Links and bibliography for heraldry


Medieval source material on the internet:

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:

For further printed material, some online bibliographies are available:


Contents:

Glossaries and manuals

The following are available on the internet:

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

Among the printed guides to heraldry is:

Medieval (and early modern) armorials

Available in electronic format:

Bibliography

Indexes and collections

Seals

The following are available online:

These published collections of seals are available online:

There are some other illustrated collections of seals:

Published works:

Monuments and architecture

On the internet:

Published works:

Grants of arms

Published works:

Modern armorials

The following lists of arms are available on the internet:

Published armorials:

Modern ordinaries

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

The Dictionary of British Arms: Medieval Ordinary, published by the Society of Antiquaries of London, is an extensive and scholarly complication including full references to sources:

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).

Another published ordinary of medieval coats of arms is:

Works on crests


Return to a brief guide to medieval English genealogy:
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