Excerpt from Encyclopaedia of Heraldry, or General Armory of England, Scotland, and Ireland: Comprising a Registry of All Armorial Bearings From the Earliest to the Present Time, Including the Late Grants by the College of Arms

Uillim, in prefacing his display of Heraldry, deplores that he has been forced to build solely on other men's foundations, and apprehends, that he may therefore be thought to have undertaken an idle task in writing of things formerly handled and published by persons of more sufficiency and greater judgment. This partakes much of the pride that apes humility, and the old Herald verily seems more courteous than candid. The Authors of the German. Almonv have built in like manner upon other men's foundations; but they have done so, that the structure they were about to raise might rest upon solidity and strength - that, being assured of the groundwork, they might advance with greater confidence to the battlement.

The great works on Heraldry have long since passed out of print; and, able and useful as those works confessedly were, they have become so entirely obso lete, that they are of little value now, except to the Antiquary. Other works of a similar kind - similar almost to the letter - have occasionally followed and shared the same fate, with this material difference, that the old books are still regarded and referred to, while the more recent are, in a great measure, if not altogether, forgotten. All have been, though, voluminous and costly - voluminous designedly, for the subject did not require tomes of such magnitude - costly, because volumi nous. In the present instance, the cause being removed by the whole subject matter having been confined to one volume, the effect, costliness, has ceased, and an opportunity is thus afforded to almost everybody desirous of possessing it, of obtaining a work upon Heraldry and the science of Arms.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.