I’m using the term ‘armorials’ very loosely here, to include rolls of arms, actual armorials, genealogies, or even history books with lots of pictures of arms; basically, any source, handwritten or printed, which contains a number of emblazons.

A lot of the sources are very vague on dates and provenances; I’ve sorted these the best I could based on what info was available, which is in part why the geographic groupings are fairly broad.

For the most part, I didn’t include sources which include items past the year 1600, particularly when there were a range of dates crossing that line when the source is unclear about which items are dated to when.

I also only included primary sources. So, to choose a completely random example, even though there are a few sites online with the full text of the Caerlaverock poem, those would be out of scope. But if the British Library ever makes a digital version of Cotton Caligula A.xviii (the manuscript with the poem) available online, that would be within scope.


Great Britain and Ireland (60 items)

France (98 items)

Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Poland (186 items)

Italy (52 items)

Low Countries (30 items)

Iberia (41 items)

Scandinavia (2 items)

Southeast Europe (1 item)

Friendship Albums (143 items)

Treatises (36 items)

Knights of the Round Table (18 items)

Collected Armorials from 1600-1650