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Resources of heraldry
Interesting links:
Webpage
of James Keating
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Abc of Heraldry, coats of arms and family crests
This web site is designed in order to introduce you in the
fantastic world of heraldry for family names. We have collected links to web-sites of
heraldry, as well as several heraldic useful resources.
Resources of heraldry of a lot of countries.
You could see the big list of family
names with one or more coats of arms /crests associates, depending of the branches,
and look coats of arms and family crests in the section 'Coat of arms,
crests and names with illustrations'. Here you'll find
many heraldic resources.
Some of these resources are authentic electronic books
(e-books) that you could download in order to read comfortably without being connected to
Internet and without additional software, marked with the icon .
If you want get the coat of arms for your family name, we
recommend to visit 'Getting coat of arms'.
The bibliography of heraldry is collected in 'Heraldry
Books'.
There are two manuals of heraldry in e-book format (icon ): Pimbley's
Dictionary of Heraldry (a classic in heraldry) and Manual of symbolic heraldry with many significances of figures in
heraldry. This web-site is a complete manual of heraldry, too.
Other e-book is 'Origins of many names'. All the e-books are FREE and may be freely distributed.
There is one section of heraldic clip art very useful in order to carry out designs and decorations
based in heraldry.
Very interesting is the section of 'Blazon of arms, a heraldic animation: How a heraldic
shield is compouned' with a curious heraldic animation.
In this web-site we give you a very complete study of the
heraldry for family with their several components detailed: The Motto, look for your family motto / Hatchments / Crests, wreaths and badges / King
of Arms and Heralds / Parts of a coat of arms
/ Classes of arms / Supporters / Helmets / Mantles / Marks of Cadency / Crowns, coronets and chapeaux / Tinctures: Colours, metals and furs in heraldry / Positions and partitions / Marshalling of arms / Ordinaries in heraldry / Positions of beasts as exemplified by lions / Birds in heraldry / Crosses in
heraldry / Fantastic animals in heraldry
and Other charges in heraldry
A program that you will need in order to use some resources
is Winzip, a compressor of files, Don't you have Winzip?, Get you it free from http://www.winzip.com
But before all it's necessary to begin with one question:
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What is the Heraldry?
Heraldry may be defined the art of blazoning, assigning, and marshaling coat armor, or
more particularly the art of arranging and arranging and explaining in proper terms all
that relates or appertains to the bearing of Arms, Crests, Badges, Quarterings, and other
hereditary marks of honor. The marshaling of processions, the conducting of public
solemnities, the declaring of peace and war, coma also within the province of a heralds
duties.
The origin of badges and emblems may certainly be traced to the earliest of times, and the
enthusiasm of some of the primitive writers on the subject as left them to gravely assert
that even Noah and the Japhet had distinctive armorial bearings. But while it may be
admitted that in the ancient world warlike nations bore on their shields and standards
distinguishing devises, it is not clear that our Heraldry can in strictness by traced to a
more remote period that of the twelfth or, at furthest, the eleventh century. Numerous
tombs exist of persons of noble blood, who died before the year 1000, yet there is not an
instance known of one with a Heraldic bearing. The Pèire Menestrier made a minute and
extensive search through France, Italy, Germany, and Flanders, and the most ancient coat
of arms he was able to discover was that upon the monumental effigy of a count of
Wasserburg, in the church of St. Emeran, at Ratisbon: the assigns were Per fess argent and
sable, a lion countercharged: and the date 1010. Yet even here this is good reason to
believe, says the learned Frenchman, that this tomb was restored some tome after that
counts death by the Monks of the Abbey he had owned.
Sir John Fern is of opinion that the science was borrowed from the Egyptians. Sir George
Mackenzie ascribes it to the age of Charlemagne, and says it began to grow with the feudal
laws, but took its origin, perhaps, in the time of Jacob, who, blessing his sons, gave
them marks of distinction, which the twelve tribes after woods bore on their ensigns: But
our old reliable friend, Guillim, will have it that Heraldry - as a science of England -
cannot go back to an earlier epoch that about the year 1200. For my own part, I consider
that the registry of its birth may be found among the archives of the Holy Wars, that its
hand was rocked by the soldiers of the cross, and that its maturity was attained in the
chivalrous age of feudalism.
However, at the trial of the celebrated controversy between Sir Richard Le Scrope and Sir
Robert Grosvenor, for the right to bear the arms azure a bend or, held 20th August, 1385,
before the high constable of England, and Sir John de Multon, Deputy to the Earl Marshal,
and adjourned to 16th May, 1386, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, deposed that the said
arms were of right the arms of Sir Richard Le Scrope, and his ancestors at the time of the
conquest, and that in the French Wars, under Edward III. One Carminow of Cornwall,
challenged Sir Richard Le Scropes right to the same, that the dispute having been referred
to six knights, they found that the said Carminow was descended of a lineage armed azure a
bend or, since the time of King Arthur, and that the said Richard Le Scrope was descended
of a right line of ancestors armed with the same arms since the time of king William the
Conqueror. Owen Glendower, the welsh prince, deposed at the trial the Grosvenors bore the
same arms at the time of the conquest. The word Heraldry is derived from the German Heer,
a host, an army - and Held, a champion; and the term blasson, by which the science is
denoted in French, English, Italian, and German, has most probably its origin in the
German word Blazon, To blow the horn. The Germans transmitting the word to the French, it
reached us after the Norman conquest.
At first armorial bearings were probably like surnames, assumed by each warrior at his
free will and pleasure; and as his object would be to distinguish himself and his
followers from others, his cognizance would be respected by the rest, either out of an
inuate courtesy or a feeling of natural justice disposing men to recognise the right of
first occupation, or really from a positive sense of the inconvenience of being identified
or cofounded with those to whom no common tie united them. Where however, remoteness of
stations kept soldiers aloof, and extensive boundaries, and different classes of enemies
from without, subdivided the force of a kingdom into many distinct bands and armies,
opportunities of comparing an ascertaining what ensigns had been already appropriated
would be lost, and it well might happen, even in the same country, that various families
might be found unconsciously using the same arms.
It has long been a matter of doubt when he bearing of arms first became hereditary. The
Normals tiles engraved in Mr. Einikers letter to the Society of Antiquaries, were supposed
to have fixed the date at the period of the Norman Conquest, but Mr. Montagu very ably
argues that it is not at all clear that these tiles were of the same antiquity as the
Abbaye aux hommes at Caen. in which they were found; indeed he seem to prove quite the
contrary. Certain it is that it was not until the Crusades that Heraldry came into general
use. In the history of Battell Abbey, Richard Lucy, Chief Justice temp. Henry II, is
reported to have blamed a mean subject for carrying a private seal, when that pertained,
as he said, to the King and Nobility alone. Under Edward I , seals of some sort were so
general, that the statute of Exon ordained the coroners jury to certify with their
respective signets, and in the following reign they become very common, so that they not
only bore arms to seal, but others fashioned signets, taking the letters of their own
names, flowers, knots, birds, birds, beasts etc. It was afterward enacted by statute, that
every freeholder should have his proper seal of arms ; and he was to either appear at the
head court of the shire, or send his attorney with the said seal, and those who omitted
this duty were amerced or fined.
The earliest Heraldic document that has been handed down to us as a ROLL OF ARMS, made
between the years of 1240 and 1245. It contains the names and arms of the Barrons and
knights of the reign of Henry III, and affords incontrovertible evidence of the fact that
heraldry was reduced to a science. It is curios, too, as indicating the changes that have
taken place between a period approximating so nearly to its origin and the present ; and
invaluable, as offering contemporary testimony of the exact bearings of the ancestors of
some of our most distinguished families. This important manuscript as well as well as
three other collections, the siege of carlaverock, A Roll of Arms, temp. Edward II, and A
Roll of Arms, temp. Edward III, were published by the late Sir Harris Nicolas, as
accompanied by prefatory remarks and occasional notes.
THE SIEGE OF CARLAVEROCK is a poem descriptive of the banners of the peers and Knights of
the English army who were the present at the siege of Carleverock Castle of Scotland, in
February, 1301.
The ROLL OF ARMS of the time of Edward II made between the years 1308 and 1314, is divided
into countries, and comprises the names of arms of about eleven hundred and sixty persons.
It still remains in the cottonian Library, British Museu, (Calig. A.xviii.).
The FORTH ROLL, temp.Edward III, appears to have been compiled between the years 1337 and
1350. Its plan was most comprehensive, embrassing the arms all the peers and Knights in
England, arranging in the following order: -
1 The King, the Earls, and the Barons.
2 The Knights under their respective counties.
3 The great personages who lived in earlier times.
Besides these Rolls, other collections of arms have been published, adding much to our
information on the subject. in these ancient rolls Heraldry first assumes the appeence of
a science, and it would seem that the rules by which it is governed then existed.
The earliest writer on the subject, whose work has descended to us, is Nicolas Upton. His
treatise was composed in the reign of Henry V., and translated in that of his successor,
in the work well known to all admirers of the art as The boke of St. Albans. With the
decline of chivalry the study of heraldry was neglected, and the exaggerated dignity to
which Fern, Mackenzie, and other enthusiasts endeavoured to raise it, only gained for it
contempt ; but a taste for the antiques generally has gradually revived ; and the use of
Heraldry as a key to history and biography is becoming every day more and more
acknowledged, not only in England, but throughout Europe.
Updated July, 7, 2.005
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