf's comprehensive site Heraldry on the Internet. This includes alphabetical listings of web pages with heraldic content, arranged by family name (and also listings of civic and ecclesiastical arms), and also reference information and heraldry software.

Some other useful heraldic web sites are:

• Baronage (The Baronage Press)
  An electronic magazine with articles on heraldry and genealogy
• British Heraldry (François R. Velde, Heraldica)
  Articles on various aspects of heraldry, including detailed ones on the regulation of arms-bearing and marks of cadency in the British royal family; there are also lists of English heralds
• The College of Arms (official web site)
• Elizabethan Heraldry (Paula Kate Marmor and John Neitz, Elizabethan Heraldry)
  A small site containing an Elizabethan armorial, a brief primer on blazonry and an article on the Elizabethan heralds
• Lord Kyl's Heraldry [not available, 12 October 2009; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from January 2008]
  The motivation for this site is the design of coats of arms for use by the 'Society for Creative Anachronism', but it contains some very useful reference material, including an glossary, an outline of blazonry, an extensive bibliography, and an online ordinary of arms

For further printed material, some online bibliographies are available:

• Armorial Bibliography, with critical comments ('Arval Benicoeur') [not available, 12 October 2009; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from January 2008]
  Follow the menu link labelled "Heraldic Glossary"
• Heraldry: a selected list of references (Library of Congress)
• Armory and Heraldry section of the Royal and Noble Bibliography, with critical comments (Michael K. Smith)

Contents:

• Glossaries and manuals
• Medieval (and early modern) armorials
• Seals
• Monuments and architecture
• Grants of arms
• Heralds' visitations (separate section)
• Modern armorials
• Modern ordinaries
• Works on crests

Glossaries and manuals

The following are available on the internet:

• James Parker, A Glossary of terms used in Heraldry (Oxford and London, 1894; reprinted 1970) (online version by 'saitou')
  An illustrated hypertext version of a very substantial work (a revision of Henry Gough's work of the same title, 1847). As well as explanations of heraldic terms, it is said to contain over 4000 blazons of coats of arms as examples, to which there is a surname index. There are also detailed articles on heraldic practice, including a useful one on Marshalling (the combination of arms to indicate marriages and ancestry)
• Charles Boutell, English heraldry (1867) (Making of America, University of Michigan)
  Choice of images, PDF files or text, with a search facility (but beware of sometimes inaccurate text conversion)
• A.F. Pimbley's Dictionary of Heraldry (Baltimore, 1908) (online version by James P. Wolf, Heraldry on the Internet)
  An extensive dictionary of heraldic terms.
• Heraldic Dictionary (University of Notre Dame, Indiana)
  Illustrated guide to blazonry
• Glossary of Heraldic Terms (Gill Smith)
  A clear, well illustrated introduction to blazonry, with quite a large glossary
• International Illustrated Glossary (François R. Velde, Heraldica)
• A primer of blazonry (Paula Kate Marmor, Elizabethan Heraldry)
  A nicely illustrated basic introduction.
• Glossary of heraldic terms, How to blazon a device and The history of tinctures (Lord Kyl's Heraldry) [not available, 12 October 2009; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from January 2008]
  Follow the menu link labelled "SCA Heraldry Docs" for these articles
• Guide to Heraldic Terms (Burke's Peerage and Gentry)
  Glossary from the 106th Edition of Burke's Peerage and Baronetage.
• Charles Worthy Practical Heraldry or An Epitome of English Armory, showing how and by whom arms may be borne or acquired, how pedigrees may be traced or family histories ascertained (1889) (Google Books [Hints and tips])
  [Other copies at: Internet Archive - Text Archive:  1 ;  2 .]

The following is a detailed discussion of heraldry, with numerous illustrations, covering historical development, basic principles, and the artefacts on which heraldry has survived:

• Self-Representation in Heraldry (Gerhard Jaritz, Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University, Budapest)
  On the same site are a Glossary of Heraldic terms and a Bibliography of heraldry.

Among the printed guides to heraldry are:

• A.C. Fox-Davies, A complete guide to heraldry (London, 1909; most recent (revised) edition, London, 1993)

Medieval (and early modern) armorials

Available in electronic format:

• Early Rolls of Arms: European Rolls of Arms of the Thirteenth Century (Brian Timms, Heraldry)
  Illustrated versions, based on the editions of Gerard J. Brault and others, of thirteen English and four French rolls of arms (one of the latter also covering the Low Countries and Germany). There is also a list of the arms in order of their blazon which, with the help of the browser's search facility, can also be used as an ordinary.
  The English rolls are:
  • Glover's Roll (c.1253-8)
  • Walford's Roll (c.1273)
  • Heralds' Roll (c.1279)
  • Dering Roll (c.1280)
  • Camden Roll (c.1280)
  • St George's Roll (c.1285)
  • Charles' Roll (c.1285)
  • Lord Marshal's Roll (1295)
  • Collins' Roll (1296)
  • Falkirk Roll (1298)
  • Caerlaverock Poem (1300)
  • Galloway Roll (1300)
  • Stirling Roll (1304)
  The French rolls are:
  • Bigot Roll (1254)
  • Wijnbergen Roll (1265-70 and 1270-85)
  • Chifflet-Prinet Roll (1297)
  • Vermandois Roll (c.1300)
• James Greenstreet, ed., The Original Camden Roll of Arms (1882) (Google Books [Hints and tips])
  Journal of the British Archaeological Association, volume 38, pages 309-328 (1882). Introduction and transcript.
  [Other copies at: Internet Archive - Text Archive.]
• Nicholas Harris Nicolas, ed., A Roll of Arms, of the reign of Edward the Second (1829) (Google Books [Hints and tips])
  Edition of the Parliamentary Roll, of c. 1312, with an introduction, index and ordinary.
• Thomas Willement, ed., A roll of arms of the reign of Richard the Second. (London, 1834) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Introduction and transcript: Willement's Roll (c.1395).
• J. Foster, Two Tudor books of arms. Harleian MSS. Nos. 2169 & 6163. ([London,] 1904) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Introduction, transcript and illustrations: Randle Holme's Book (temp. Henry VI) and Peter le Neve's Book (c.1480-1500).
• The Mitchell Rolls (The Heraldry Society of Scotland)
  Compilation, in progress, of transcripts of rolls of arms relating to Scotland.
  These include Scots arms from the following medieval rolls:
  • Balliol Roll (1332)
  • Bruce Roll (1332)
  • Armorial de Bellenville (1380)
  • Armorial de Gelre (1385)
  • Armorial de la Toison d'Or (1440)
  • Armorial de Berry (1450)
  • Scots Roll (1455)
  and from these early-modern Scottish rolls:
  • Sir David Lindsay's Armorial (1542)
  • Hamilton Armorial (1560)
  • Queen Mary's Roll (1562)
  • Forman's Armorial (1563)
  • Slains Armorial (1565)
  • Lindsay of the Mount Secundus (1599)
  • Seton Armorial (1591)
  • Hague Roll (1592)
  • Dunvegan Armorial (1600)
  • Kings and Nobilities II (1638)
• The Armorial Bearings Featured in The Vale Royal of England first published by Daniel King in 1656 (Martin S.J. Goldstraw, Cheshire Heraldry)
  Modern coloured illustrations, in progress, based on a 17th-century collection of some 520 Cheshire coats of arms, with scans of the original drawings

Bibliography

• Sir A. R. Wagner, Aspilogia I: A catalogue of English mediaeval rolls of arms (Harleian Society 100; Oxford, 1950)
  Corrections and additions are in vol. 114.
  [Available from Archive CD Books]
• Sir A. R. Wagner, ed., Aspilogia II: Rolls of Arms Henry III (Harleian Society 114; Oxford, 1957)
  Includes Matthew Paris Shields (c. 1244-59), Glover’s Roll (c. 1253), Walford’s Roll (c. 1275) and additions and corrections to A catalogue of English mediaeval rolls of arms.
  [Available from Archive CD Books]
• Gerald J. Brault, Aspilogia III: Rolls of Arms Edward I 1272-1307 (Society of Antiquaries of London, 1997)
  Includes Heralds’ Roll (c. 1279), Dering Roll (c. 1280), Camden Roll (c. 1280), St George's Roll (c. 1285), Charles's Roll (c. 1285), Segar's Roll (c. 1285), Lord Marshal's Roll (c. 1295), Collins' Roll (c. 1295), Falkirk Roll (1298), Guillim's Roll (1295-1305), Caerlaverock Poem (1300), Galloway Roll (1300), Smallpece's Roll (1298-1306), Stirling Roll (1304), Nativity Roll (1307-8), Fife Roll (temp. Edw I) and Sir William Le Neve's Roll (temp. Edw I)

Indexes and collections

• Joseph Foster, Some feudal coats of arms and others (1902) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Illustrated armory compiled from medieval rolls of arms, with many additional illustrations, particularly of funeral monuments.
  (Note that there are two editions of this work, this one with 2000 illustrations and an abbreviated one with only 830.)
  [Other copies at: Internet Archive - Text Archive.]
• C. Hunter Blair, The Armorials of Northumberland: an Index and an Ordinary (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Archaeologia aeliana, 3rd series, volume 6, pp. 89-190 (1910).

Seals

The following backgound materials are available online:

• Seals (Public Record Office information leaflet)
• Catalogue of the Medieval seals in the Durham Cathedral Muniments (Durham University)
  Revised and updated version of W. Greenwell and C. H. Hunter Blair, Catalogue of the Seals in the Treasury of the Dean and Chapter of Durham (1911), including names, dates, inscriptions and - for heraldic seals - descriptions of arms. The section on "The Charters of Durham" includes a detailed discussion of the use of seals in medieval England.
• Seals (Dr Dianne Tillotson, Medieval Writing)
  An illustrated discussion of the seals used by different groups of people in medieval England

These published collections of seals are available online:

• Walter de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Volume 1. (1887) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Seals of England and Wales: sovereigns, royal officers, ecclesiastical.
  [Other copies at: Google Books [Hints and tips]; Internet Archive - Text Archive.]
• Walter de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Volume 2. (1892) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Seals of England and Wales: local, princes of Wales, equestrian, noble and other ladies, heraldic A-F.
  [Other copies at: Google Books [Hints and tips]; Internet Archive - Text Archive:  1 ;  2 .]
• Walter de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Volume 3. (1894) (Google Books [Hints and tips])
  Seals of England and Wales, heraldic G-Z, and British companies, colonies and dependencies.
  [Other copies at: Internet Archive - Text Archive:  1 ;  2 ;  3 .]
• Walter de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Volume 4. (1895) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Seals of Scotland and Ireland.
  [Other copies at: Google Books:  1 ;  2  [Hints and tips]; Internet Archive - Text Archive:  1 ;  2 ;  3 .]
• Walter de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Volume 5. (1898) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Seals of the Byzantine Empire and of France.
  [Other copies at: Internet Archive - Text Archive.]
• Walter de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. Volume 6. (1900) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  Seals of foreign countries.
  [Other copies at: Google Books:  1 ;  2  [Hints and tips]; Internet Archive - Text Archive:  1 ;  2 ;  3 .]
• Catalogue of the Medieval seals in the Durham Cathedral Muniments (Durham University)
  Revised and updated version of W. Greenwell and C. H. Hunter Blair, Catalogue of the Seals in the Treasury of the Dean and Chapter of Durham (1911), including names, dates, inscriptions and - for heraldic seals - descriptions of arms. The section on "The Charters of Durham" includes a detailed discussion of the use of seals in medieval England.
• Walter de Gray Birch, History of Scottish seals from the eleventh to the seventeenth century ... Volume 1. The royal seals of Scotland. (1905) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  [Other copies at: Google Books [Hints and tips]; Internet Archive - Text Archive:  1 ;  2 .]
• Walter de Gray Birch, History of Scottish seals from the eleventh to the seventeenth century ... Volume 2. Ecclesiastical and monastic seals of Scotland. (1907) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
  [Other copies at: Google Books [Hints and tips]; Internet Archive - Text Archive.]
• William Rae Macdonald, Scottish Armorial Seals. (1904) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
• Henry Laing, Descriptive Catalogue of Impressions from Ancient Scottish Seals. (Bannatyne Club, 1850) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
• [Louis] Douët d'Arcq, Inventaires et documents publiés par ordre de l'Empereur sous la direction de M. le comte de Laborde. Collection de sceaux. Volume 1. (1863) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
• [Louis] Douët d'Arcq, Inventaires et documents publiés par ordre de l'Empereur sous la direction de M. le comte de Laborde. Collection de sceaux. Volume 2. (1867) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
• [Louis] Douët d'Arcq, Inventaires et documents publiés par ordre de l'Empereur sous la direction de M. le comte de Laborde. Collection de sceaux. Volume 3. (1868) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
• Joseph Delaville Le Roulx, Des sceaux des prieurs anglais de l'ordre de l'Hôpital aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (1881) (gallica; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; number for "Recherche libre" field: N063829)
  PDF format (in French)
• Early Seals (Brian Timms, Heraldry)
  Illustrated collections of seals, from the The Barons' Letter in reply to the Pope, February 1301 and Miscellaneous sources

There are some other illustrated collections of seals:

• Medieval Seals (Durham University)
  Photographs of more 60 seals from the cathedral muniments

Published works:

• Public Record Office, Guide to seals in the Public Record Office (2nd edn; London, 1968)
• R.H. Ellis, compiler, Catalogue of seals in the Public Record Office: Personal seals (2 vols; London, 1978, 1981)

Monuments and architecture

On the internet:

• Index to Monumental Heraldry in the Parish Church of St. Peter's, Barnstaple [Devon] (Jonathan Frayne, GENUKI)
  Index to names in an appendix in the Rev. Sloane Sloane-Evans, Memorials of St Peter's Church Barnstaple (1892)
• The Enamel Plaque of Geoffroy Plantagenêt (Le Mans) (François Velde)
  Illustration and commentary of the funerary plaque, the oldest coloured representation of a coat of arms
• Heraldry in Gilling Castle [Yorkshire] (Gill Smith) About 100 coats of arms, from Elizabethan stained glass
• Heraldry in Lancaster Castle (Lancaster Castle)
  Details of more than 650 shields of arms, including those of constables of the castle and sheriffs of the county (in progress)
• B. H. D’Elboux, Coats of Arms in Queenborough Castle [Kent] (Kent Archaeological Society)
  Text of a paper originally published in Archaeologia Cantiana, vol. 58, pp. 14-27 (1945) An early 17th-century list of arms, with blazons and brief biographical notes
• Heraldry in Stonegrave Church [Yorkshire] (Gill Smith)
  Arms from funeral monuments and stained glass, some medieval
• Heraldry in Trinity Hall [College, Cambridge] (Andrew Senior)
  Includes blazons of many coats of arms displayed in the College, and a list of the arms of its masters

Published works:

• Catalogues of medieval stained glass are being published in the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi project (funded in Britain by the British Academy)
• P. Heseltine, The Mill Stephenson Collection of Shields of Arms on British Brasses at the Society of Antiquaries (Godmanchester, 1994)
  A listing by county and parish of heraldry from monumental brasses (including some now lost). The arms are blazoned, and there is a surname index and an ordinary of unidentified arms
• H. Lawrance, Heraldry from Military Monuments before 1350 in England and Wales
  (Harleian Society Publications vol. 98; London, 1946)
  [Available from Archive CD Books]

Grants of arms

Published works:

• W. Harry Rylands, ed., Grantees of arms named in docquets and patents to the end of the seventeenth century ... alphabetically arranged by Joseph Foster and contained in the Additional ms. no. 37147 in the British Museum. (Bob Boynton, University of Iowa)
  Harleian Society, vol. 66 (1915). PDF file (26 MB).
• W.H. Rylands, ed., Grantees of arms named in docquets and patents between the years 1687 and 1898, preserved in various manuscripts, collected and alphabetically arranged by Joseph Foster and contained in the Additional MS. no 37149 in the British Museum
  (Harleian Society 67,68; London, 1916,1917)

Modern armorials

The following lists of arms are available on the internet:

• Buthlaw's Armorial (Harry Pirie-Gordon of Buthlaw; The Baronage Press)
  Illustrated armorial of medieval Scottish families, in the early stages of preparation
• Civic Heraldry of England and Wales (Robert Young)
  Nearly 300 coats of arms, including modern ones
• Commoners' Arms in England, (François Velde, Heraldica)
  Blazons of about 80 coats of arms, predominantly related to London in the 13th and 14th centuries, from S.L. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 1300-1500 (1948) and Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office
• An Elizabethan Armory, (John Neitz, Elizabethan Heraldry)
  Contains about 150 coats of arms
• Parker's Glossary (see above) is said to contain over 4000 blazons of coats of arms as examples, to which there is a surname index.
• earlyBlazon.com
  A compilation of the arms of knights from several European countries in the period of the Crusades. It provides illustrated lists of arms arranged by name, by geography and by the charges on the shields

Published armorials:

• Sir J.B. Burke, The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales (first published London, 1844; enlarged edn 1884; reprinted 2000)
  This is the standard armorial work. Its great advantage is its sheer volume; its main disadvantage is the lack of source references for most of the entries, which makes it difficult to verify the information or research it further.
  An electronic version, consisting of scanned images with an index to surnames, is available on the Family Tree Maker CD#367 Notable British Families. This is handy for reference, although personally I found the resolution of the images rather too coarse for comfortable reading

Modern ordinaries

These contain descriptions of coats of arms, arranged so that the family who bore them can be identified.
Two ordinaries of arms are available on the internet:

• J.W. Papworth, An alphabetical dictionary of coats of arms belonging to families in Great Britain and Ireland [Papworth's Ordinary] (first published London, 1874; most recent edition Bath, 1977)
  Compiled from a variety of sources, like Burke's General Armory it is useful by virtue of its volume; in common with Burke, Papworth does not state his source in many cases
  • John W. Papworth and Alfred W. Morant, Ordinary of British Armorials, volume 1 (1874) (Google Books [Hints and tips])
    [Other copies at: Internet Archive - Text Archive:  1 ;  2 .]
  • John W. Papworth and Alfred W. Morant, Ordinary of British Armorials, volume 2 (1874) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)
    [Other copies at: Internet Archive - Text Archive.]
• An ordinary of the arms (Brian Timms, Heraldry)
  A partial compilation from the collection of European Rolls of Arms of the Thirteenth Century on the same website. In addition there is a complete list of the arms in order of their blazon which, with the help of the browser's search facility, can also be used as an ordinary.
• 'Ordinary for the Modest Proposal...' (Kyl's Illustrative Guide to Heraldry and Blazoning) [not available, 12 October 2009; see the Internet Archive's copy of this page, from January 2008]
  Follow the menu link labelled "SCA Heraldry Docs". This is based on a very miscellaneous collection of several hundred coats of arms, including many from Continental Europe - and even further afield - often modern

But note that the Internet itself can be used as an ordinary of arms. Using a good search engine that allows an exact phrase to be specified, it's quite possible to identify a coat of arms by typing in its blazon (its description using standard heraldic language).

Published ordinaries:

• C.R. Humphery-Smith Anglo-Norman Armory Two (1984)
  An ordinary compiled from 24 rolls of arms, mostly from the 13th and early 14th centuries
• Dictionary of British Arms: Medieval Ordinary (Society of Antiquaries of London)
  Volume 1, Hubert Chesshyre and Thomas Woodcock. Uncharged, then A – Bend between ... (1992)
  Volume 2, Thomas Woodcock, Janet Grant and Ian Graham. On a Bend ... – Chevron (1996)
  Volume 3, Thomas Woodcock and Sarah Flower. Chief - Fess (2009)
  A scholarly and extensive compilation; in progress.

Works on crests

• J. Corder, A dictionary of Suffolk crests: heraldic crests of Suffolk families (Suffolk Records Society 40; Woodbridge, 1998)
• J. Fairbairn, Fairbairn's book of crests of the families of Great Britain and Ireland (first published London, 1860; most recent edition 1990)