Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Some tanning and dust marking due to age. Nice deckal pages. No notes or highlighting although the cover pages has some pencil notes. See images. Best copy of this book I have seen.

About the book >.>.> 100 frequently it is the custom to regard the study of the science Tof of Armory as that of a subject which has passed beyond the limits of practical politics. Heraldry has been termed “the shorthand of History” but nevertheless the study of that shorthand has been approached too often as if it were but the study of a dead language. The result has been that too much faith has been placed in the works of older writers whose dicta have been accepted as both unquestionably correct at the date they wrote and as a consequence equally binding at the present day. Since the “Boke of St. Albans ” was written into the heraldic portion of which the author managed to compress an unconscionable amount of rubbish books and treatises on the subject of Armory have issued from the press in a constant succession. A few of them stand a head and shoulders above the remainder. The said remainder have already sunk into oblivion. Such a book as “Guillim” must of necessity rank in the forefront of any armorial bibliography; but any one seeking to judge the Armory of the present day by the standards and ethics adopted by that writer would find himself making mistake after mis- take and led hopelessly astray. There can be very little doubt that the Display of Heraldry” is an accurate representation of the laws of date the book was (MP)