A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

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 mistake, and led hopelessly astray. There can be very little doubt that the “Display of Heraldry” is an accurate representation of the laws of Armory which governed the use of Arms at the date the book was written; and it correctly puts forward the opinions which were then accepted concerning the past history of the science.