20 - Heralds’ libraries

Summary

The College of Arms and its library

As early as the fifteenth century, rules began to be laid down concerning heralds and their use of books. Although there is some doubt about the authenticity of the ‘Ordinances and Statutes…for the good Government of the Office of Arms’, said to have been promulgated by Thomas of Lancaster, duke of Clarence, when lieutenant-general of the army in France and Normandy between 1417 and 1421, it is probable that those parts which do not concern the office of Garter were based on genuine originals of the fifteenth century. One of these ordinances laid down that at convenient times the officers of arms were to apply themselves to the study of books of good manners and eloquence, chronicles and accounts of honourable and notable deeds of arms, and the properties of colours, plants and precious stones, so that they might be able most properly and appropriately to assign arms to each person.

Under the terms of their charter of incorporation of 1484, the heralds were to establish a library in Coldharbour (their original headquarters) which was to be common to all the heralds, under the control of chapter. There, each king of arms ‘had his place several for his own library’. When the house was taken away from the heralds by Henry VII, there is some conflict of evidence regarding what happened to their corporate library, but it seems that all the books were taken to the house of John Wrythe, then Garter King of Arms.