Special Collections
Book of the Month, March 2010
The Elements of Armories
Edmund Bolton
London: George Eld, 1610
[D.-L.L.] F1 [Bolton]
Coats of arms were inherited across Europe by the middle of the twelfth century, and the first work on heraldic jurisprudence, Bartolus de Saxoferrato’s De insigniis et armiis, was written in the 1350s. By 1600 there were several heraldic libraries in England. The Elements of Armories is one of the earliest works of the antiquary and historian Edmund Bolton (1574/5-c.1634), and his first full-length work to be published. In about 200 quarto pages, with several explanatory woodcut illustrations, the book deals with the conventions of heraldry. It is in the form of a dialogue between two knights, Sir Amias (who could represent the author) and Sir Eustace: Sir Eustace requests information, and Sir Amias enlightens him.
This is one of two editions of Bolton’s book; the other is also from 1610. It is one of thirty-two English books about heraldry published between 1600 and 1650 and recorded on the English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC); thirteen books had appeared in the previous fifty years, and fifty-three more were to be published by the end of the seventeenth century. This copy is one of eleven seventeenth-century books on heraldry in the Durning-Lawrence Library Its place there is explained by the armigerous status of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), whom Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence believed to be one of the seven greatest Englishmen to have existed and around whom he built a 5,760-item strong library.
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