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164-550: The Royal manuscripts are one of the "closed collections" of the British Library (i.e. historic collections to which new material is no longer added), consisting of some 2,000 manuscripts collected by the sovereigns of England in the " Old Royal Library " and given to the British Museum by George II in 1757. They are still catalogued with call numbers using the prefix "Royal" in the style "Royal MS 2. B. V". As

328-495: A crest , supporters , and other heraldic embellishments. The term " coat of arms " technically refers to the shield of arms itself, but the phrase is commonly used to refer to the entire achievement. The one indispensable element of a coat of arms is the shield; many ancient coats of arms consist of nothing else, but no achievement or armorial bearings exists without a coat of arms. From a very early date, illustrations of arms were frequently embellished with helmets placed above

492-481: A psalter of about 1200 from Westminster Abbey to which five tinted drawings were added some fifty years later, including the kneeling knight illustrated above. British Library 13,950,000 books 824,101 serial titles 351,116 manuscripts (single and volumes) 8,266,276 philatelic items 4,347,505 cartographic items 1,607,885 music scores The British Library is a research library in London that

656-465: A Reader Pass. The Library has been criticised for admitting numbers of undergraduate students, who have access to their own university libraries, to the reading rooms. The Library replied that it has always admitted undergraduates as long as they have a legitimate personal, work-related or academic research purpose. The majority of catalogue entries can be found on Explore the British Library,

820-501: A bright violet-red or pink colour; and carnation , commonly used to represent flesh in French heraldry. A more recent addition is the use of copper as a metal in one or two Canadian coats of arms. There are two basic types of heraldic fur, known as ermine and vair , but over the course of centuries each has developed a number of variations. Ermine represents the fur of the stoat , a type of weasel, in its white winter coat, when it

984-536: A collection, the Royal manuscripts date back to Edward IV , though many earlier manuscripts were added to the collection before it was donated. Though the collection was therefore formed entirely after the invention of printing, luxury illuminated manuscripts continued to be commissioned by royalty in England as elsewhere until well into the 16th century. The collection was expanded under Henry VIII by confiscations in

1148-760: A daily shuttle service. Construction work on the Additional Storage Building was completed in 2013 and the newspaper library at Colindale closed on 8 November 2013. The collection has now been split between the St Pancras and Boston Spa sites. The British Library Document Supply Service (BLDSS) and the Library's Document Supply Collection is based on the same site in Boston Spa. Collections housed in Yorkshire, comprising low-use material and

1312-399: A dark red or mulberry colour between gules and purpure, and tenné , an orange or dark yellow to brown colour. These last two are quite rare, and are often referred to as stains , from the belief that they were used to represent some dishonourable act, although in fact there is no evidence that this use existed outside of fanciful heraldic writers. Perhaps owing to the realization that there

1476-553: A division of the field, which is partly metal and partly colour; nor, strictly speaking, does it prevent a field from consisting of two metals or two colours, although this is unusual. Furs are considered amphibious, and neither metal nor colour; but in practice ermine and erminois are usually treated as metals, while ermines and pean are treated as colours. This rule is strictly adhered to in British armory, with only rare exceptions; although generally observed in continental heraldry, it

1640-452: A famous letter to Cromwell. A large but unknown number of books were taken for the royal library, others were taken by the expelled monastics or private collectors, but many were simply left in the abandoned buildings; at St Augustine's, Canterbury there were still some remaining in the 17th century. Those preserved were often not the ones that modern interests would have preferred. The monastic books were initially collected in libraries at

1804-609: A far larger and more coherent group than survive from any of his predecessors. He was not a scholarly man, and had to fight his way to the throne after inheriting the Yorkist claim to the throne at the age of eighteen after his father and elder brother died in battle. He reigned from 1461 until 1470, when machinations among the leading nobles forced a six-month period of exile in Burgundy . He stayed for some of this period in Bruges at

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1968-557: A good number of medieval liturgical manuscripts were destroyed for religious reasons under Edward VI . The librarian from 1549 was Bartholomew Traheron , an evangelical Protestant recommended by John Cheke . In January 1550 a letter was sent out from the Council instructing the country to "cull out all superstitious books, as missals, legends, and such like, and to deliver the garniture of the books, being either gold or silver, to Sir Anthony Aucher" (d. 1558, one of Henry's commissioners for

2132-407: A grant of arms; it may be assumed without authority by anyone entitled to bear arms, together with mantling and whatever motto the armiger may desire. The crest, however, together with the torse or coronet from which it arises, must be granted or confirmed by the relevant heraldic authority. If the bearer is entitled to the ribbon, collar, or badge of a knightly order, it may encircle or depend from

2296-665: A handful of exhibition-style items in a proprietary format, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels . This includes the facility to "turn the virtual pages" of a few documents, such as Leonardo da Vinci 's notebooks. Catalogue entries for many of the illuminated manuscript collections are available online, with selected images of pages or miniatures from a growing number of them, and there is a database of significant bookbindings . British Library Sounds provides free online access to over 60,000 sound recordings. The British Library's commercial secure electronic delivery service

2460-535: A large number of the books initially acquired were later dispersed to a new breed of antiquarian collectors. The priory of Rochester Cathedral was the source of manuscripts including the Rochester Bestiary, famous for its lively illustrations, and an unillustrated 11th-century manuscript of the Liber Scintillarum (Royal 7. C. iv) with interlinear Old English glosses . Very probably

2624-464: A late use of heraldic imagery has been in patriotic commemorations and nationalistic propaganda during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since the late nineteenth century, heraldry has focused on the use of varied lines of partition and little-used ordinaries to produce new and unique designs. A heraldic achievement consists of a shield of arms , the coat of arms, or simply coat, together with all of its accompanying elements, such as

2788-415: A leading illuminator who had moved from France to Flanders. At least six of Edward's Flemish books are dated to 1479 and 1480; such large books naturally took a considerable time to produce. Further payments totalling £10 are recorded in 1480 for binding eight books, for which other payments record the transport to Eltham in special pine chests. Other manuscripts are no longer in the Royal collection, such as

2952-468: A million discs and 185,000 tapes. The collections come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound, from music, drama and literature to oral history and wildlife sounds, stretching back over more than 100 years. The Sound Archive's online catalogue is updated daily. It is possible to listen to recordings from the collection in selected Reading Rooms in the Library through their SoundServer and Listening and Viewing Service , which

3116-409: A number is usually displayed only in documentary contexts. The Scottish and Spanish traditions resist allowing more than four quarters, preferring to subdivide one or more "grand quarters" into sub-quarters as needed. The third common mode of marshalling is with an inescutcheon , a small shield placed in front of the main shield. In Britain this is most often an "escutcheon of pretence" indicating, in

3280-470: A number of seals dating from between 1135 and 1155 appear to show the adoption of heraldic devices in England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. A notable example of an early armorial seal is attached to a charter granted by Philip I, Count of Flanders , in 1164. Seals from the latter part of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries show no evidence of heraldic symbolism, but by the end of the twelfth century, seals are uniformly heraldic in nature. One of

3444-401: A number of ways, of which the simplest is impalement : dividing the field per pale and putting one whole coat in each half. Impalement replaced the earlier dimidiation – combining the dexter half of one coat with the sinister half of another – because dimidiation can create ambiguity between, for example, a bend and a chevron . "Dexter" (from Latin dextra , "right") means to

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3608-612: A press in Westminster . At the top end of the market the illuminated manuscript continued to retain a superior prestige for many decades. When Edward's brother in law, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers had Caxton print his own translation of the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers in 1477, the book he presented to Edward was a special manuscript copied from the printed edition, with a presentation miniature , implying "that

3772-460: A printed book might not yet have been regarded as sufficiently distinguished for a formal gift of this kind". Henry VII appears to have commissioned relatively few manuscripts, preferring French luxury printed editions (his exile had been spent in France). He also added his own arms to a number of earlier manuscripts, a common practice for those bought second-hand. One manuscript, Royal 19. C. VIII,

3936-701: A proclamation in 1419, forbidding all those who had not borne arms at the Battle of Agincourt from assuming arms, except by inheritance or a grant from the crown. Beginning in the reign of Henry VIII of England, the English Kings of Arms were commanded to make visitations , in which they traveled about the country, recording arms borne under proper authority, and requiring those who bore arms without authority either to obtain authority for them, or cease their use. Arms borne improperly were to be taken down and defaced. The first such visitation began in 1530, and

4100-558: A programme for content acquisition and adds some three million items each year occupying 9.6 kilometres (6 mi) of new shelf space. Prior to 1973, the Library was part of the British Museum , also in the Borough of Camden . The Library's modern purpose-built building stands next to St Pancras station on Euston Road in Somers Town , on the site of a former goods yard. There is an additional storage building and reading room in

4264-602: A room devoted solely to Magna Carta , as well as several Qur'ans and Asian items. In addition to the permanent exhibition, there are frequent thematic exhibitions which have covered maps, sacred texts, history of the English language, and law, including a celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta . In May 2005, the British Library received a grant of £1 million from the London Development Agency to change two of its reading rooms into

4428-608: A secure network in constant communication automatically replicate, self-check, and repair data. A complete crawl of every .uk domain (and other TLDs with UK based server GeoIP ) has been added annually to the DLS since 2013, which also contains all of the Internet Archive 's 1996–2013 .uk collection. The policy and system is based on that of the Bibliothèque nationale de France , which has crawled (via IA until 2010)

4592-702: A shared technical infrastructure implementing the Digital Library System developed by the British Library. The DLS was in anticipation of the Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013, an extension of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 to include non-print electronic publications from 6 April 2013. Four storage nodes, located in London, Boston Spa , Aberystwyth , and Edinburgh , linked via

4756-466: A shield divided azure and gules would be perfectly acceptable. A line of partition may be straight or it may be varied. The variations of partition lines can be wavy, indented, embattled, engrailed, nebuly , or made into myriad other forms; see Line (heraldry) . In the early days of heraldry, very simple bold rectilinear shapes were painted on shields. These could be easily recognized at a long distance and could be easily remembered. They therefore served

4920-565: A time, such as Richard de Bury , perhaps England's leading bibliophile at the time as well as an important figure in the government, who received 14 books in 1328. By 1340 there were only 18 books left, although this probably did not include Edward's personal books. Despite the cultured nature of his court, and his encouragement of English poets, little is known of the royal books under Richard II , although one illuminated manuscript created in Paris for Charles VI of France to present to Richard,

5084-477: A traditional shield under certain circumstances, and in Canadian heraldry the shield is now regularly granted. The whole surface of the escutcheon is termed the field , which may be plain, consisting of a single tincture, or divided into multiple sections of differing tinctures by various lines of partition; and any part of the field may be semé , or powdered with small charges. The edges and adjacent parts of

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5248-531: A window commemorating the knights who embarked on the Second Crusade in 1147, and was probably made soon after the event; but Montfaucon's illustration of the window before it was destroyed shows no heraldic design on any of the shields. In England, from the time of the Norman conquest, official documents had to be sealed. Beginning in the twelfth century, seals assumed a distinctly heraldic character;

5412-410: A year in both 1509 and 1534, who in both years was based at Richmond Palace west of London, which seems to have been the location of the main collection. As well as more common northern European manuscripts, Henry also received Italian manuscripts illuminated in full-blown Renaissance style as gifts; at least three remain in the British Library. It was at Richmond that in 1535 a French visitor compiled

5576-606: Is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport . The British Library is a major research library , with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains

5740-544: Is a large piazza that includes pieces of public art , such as large sculptures by Eduardo Paolozzi (a bronze statue based on William Blake 's study of Isaac Newton ) and Antony Gormley . It is the largest public building constructed in the United Kingdom in the 20th century. In the middle of the building is a six-storey glass tower inspired by a similar structure in the Beinecke Library , containing

5904-455: Is also credited with having originated the English crest of a lion statant (now statant-guardant). The origins of heraldry are sometimes associated with the Crusades , a series of military campaigns undertaken by Christian armies from 1096 to 1487, with the goal of reconquering Jerusalem and other former Byzantine territories captured by Muslim forces during the seventh century. While there

6068-485: Is an important means of identifying the original owner. There are patchy documentary records which mention many more, though the royal library was from about 1318 covered in the records of the "Chamber", which have survived far less completely than the pipe rolls of the main Exchequer . The careful inventories of the French royal library have no English equivalent until a list compiled at Richmond Palace in 1535. At

6232-701: Is any object or figure placed on a heraldic shield or on any other object of an armorial composition. Any object found in nature or technology may appear as a heraldic charge in armory. Charges can be animals, objects, or geometric shapes. Apart from the ordinaries, the most frequent charges are the cross – with its hundreds of variations – and the lion and eagle . Other common animals are bears , stags , wild boars , martlets , wolves and fish . Dragons , bats , unicorns , griffins , and other monsters appear as charges and as supporters . Animals are found in various stereotyped positions or attitudes . Quadrupeds can often be found rampant (standing on

6396-497: Is available in hard copy and via online databases. Staff are trained to guide small and medium enterprises (SME) and entrepreneurs to use the full range of resources. In 2018, a Human Lending Library service was established in the Business & IP Centre, allowing social entrepreneurs to receive an hour's mentoring from a high-profile business professional. This service is run in partnership with Expert Impact. Stephen Fear

6560-693: Is based in the Rare Books & Music Reading Room. In 2006, the Library launched a new online resource, British Library Sounds , which makes 50,000 of the Sound Archive's recordings available online. Launched in October 2012, the British Library's moving image services provide access to nearly a million sound and moving image items onsite, supported by data for over 20 million sound and moving image recordings. The three services, which for copyright reasons can only be accessed from terminals within

6724-503: Is called barry , while a pattern of vertical (palewise) stripes is called paly . A pattern of diagonal stripes may be called bendy or bendy sinister , depending on the direction of the stripes. Other variations include chevrony , gyronny and chequy . Wave shaped stripes are termed undy . For further variations, these are sometimes combined to produce patterns of barry-bendy , paly-bendy , lozengy and fusilly . Semés, or patterns of repeated charges, are also considered variations of

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6888-442: Is called an ermine. It consists of a white, or occasionally silver field, powdered with black figures known as ermine spots , representing the black tip of the animal's tail. Ermine was traditionally used to line the cloaks and caps of the nobility. The shape of the heraldic ermine spot has varied considerably over time, and nowadays is typically drawn as an arrowhead surmounted by three small dots, but older forms may be employed at

7052-524: Is conventionally regarded as the founder of the "old Royal Library" which formed a continuous collection from his reign until its donation to the nation in the 18th century, though this view has been challenged. There are only about twenty surviving manuscripts that probably belonged to the English kings and queens between Edward I and Henry VI , though the number expands considerably when the princes and princesses are included. A few Anglo-Saxon manuscripts owned by royalty have survived after being presented to

7216-439: Is free of charge in hard copy and online via approximately 30 subscription databases. Registered readers can access the collection and the databases. There are over 50 million patent specifications from 40 countries in a collection dating back to 1855. The collection also includes official gazettes on patents, trade marks and Registered Design ; law reports and other material on litigation ; and information on copyright . This

7380-438: Is given to the heraldic artist in depicting the heraldic tinctures; there is no fixed shade or hue to any of them. Whenever an object is depicted as it appears in nature, rather than in one or more of the heraldic tinctures, it is termed proper , or the colour of nature. This does not seem to have been done in the earliest heraldry, but examples are known from at least the seventeenth century. While there can be no objection to

7544-507: Is no evidence that heraldic art originated in the course of the Crusades, there is no reason to doubt that the gathering of large armies, drawn from across Europe for a united cause, would have encouraged the adoption of armorial bearings as a means of identifying one's commanders in the field, or that it helped disseminate the principles of armory across Europe. At least two distinctive features of heraldry are generally accepted as products of

7708-423: Is no heraldic authority, and no law preventing anyone from assuming whatever arms they please, provided that they do not infringe upon the arms of another. Although heraldry originated from military necessity, it soon found itself at home in the pageantry of the medieval tournament . The opportunity for knights and lords to display their heraldic bearings in a competitive medium led to further refinements, such as

7872-452: Is normally left to the discretion of the heraldic artist, and many different shapes have prevailed during different periods of heraldic design, and in different parts of Europe. One shape alone is normally reserved for a specific purpose: the lozenge , a diamond-shaped escutcheon, was traditionally used to display the arms of women, on the grounds that shields, as implements of war, were inappropriate for this purpose. This distinction

8036-460: Is not adhered to quite as strictly. Arms which violate this rule are sometimes known as "puzzle arms", of which the most famous example is the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem , consisting of gold crosses on a silver field. The field of a shield, or less often a charge or crest, is sometimes made up of a pattern of colours, or variation . A pattern of horizontal (barwise) stripes, for example,

8200-522: Is really no such thing as a stain in genuine heraldry, as well as the desire to create new and unique designs, the use of these colours for general purposes has become accepted in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Occasionally one meets with other colours, particularly in continental heraldry, although they are not generally regarded among the standard heraldic colours. Among these are cendrée , or ash-colour; brunâtre , or brown; bleu-céleste or bleu de ciel , sky blue; amaranth or columbine ,

8364-423: Is similar to vair in pale, but diagonal. When alternating rows are reversed as in counter-vair, and then displaced by half the width of one bell, it is termed vair in point , or wave-vair. A form peculiar to German heraldry is alternate vair , in which each vair bell is divided in half vertically, with half argent and half azure. All of these variations can also be depicted in the form known as potent , in which

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8528-452: Is sometimes found. Three additional furs are sometimes encountered in continental heraldry; in French and Italian heraldry one meets with plumeté or plumetty , in which the field appears to be covered with feathers, and papelonné , in which it is decorated with scales. In German heraldry one may encounter kursch , or vair bellies, depicted as brown and furry; all of these probably originated as variations of vair. Considerable latitude

8692-480: Is the national library of the United Kingdom . It is one of the largest libraries in the world . It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the United Kingdom. The Library

8856-596: Is the only one that must automatically receive a copy of every item published in Britain; the others are entitled to these items, but must specifically request them from the publisher after learning that they have been or are about to be published, a task done centrally by the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries . Further, under the terms of Irish copyright law (most recently the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000),

9020-564: Is the use of a limited palette of colours and patterns, usually referred to as tinctures . These are divided into three categories, known as metals , colours , and furs . The metals are or and argent , representing gold and silver, respectively, although in practice they are usually depicted as yellow and white. Five colours are universally recognized: gules , or red; sable , or black; azure , or blue; vert , or green; and purpure , or purple; and most heraldic authorities also admit two additional colours, known as sanguine or murrey ,

9184-547: The .fr domain annually (62 TBs in 2015) since 2006. On 28 October 2023 the British Library's entire website went down due to a cyber attack, later confirmed as a ransomware attack attributed to ransomware group Rhysida . Catalogues and ordering systems were affected, rendering the great majority of the library's collections inaccessible to readers. The library released statements saying that their services would be disrupted for several weeks, with some disruption expected to persist for several months. As at January 2024,

9348-520: The Bayeux Tapestry , illustrating the Norman invasion of England in 1066, and probably commissioned about 1077, when the cathedral of Bayeux was rebuilt, depicts a number of shields of various shapes and designs, many of which are plain, while others are decorated with dragons, crosses, or other typically heraldic figures. Yet no individual is depicted twice bearing the same arms, nor are any of

9512-655: The Dissolution of the Monasteries and after the falls of Henry's ministers Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell . Many older manuscripts were presented to monarchs as gifts; perhaps the most important manuscript in the collection, the Codex Alexandrinus , was presented to Charles I in recognition of the diplomatic efforts of his father James I to help the Eastern Orthodox churches under

9676-651: The Epistre au roi Richart of Philippe de Mézières (Royal 20. B. VI), was at Richmond in 1535, and is in the British Library Royal manuscripts. The reign of Henry IV has left records of the building of a novum studium ("new study") at Eltham Palace finely decorated with more than 78 square feet of stained glass , at a cost of £13, and a prosecution involving nine missing royal books, including bibles in Latin and English, valued respectively at £10 and £5,

9840-552: The HMSO Binderies became British Library responsibilities. In 1983, the Library absorbed the National Sound Archive , which holds many sound and video recordings, with over a million discs and thousands of tapes. The core of the Library's historical collections is based on a series of donations and acquisitions from the 18th century. These are known as the "foundation collections", and they include

10004-462: The King's Library with 65,000 printed volumes along with other pamphlets, manuscripts and maps collected by King George III between 1763 and 1820. In December 2009 a new storage building at Boston Spa was opened by Rosie Winterton . The new facility, costing £26 million, has a capacity for seven million items, stored in more than 140,000 bar-coded containers and which are retrieved by robots from

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10168-604: The Nebra sky disc , is also thought to serve as a heraldic precursor. Until the nineteenth century, it was common for heraldic writers to cite examples such as these, and metaphorical symbols such as the "Lion of Judah" or "Eagle of the Caesars", as evidence of the antiquity of heraldry itself; and to infer therefrom that the great figures of ancient history bore arms representing their noble status and descent. The Book of Saint Albans , compiled in 1486, declares that Christ himself

10332-410: The fess , the pale , the bend , the chevron , the saltire , and the pall . There is a separate class of charges called sub-ordinaries which are of a geometrical shape subordinate to the ordinary. According to Friar, they are distinguished by their order in blazon. The sub-ordinaries include the inescutcheon , the orle , the tressure, the double tressure, the bordure , the chief , the canton ,

10496-604: The griffin can also be found. In the Bible , the Book of Numbers refers to the standards and ensigns of the children of Israel , who were commanded to gather beneath these emblems and declare their pedigrees. The Greek and Latin writers frequently describe the shields and symbols of various heroes, and units of the Roman army were sometimes identified by distinctive markings on their shields. At least one pre-historic European object,

10660-404: The herald , originally a type of messenger employed by noblemen, assumed the responsibility of learning and knowing the rank, pedigree, and heraldic devices of various knights and lords, as well as the rules governing the design and description, or blazoning of arms, and the precedence of their bearers. As early as the late thirteenth century, certain heralds in the employ of monarchs were given

10824-459: The label , and flaunches . Ordinaries may appear in parallel series, in which case blazons in English give them different names such as pallets, bars, bendlets, and chevronels. French blazon makes no such distinction between these diminutives and the ordinaries when borne singly. Unless otherwise specified an ordinary is drawn with straight lines, but each may be indented, embattled, wavy, engrailed, or otherwise have their lines varied. A charge

10988-542: The "Soane Josephus " (MS 1, Sir John Soane's Museum ), which remained in the collection until after an inventory in 1666. One of the most splendid books made for Edward in Bruges in the 1470s is a Bible historiale in French in three volumes (Royal MS 15 D i, 18 D ix-x), which was probably begun for another patron, then completed for Edward. Edward's reign saw the beginning of printing, both in English in 1473-75 and in England itself from 1476, when William Caxton set up

11152-399: The 162.7 miles of temperature and humidity-controlled storage space. On Friday, 5 April 2013, the Library announced that it would begin saving all sites with the suffix .uk in a bid to preserve the nation's " digital memory " (which as of then amounted to about 4.8 million sites containing 1 billion web pages). The Library would make all the material publicly available to users by

11316-518: The 18th and 19th centuries were made available online as the British Newspaper Archive . The project planned to scan up to 40 million pages over the next 10 years. The archive is free to search, but there is a charge for accessing the pages themselves. As of 2022, Explore the British Library is the latest iteration of the online catalogue. It contains nearly 57 million records and may be used to search, view and order items from

11480-677: The British Library by other routes, the Parisian Bedford Hours (Ms Add 18850, in fact presented to Henry VI in 1431) and the English Bedford Psalter and Hours (BL Ms Add 42131). He also used the dominant English position in France to buy the French royal library of the Louvre , from which a few examples remain in the Royal manuscripts. About fifty of the Royal manuscripts were acquired by Edward IV (1442-1483),

11644-880: The British Library continued to experience technology outages as a result of the cyber-attack. A number of books and manuscripts are on display to the public in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery which is open seven days a week at no charge. Some manuscripts in the exhibition include Beowulf , the Lindisfarne Gospels and St Cuthbert Gospel , a Gutenberg Bible , Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales , Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur ( King Arthur ), Captain Cook 's journal, Jane Austen 's History of England , Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre , Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures Under Ground , Rudyard Kipling 's Just So Stories , Charles Dickens 's Nicholas Nickleby , Virginia Woolf 's Mrs Dalloway and

11808-788: The British Library is entitled to automatically receive a free copy of every book published in Ireland, alongside the National Library of Ireland , Trinity College Library in Dublin, the library of the University of Limerick , the library of Dublin City University and the libraries of the four constituent universities of the National University of Ireland . The Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, and

11972-409: The British Library must cover a percentage of its operating costs, a fee is charged to the user. However, this service is no longer profitable and has led to a series of restructures to try to prevent further losses. When Google Books started, the British Library signed an agreement with Microsoft to digitise a number of books from the British Library for its Live Search Books project. This material

12136-483: The British Library required demolition of an integral part of Bloomsbury – a seven-acre swathe of streets immediately in front of the Museum, so that the Library could be situated directly opposite. After a long and hard-fought campaign led by Dr George Wagner, this decision was overturned and the library was instead constructed by John Laing plc on a site at Euston Road next to St Pancras railway station . Following

12300-545: The Business & IP Centre. The centre was opened in March 2006. It holds arguably the most comprehensive collection of business and intellectual property (IP) material in the United Kingdom and is the official library of the UK Intellectual Property Office . The collection is divided up into four main information areas: market research , company information, trade directories, and journals . It

12464-589: The Dissolution in Kent). Despite the additions from the dissolved monasteries, the collection that survived is very short of medieval liturgical manuscripts, and a high proportion of those that do remain can be shown to have arrived under Mary I or the Stuarts. There are no illuminated missals at all, only eight other liturgical manuscripts, eighteen illuminated psalters and eight books of hours . Edward died at

12628-533: The Document Supply Collection are held electronically and can be downloaded immediately. The collection supports research and development in UK, overseas and international industry, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry . BLDSS also provides material to Higher Education institutions, students and staff and members of the public, who can order items through their Public Library or through

12792-442: The English tinted drawing style. Another, Royal 2 B III, is a 13th-century production of Bruges , which was given by "your humbull and poore orytur Rafe, Pryne, grocer of Loundon, wushynge your gras prosperus helthe", as an inscription says. The son of James I , Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (1594-1612), made a significant addition to the library by acquiring the library of John, Lord Lumley (c.1533-1609). Lumley had married

12956-484: The Library announced that it would be moving low-use items to a new storage facility in Boston Spa in Yorkshire and that it planned to close the newspaper library at Colindale, ahead of a later move to a similar facility on the same site. From January 2009 to April 2012 over 200 km of material was moved to the Additional Storage Building and is now delivered to British Library Reading Rooms in London on request by

13120-505: The Library's BL Document Supply Service (BLDSS). The Document Supply Service also offers Find it For Me and Get it For Me services which assist researchers in accessing hard-to-find material. In April 2013, BLDSS launched its new online ordering and tracking system, which enables customers to search available items, view detailed availability, pricing and delivery time information, place and track orders, and manage account preferences online. The British Library Sound Archive holds more than

13284-556: The Library's main catalogue, which is based on Primo. Other collections have their own catalogues, such as western manuscripts. The large reading rooms offer hundreds of seats which are often filled with researchers, especially during the Easter and summer holidays. British Library Reader Pass holders are also able to view the Document Supply Collection in the Reading Room at the Library's site in Boston Spa in Yorkshire as well as

13448-879: The NLL became part of the British Library in 1973 it changed its name to the British Library Lending Division, in 1985 it was renamed as the British Library Document Supply Centre and is now known as the British Library Document Supply Service, often abbreviated as BLDSS. BLDSS now holds 87.5 million items, including 296,000 international journal titles, 400,000 conference proceedings, 3 million monographs , 5 million official publications, and 500,000 UK and North American theses and dissertations. 12.5 million articles in

13612-628: The National Libraries of Scotland and Wales are also entitled to copies of material published in Ireland, but again must formally make requests. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 extended United Kingdom legal deposit requirements to electronic documents, such as CD-ROMs and selected websites. The Library also holds the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (APAC) which include the India Office Records and materials in

13776-658: The Reading Rooms at St Pancras or Boston Spa, are: The Library holds an almost complete collection of British and Irish newspapers since 1840. This is partly because of the legal deposit legislation of 1869, which required newspapers to supply a copy of each edition of a newspaper to the library. London editions of national daily and Sunday newspapers are complete back to 1801. In total, the collection consists of 660,000 bound volumes and 370,000 reels of microfilm containing tens of millions of newspapers with 52,000 titles on 45 km (28 mi) of shelves. From earlier dates,

13940-419: The age of 16, and was a solitary and studious boy, several of whose personal books are in the British Library. He seems to have centralized most of the library at Whitehall Palace , though Richmond still seems to have retained a collection to judge by the reports of later visitors. The significant addition to the library of Edward's reign, though only completed after his death, was the purchase from his widow of

14104-403: The antiquity of heraldry. The development of the modern heraldic language cannot be attributed to a single individual, time, or place. Although certain designs that are now considered heraldic were evidently in use during the eleventh century, most accounts and depictions of shields up to the beginning of the twelfth century contain little or no evidence of their heraldic character. For example,

14268-409: The arms of a married couple, that the wife is an heraldic heiress (i.e., she inherits a coat of arms because she has no brothers). In continental Europe an inescutcheon (sometimes called a "heart shield") usually carries the ancestral arms of a monarch or noble whose domains are represented by the quarters of the main shield. In German heraldry , animate charges in combined coats usually turn to face

14432-404: The artist's discretion. When the field is sable and the ermine spots argent, the same pattern is termed ermines ; when the field is or rather than argent, the fur is termed erminois ; and when the field is sable and the ermine spots or , it is termed pean . Vair represents the winter coat of the red squirrel , which is blue-grey on top and white underneath. To form the linings of cloaks,

14596-612: The authority of the Earl Marshal ; but all of the arms granted by the college are granted by the authority of the crown. In Scotland Court of the Lord Lyon King of Arms oversees the heraldry, and holds court sessions which are an official part of Scotland's court system. Similar bodies regulate the granting of arms in other monarchies and several members of the Commonwealth of Nations , but in most other countries there

14760-435: The base. The other points include dexter chief , center chief , and sinister chief , running along the upper part of the shield from left to right, above the honour point; dexter flank and sinister flank , on the sides approximately level with fess point; and dexter base , middle base , and sinister base along the lower part of the shield, below the nombril point. One of the most distinctive qualities of heraldry

14924-590: The books and manuscripts: For many years its collections were dispersed in various buildings around central London , in places such as Bloomsbury (within the British Museum), Chancery Lane , Bayswater , and Holborn , with an interlibrary lending centre at Boston Spa , 2.5 miles (4 km) east of Wetherby in West Yorkshire (situated on Thorp Arch Trading Estate), and the newspaper library at Colindale , north-west London. Initial plans for

15088-498: The branch library near Boston Spa in Yorkshire. The St Pancras building was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 25 June 1998, and is classified as a Grade I listed building "of exceptional interest" for its architecture and history. The British Library was created on 1 July 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972. Prior to this, the national library was part of the British Museum , which provided

15252-760: The bulk of the holdings of the new library, alongside smaller organisations which were folded in (such as the National Central Library , the National Lending Library for Science and Technology and the British National Bibliography ). In 1974 functions previously exercised by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information were taken over; in 1982 the India Office Library and Records and

15416-416: The centre of the composition. In English the word "crest" is commonly (but erroneously) used to refer to an entire heraldic achievement of armorial bearings. The technical use of the heraldic term crest refers to just one component of a complete achievement. The crest rests on top of a helmet which itself rests on the most important part of the achievement: the shield. The modern crest has grown out of

15580-414: The church, among them a Gospel Book, Royal 1. B. VII , given to Christ Church, Canterbury by King Athelstan in the 920s, which probably rejoined the collection at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. However these works are scattered among a variety of libraries. By the late Middle Ages luxury manuscripts would generally include the heraldry of the commissioner, especially in the case of royalty, which

15744-480: The closure of the Round Reading Room on 25 October 1997 the library stock began to be moved into the St Pancras building. Before the end of that year the first of eleven new reading rooms had opened and the moving of stock was continuing. From 1997 to 2009 the main collection was housed in this single new building and the collection of British and overseas newspapers was housed at Colindale . In July 2008

15908-841: The collections include the Thomason Tracts , comprising 7,200 seventeenth-century newspapers, and the Burney Collection , featuring nearly 1 million pages of newspapers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The section also holds extensive collections of non-British newspapers, in numerous languages. The Newspapers section was based in Colindale in North London until 2013, when the buildings, which were considered to provide inadequate storage conditions and to be beyond improvement, were closed and sold for redevelopment. The physical holdings are now divided between

16072-513: The collections or search the contents of the Library's website. The Library's electronic collections include over 40,000 ejournals, 800 databases and other electronic resources. A number of these are available for remote access to registered St Pancras Reader Pass holders. PhD theses are available via the E-Theses Online Service (EThOS). In 2012, the UK legal deposit libraries signed a memorandum of understanding to create

16236-401: The crusaders: the surcoat , an outer garment worn over the armor to protect the wearer from the heat of the sun, was often decorated with the same devices that appeared on a knight's shield. It is from this garment that the phrase "coat of arms" is derived. Also the lambrequin, or mantling, that depends from the helmet and frames the shield in modern heraldry, began as a practical covering for

16400-532: The descendants of the various persons depicted known to have borne devices resembling those in the tapestry. Similarly, an account of the French knights at the court of the Byzantine emperor Alexius I at the beginning of the twelfth century describes their shields of polished metal, devoid of heraldic design. A Spanish manuscript from 1109 describes both plain and decorated shields, none of which appears to have been heraldic. The Abbey of St. Denis contained

16564-405: The development of "landscape heraldry", incorporating realistic depictions of landscapes, during the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century. These fell out of fashion during the mid-nineteenth century, when a renewed interest in the history of armory led to the re-evaluation of earlier designs, and a new appreciation for the medieval origins of the art. In particular,

16728-471: The development of elaborate tournament helms, and further popularized the art of heraldry throughout Europe. Prominent burghers and corporations, including many cities and towns, assumed or obtained grants of arms, with only nominal military associations. Heraldic devices were depicted in various contexts, such as religious and funerary art, and in using a wide variety of media, including stonework, carved wood, enamel , stained glass , and embroidery . As

16892-446: The dexter is on the left side, and the sinister on the right. The placement of various charges may also refer to a number of specific points, nine in number according to some authorities, but eleven according to others. The three most important are fess point , located in the visual center of the shield; the honour point , located midway between fess point and the chief; and the nombril point , located midway between fess point and

17056-543: The distinguishing feature of heraldry, did not develop until the High Middle Ages . It is often claimed that the use of helmets with face guards during this period made it difficult to recognize one's commanders in the field when large armies gathered together for extended periods, necessitating the development of heraldry as a symbolic language, but there is little support for this view. The perceived beauty and pageantry of heraldic designs allowed them to survive

17220-443: The earliest known examples of armory as it subsequently came to be practiced can be seen on the tomb of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou , who died in 1151. An enamel, probably commissioned by Geoffrey's widow between 1155 and 1160, depicts him carrying a blue shield decorated with six golden lions rampant. He wears a blue helmet adorned with another lion, and his cloak is lined in vair. A medieval chronicle states that Geoffrey

17384-607: The end of 2013, and would ensure that, through technological advancements, all the material is preserved for future generations, despite the fluidity of the Internet. The Euston Road building was Grade I listed on 1 August 2015. It has plans to open a third location in Leeds , potentially located in the Grade 1 listed Temple Works . In England, legal deposit can be traced back to at least 1610. The Copyright Act 1911 established

17548-436: The escutcheon are used to identify the placement of various heraldic charges; the upper edge, and the corresponding upper third of the shield, are referred to as the chief; the lower part is the base. The sides of the shield are known as the dexter and sinister flanks, although these terms are based on the point of view of the bearer of the shield, who would be standing behind it; to the observer, and in all heraldic illustration,

17712-399: The field. The Rule of tincture applies to all semés and variations of the field. The field of a shield in heraldry can be divided into more than one tincture , as can the various heraldic charges . Many coats of arms consist simply of a division of the field into two contrasting tinctures. These are considered divisions of a shield, so the rule of tincture can be ignored. For example,

17876-457: The first surviving approach to a list of books in the royal library, though this was only covered the books there, and perhaps was not complete. He listed 143 books, which were nearly all in French, and included many of Edward IV's collection. This was just before Henry's Dissolution of the Monasteries , which was to greatly increase the size of the royal library. In 1533, before the dissolution began, Henry had commissioned John Leland to examine

18040-475: The fur is termed gros vair or beffroi ; if of six or more, it is menu-vair , or miniver. A common variation is counter-vair , in which alternating rows are reversed, so that the bases of the vair bells of each tincture are joined to those of the same tincture in the row above or below. When the rows are arranged so that the bells of each tincture form vertical columns, it is termed vair in pale ; in continental heraldry one may encounter vair in bend , which

18204-683: The gradual abandonment of armour on the battlefield during the seventeenth century. Heraldry has been described poetically as "the handmaid of history", "the shorthand of history", and "the floral border in the garden of history". In modern times, individuals, public and private organizations, corporations, cities, towns, regions, and other entities use heraldry and its conventions to symbolize their heritage, achievements, and aspirations. Various symbols have been used to represent individuals or groups for thousands of years. The earliest representations of distinct persons and regions in Egyptian art show

18368-482: The hard-copy newspaper collection from 29 September 2014. Now that access is available to legal deposit collection material, it is necessary for visitors to register as a Reader to use the Boston Spa Reading Room. The British Library makes a number of images of items within its collections available online. Its Online Gallery gives access to 30,000 images from various medieval books, together with

18532-402: The helmet and the back of the neck during the Crusades, serving much the same function as the surcoat. Its slashed or scalloped edge, today rendered as billowing flourishes, is thought to have originated from hard wearing in the field, or as a means of deadening a sword blow and perhaps entangling the attacker's weapon. The spread of armorial bearings across Europe gave rise to a new occupation:

18696-519: The heraldry of the commissioner. Many of Edward's manuscripts reflected this taste; like that of Philip, his court displayed an increase in ceremonial formality, and interest in chivalry. Most of his books are large-format popular works in French, with several modern and ancient histories, and authors such as Boccaccio , Christine de Pisan and Alain Chartier . They are too large to hold comfortably, and may have been read aloud from lecterns , though

18860-698: The high figures suggesting they were illuminated. The wills of Henry's son, Henry V refer to a Biblia Magna ("Big" or "Great Bible"), which had belonged to Henry IV and was to be left to the nuns of Henry V's foundation at Syon . This may be Royal MS 1. E. IX, with fine historiated initials illuminated in London by several artists from the school of Herman Scheerre of Cologne . A considerable number of religious texts were left to family members, staff and his many chaplains. Two of Henry V's younger brothers were notable collectors. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (1390-1447), who had commissioned translations from Greek into Latin and gave most of his collection, 281 books, to

19024-709: The house of Louis de Gruuthuse , a leading nobleman in the intimate circle of Philip the Good , who had died three years before. Philip had the largest and finest library of illuminated manuscripts in Europe, with perhaps 600, and Gruuthuse was one of several Burgundian nobles who had begun to collect seriously in emulation. In 1470 his library (much of it now in Paris) was in its early stages, but must already have been very impressive for Edward. The Flemish illuminating workshops had by this date clearly overtaken those of Paris to become

19188-423: The languages of Asia and of north and north-east Africa. The Library is open to everyone who has a genuine need to use its collections. Anyone with a permanent address who wishes to carry out research can apply for a Reader Pass; they are required to provide proof of signature and address. Historically, only those wishing to use specialised material unavailable in other public or academic libraries would be given

19352-431: The large miniatures were certainly intended to be appreciated. The largest purchases were probably made from about April 1479, when a part-payment is recorded to a foreign ("stranger") "merchant" or dealer for £80 to "merchant stranger Philip Maisertuell in partie of paiement of £240 of certaine bokes by the said Philip to be provided to the kyngs use in the parties beyond the see." This was perhaps Philippe de Mazerolles ,

19516-567: The last was carried out in 1700, although no new commissions to carry out visitations were made after the accession of William III in 1689. There is little evidence that Scottish heralds ever went on visitations. In 1484, during the reign of Richard III , the various heralds employed by the crown were incorporated into England's College of Arms , through which all new grants of arms would eventually be issued. The college currently consists of three Kings of Arms, assisted by six Heralds, and four Pursuivants , or junior officers of arms, all under

19680-458: The leading centre in northern Europe, and English illumination had probably come to seem somewhat provincial. The Burgundian collectors were especially attracted to secular works, often with a military or chivalric flavour, that were illustrated with a lavishness rarely found in earlier manuscripts on such subjects. As well as generous numbers of miniatures, the borders were decorated in increasingly inventive and elaborate fashion, with much use of

19844-409: The left hind foot). Another frequent position is passant , or walking, like the lions of the coat of arms of England . Eagles are almost always shown with their wings spread, or displayed. A pair of wings conjoined is called a vol . In English heraldry the crescent , mullet , martlet , annulet , fleur-de-lis , and rose may be added to a shield to distinguish cadet branches of a family from

20008-444: The libraries of religious houses in England. Leland was a young Renaissance humanist whose patrons included Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell and was a chaplain to the king with church benefices , by papal dispensation as he was not yet even a subdeacon . He spent much of the following years touring the country compiling lists of the most significant manuscripts, from 1536 being overtaken by the process of dissolution, as he complained in

20172-550: The library at Oxford University , where the Bodleian Library later grew around Duke Humfrey's Library . At his death his remaining books mostly went to his nephew Henry VI's new King's College, Cambridge , but some illuminated books in French were kept for the royal library, and are still in the Royal manuscripts. John, Duke of Bedford took over as English commander in France after Henry V's death in 1422, and commissioned two important manuscripts which have reached

20336-499: The library turned into a national library accessible to all scholars, an idea already proposed by John Dee to Elizabeth I, and thereafter by Richard Bentley , the famous textual scholar who became librarian in 1693. There was a new inventory in 1666. The major purchase in the reign of Charles II was of 311 volumes in about 1678 from the collection of John Theyer , including the Westminster Psalter (Royal 2. A. xxii),

20500-399: The main purpose of heraldry: identification. As more complicated shields came into use, these bold shapes were set apart in a separate class as the "honourable ordinaries". They act as charges and are always written first in blazon . Unless otherwise specified they extend to the edges of the field. Though ordinaries are not easily defined, they are generally described as including the cross ,

20664-480: The main royal library was moved to St James's Palace where his books had been kept. The Lumley library included MS Royal 14. C. vii, with the Historia Anglorum and Chronica Maiora of Matthew Paris , which had passed from St Albans Abbey to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and later Arundel. James I purchased much of the library of the classical scholar Isaac Casaubon who died in London in 1614, and

20828-483: The manuscripts belonging to the reformer Martin Bucer , who had died in England. Mary I , who restored Catholicism, may have felt the lack of liturgical books, and was presented with at least two illuminated psalters, one the highly important English Queen Mary Psalter of 1310-1320 (Royal 2 B VII), confiscated from Henry Manners, 2nd Earl of Rutland after his arrest. This has in total over 1,000 illustrations, many in

20992-636: The miniatures and painted decoration were done in Flanders or France, even if the text had been written in England. Meghen and Gerard Horenbout both worked on a Latin New Testament, mixing the gospels in the Vulgate with translations by Erasmus of Acts and the Apocalypse, which has the heraldry of Henry and Catherine of Aragon ( Hatfield House MS 324). Henry also retained a librarian, paid £10

21156-430: The name implies, the usual number of divisions is four, but the principle has been extended to very large numbers of "quarters". Quarters are numbered from the dexter chief (the corner nearest to the right shoulder of a man standing behind the shield), proceeding across the top row, and then across the next row and so on. When three coats are quartered, the first is repeated as the fourth; when only two coats are quartered,

21320-646: The nation by his son George IV , which is also in the British Library, as is the Royal Music Library, a collection mostly of scores and parts both printed (about 4,500 items) and in manuscript (about 1,000), given in 1957. The Royal manuscripts were deposited in 1707 in Cotton House, Westminster with the Cotton Library , which was already a form of national collection under trustees, available for consultation by scholars and antiquaries ;

21484-565: The newspaper and Document Supply collections, make up around 70% of the total material the library holds. The Library previously had a book storage depot in Woolwich , south-east London, which is no longer in use. The new library was designed specially for the purpose by the architect Colin St John Wilson in collaboration with his wife MJ Long , who came up with the plan that was subsequently developed and built. Facing Euston Road

21648-685: The next, representing a particular person or line of descent. The medieval heralds also devised arms for various knights and lords from history and literature. Notable examples include the toads attributed to Pharamond , the cross and martlets of Edward the Confessor , and the various arms attributed to the Nine Worthies and the Knights of the Round Table . These too are readily dismissed as fanciful inventions, rather than evidence of

21812-668: The norm, though the richest buyers, like Henry, could often order copies printed on vellum. But some manuscripts were still commissioned and illuminated, and Henry and his minister Cardinal Wolsey were the main English patrons in the 1520s. Henry retained a scribe with the title "writer of the king's books", from 1530 employing the Fleming Pieter Meghen (1466/67 1540), who had earlier been used by Erasmus and Wolsey. Although some Flemish illuminators were active in England, notably Lucas Horenbout (as well as his father Gerard and sister Susanna), it seems that more often

21976-601: The occasional depiction of objects in this manner, the overuse of charges in their natural colours is often cited as indicative of bad heraldic practice. The practice of landscape heraldry, which flourished in the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century, made extensive use of non-heraldic colours. One of the most important conventions of heraldry is the so-called " rule of tincture ". To provide for contrast and visibility, metals should never be placed on metals, and colours should never be placed on colours. This rule does not apply to charges which cross

22140-401: The older, undulating pattern, now known as vair ondé or vair ancien , the bells of each tincture are curved and joined at the base. There is no fixed rule as to whether the argent bells should be at the top or the bottom of each row. At one time vair commonly came in three sizes, and this distinction is sometimes encountered in continental heraldry; if the field contains fewer than four rows,

22304-409: The palaces of Westminster (later known as Whitehall), Hampton Court and Greenwich , though from around 1549 they were apparently all concentrated at Westminster. There is an inventory from April 1542 listing 910 books at Westminster, and there are press-marks on many books relating to this. It is often impossible to trace the origin of monastic manuscripts in or passing through the royal library -

22468-410: The pelts were sewn together, forming an undulating, bell-shaped pattern, with interlocking light and dark rows. The heraldic fur is depicted with interlocking rows of argent and azure, although the shape of the pelts, usually referred to as "vair bells", is usually left to the artist's discretion. In the modern form, the bells are depicted with straight lines and sharp angles, and meet only at points; in

22632-681: The principle of the legal deposit, ensuring that the British Library and five other libraries in Great Britain and Ireland are entitled to receive a free copy of every item published or distributed in Britain. The other five libraries are: the Bodleian Library at Oxford ; the University Library at Cambridge ; Trinity College Library in Dublin ; and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales . The British Library

22796-462: The right from the viewpoint of the bearer of the arms and "sinister" (from Latin sinistra , "left") means to the bearer's left. The dexter side is considered the side of greatest honour (see also dexter and sinister ). A more versatile method is quartering , division of the field by both vertical and horizontal lines. This practice originated in Spain ( Castile and León ) after the 13th century. As

22960-418: The rise of firearms rendered the mounted knight increasingly irrelevant during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the tournament faded into history, the military character of heraldry gave way to its use as a decorative art. Freed from the limitations of actual shields and the need for arms to be easily distinguished in combat, heraldic artists designed increasingly elaborate achievements, culminating in

23124-638: The rule of the Ottoman Empire . The date and means of entry into the collection can only be guessed at in many if not most cases. Now the collection is closed in the sense that no new items have been added to it since it was donated to the nation. The collection is not to be confused with the Royal Collection of various types of art still owned by the Crown, nor the King's Library of printed books, mostly assembled by George III , and given to

23288-464: The scholar and author Jane Lumley , who inherited the library of her father, Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel (1512-1580), which was among the most important private libraries of the period, with around 3,000 volumes, including much of the library of Archbishop Cranmer . A catalogue survives, a 1609 copy of an original of 1596 that is now lost; Lumley had also given many volumes to the universities in his last years. Soon after Prince Henry's death,

23452-433: The second is also repeated as the third. The quarters of a personal coat of arms correspond to the ancestors from whom the bearer has inherited arms, normally in the same sequence as if the pedigree were laid out with the father's father's ... father (to as many generations as necessary) on the extreme left and the mother's mother's...mother on the extreme right. A few lineages have accumulated hundreds of quarters, though such

23616-426: The senior line. These cadency marks are usually shown smaller than normal charges, but it still does not follow that a shield containing such a charge belongs to a cadet branch. All of these charges occur frequently in basic undifferenced coats of arms. To marshal two or more coats of arms is to combine them in one shield, to express inheritance, claims to property, or the occupation of an office. This can be done in

23780-585: The shape of the vair bell is replaced by a T -shaped figure, known as a potent from its resemblance to a crutch. Although it is really just a variation of vair, it is frequently treated as a separate fur. When the same patterns are composed of tinctures other than argent and azure, they are termed vairé or vairy of those tinctures, rather than vair ; potenté of other colours may also be found. Usually vairé will consist of one metal and one colour, but ermine or one of its variations may also be used, and vairé of four tinctures, usually two metals and two colours,

23944-436: The shield. Some arms, particularly those of the nobility, are further embellished with supporters, heraldic figures standing alongside or behind the shield; often these stand on a compartment , typically a mound of earth and grass, on which other badges , symbols, or heraldic banners may be displayed. The most elaborate achievements sometimes display the entire coat of arms beneath a pavilion, an embellished tent or canopy of

24108-408: The shields. These in turn came to be decorated with fan-shaped or sculptural crests, often incorporating elements from the shield of arms; as well as a wreath or torse , or sometimes a coronet , from which depended the lambrequin or mantling . To these elements, modern heraldry often adds a motto displayed on a ribbon, typically below the shield. The helmet is borne of right, and forms no part of

24272-528: The site is now covered by the Houses of Parliament . The collection escaped relatively lightly in the fire of 1731 at Ashburnham House , to which the collections had been moved. The Cotton Library was one of the founding collections of the British Museum in 1753, and four years later the Royal collection was formally donated to the new institution by the king. It moved to the new British Library when this

24436-499: The sites at St Pancras (some high-use periodicals, and rare items such as the Thomason Tracts and Burney collections) and Boston Spa (the bulk of the collections, stored in a new purpose-built facility). Heraldry Although the use of various devices to signify individuals and groups goes back to antiquity , both the form and use of such devices varied widely, as the concept of regular, hereditary designs, constituting

24600-549: The start of Edward III's reign there was a significant library kept in the Privy Wardrobe of the Tower of London , partly built up from confiscations from difficult members of the nobility, which were often later returned. Many books were given away, as diplomatic, political or family gifts, but also (especially if in Latin rather than French) to "clerks" or civil servants of the royal administration, some receiving several at

24764-548: The title "King of Heralds", which eventually became " King of Arms ." In the earliest period, arms were assumed by their bearers without any need for heraldic authority. However, by the middle of the fourteenth century, the principle that only a single individual was entitled to bear a particular coat of arms was generally accepted, and disputes over the ownership of arms seems to have led to gradual establishment of heraldic authorities to regulate their use. The earliest known work of heraldic jurisprudence , De Insigniis et Armis ,

24928-434: The type associated with the medieval tournament, though this is only very rarely found in English or Scots achievements. The primary element of a heraldic achievement is the shield, or escutcheon, upon which the coat of arms is depicted. All of the other elements of an achievement are designed to decorate and complement these arms, but only the shield of arms is required. The shape of the shield, like many other details,

25092-421: The use of standards topped with the images or symbols of various gods, and the names of kings appear upon emblems known as serekhs , representing the king's palace, and usually topped with a falcon representing the god Horus , of whom the king was regarded as the earthly incarnation. Similar emblems and devices are found in ancient Mesopotamian art of the same period, and the precursors of heraldic beasts such as

25256-414: Was a gentleman of coat armour. These claims are now regarded as the fantasy of medieval heralds, as there is no evidence of a distinctive symbolic language akin to that of heraldry during this early period; nor do many of the shields described in antiquity bear a close resemblance to those of medieval heraldry; nor is there any evidence that specific symbols or designs were passed down from one generation to

25420-512: Was established in 1973. The 9,000 printed books that formed the majority of the Old Royal Library were not kept as a distinct collection in the way the manuscripts were, and are dispersed among the library's holdings. The Royal manuscripts, and those in other British Library collections with royal connections, were the focus of an exhibition at the British Library "Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination" in 2011–2012. Edward IV

25584-523: Was given a shield of this description when he was knighted by his father-in-law, Henry I , in 1128; but this account probably dates to about 1175. The earlier heraldic writers attributed the lions of England to William the Conqueror , but the earliest evidence of the association of lions with the English crown is a seal bearing two lions passant, used by the future King John during the lifetime of his father, Henry II , who died in 1189. Since Henry

25748-662: Was given the Codex Alexandinus , as explained above. The royal library managed to survive relatively unscathed during the English Civil War and Commonwealth , partly because the well-known and aggressive figures on the Parliamentarian side of the preacher Hugh Peters (later executed as a regicide ) and the lawyer and M.P. Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke were successively appointed as librarians by Parliament, and defended their charge. Whitelocke wanted

25912-567: Was not always strictly adhered to, and a general exception was usually made for sovereigns, whose arms represented an entire nation. Sometimes an oval shield, or cartouche, was substituted for the lozenge; this shape was also widely used for the arms of clerics in French, Spanish, and Italian heraldry, although it was never reserved for their use. In recent years, the use of the cartouche for women's arms has become general in Scottish heraldry, while both Scottish and Irish authorities have permitted

26076-530: Was only available to readers in the US, and closed in May 2008. The scanned books are currently available via the British Library catalogue or Amazon . In October 2010 the British Library launched its Management and business studies portal . This website is designed to allow digital access to management research reports, consulting reports, working papers and articles. In November 2011, four million newspaper pages from

26240-512: Was scribed at Sheen Palace in 1496 by the Flemish royal librarian, Quentin Poulet and then sent to Bruges to be illuminated, and another, Royal 16. F. II, appears to have been begun as a present for Edward IV, then left aside until completed with new miniatures and Tudor roses in about 1490, as a present for Henry. By the time Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, the printed book had become

26404-412: Was started in 2003 at a cost of £6 million. This offers more than 100 million items (including 280,000 journal titles, 50 million patents, 5 million reports, 476,000 US dissertations and 433,000 conference proceedings) for researchers and library patrons worldwide which were previously unavailable outside the Library because of copyright restrictions. In line with a government directive that

26568-470: Was the British Library's Entrepreneur in Residence and Ambassador from 2012 to 2016. As part of its establishment in 1973, the British Library absorbed the National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLL), based near Boston Spa in Yorkshire, which had been established in 1961. Before this, the site had housed a World War II Royal Ordnance Factory , ROF Thorp Arch , which closed in 1957. When

26732-555: Was the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, it seems reasonable to suppose that the adoption of lions as an heraldic emblem by Henry or his sons might have been inspired by Geoffrey's shield. John's elder brother, Richard the Lionheart , who succeeded his father on the throne, is believed to have been the first to have borne the arms of three lions passant-guardant, still the arms of England, having earlier used two lions rampant combatant, which arms may also have belonged to his father. Richard

26896-416: Was written about 1350 by Bartolus de Saxoferrato , a professor of law at the University of Padua . The most celebrated armorial dispute in English heraldry is that of Scrope v Grosvenor (1390), in which two different men claimed the right to bear azure, a bend or . The continued proliferation of arms, and the number of disputes arising from different men assuming the same arms, led Henry V to issue

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