Dictionary of British arms - Thomas Woodcock

This book completes the Dictionary of British Medieval Arms, a major work which is designed to enable those with a working knowledge of heraldry to identify medieval British coats of arms.

The Dictionary is the result of a bequest to the Society of Antiquaries in 1926 for the production of a new edition of Papworth's Ordinary which has remained, since its publication in 1874, the principal tool for the identification of British coats of arms. An Ordinary, in this context, is a collection of arms arranged alphabetically according to their designs, as opposed to an armory which is arranged alphabetically by surname. The indices of the four volumes act as an armory.
The Dictionary covers the period before the beginning of the heraldic visitations in 1530. Its publication will mean that the wide range of people interested in medieval arms - historians, antiquaries, archaeologists, genealogist and those dealing in and collecting medieval objects - will be able to identify accurately the arms that occur in a medieval context. Even those without a knowledge of the subject will be able, by means of the index, to discover the blazon of arms recorded under particular surnames in the Middle Ages.