Dictionary of British Arms: Medieval Ordinary Volume II

This book is designed to enable those with a working knowledge of heraldry to identify medieval 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. Listed in this volume are entries from Anchor to Bend. This present work is the first of a four-volume Ordinary covering the period before 1530, which is the point at which heraldic visitations for the purpose of collecting information about arms began, and which marks the appearance of the modern heraldic system. 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. Arms were widely displayed in the middle ages and can be found not only on tombs, monuments and seals, but also on textiles, manuscripts, metalwork, glass, wall paintings and other medieval artefacts. The index acts as an armory, and allows the reader to discover the blazons of arms recorded for particular surnames in the medieval period. It will thus be a key tool for anyone researching medieval families and their history, and represents a remarkable achievement on the part of the many experts who have contributed to it.