In 1688 appeared decidedly the most curious heraldric treatise ever printed. I mean Randle Holme’s ‘Academie of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon.’ Mr. Moule characterizes it as “a most heterogeneous and extraordinary composition, which may be well denominated a Pantalogia. The author was not a learned man, nor has he adopted any systematic arrangement of its multifarious contents, but he has contrived to amass in this storehouse a vast fund of curious information upon every branch of human knowledge, such as is not to be found in any other work, and of a nature peculiarly adapted to the illustration of the manners and customs of our predecessors, from the highest rank to the lowest menial.”
It is one of the scarcest of books, there being, according to Mr. Moule, not more than fifty copies in the kingdom.
It will be interesting to the general reader to know that “Dr. Johnson confessed, with much candour, that the Address to the Reader at the end of this book suggested the idea of his own inimitable preface to his Dictionary.”[299]
The volume, a large folio, is illustrated by numerous plates of objects borne as charges in arms, as well as many that never entered the field of heraldry. “The author’s object,” says Mr. Ormerod, “appears to have been the formation of a kind of encyclopædia in an heraldic form.”[300] To give the merest outline of the subjects treated would occupy many pages; suffice it to say that every imaginable created being, spiritual and corporeal; every science and pseudo-science; every gradation of rank, from the ‘emperour’ with the ceremonies of his coronation, to the butcher and barber, with the implements of their trades; hunters’ terms and the seven deadly sins; palmistry and the seven cardinal virtues; grammar and cockfighting; poverty and the sybils; an essay on time, and bricklayers’ tools; glass-painting and billiards; architecture and wrestling; languages and surgery; tennis and theology, all find a place in this compendium, and are all adorned with “very proper cuts,” in copper.
I have had the good fortune to procure a copy of this amusing work. It has, opposite the title, an engraving containing the external ornaments of a coat of arms, the coat and crest being neatly inserted in pen-drawing. Beneath is the following in letter-press, except the line in italics, which is MS.:
“The Coat and Crest of
The ever Honoured and Highly Esteemed
Sr. James Poole of Poole, Baronett:
To whom this First Volume of the Book Entituled
The Academy of Armory is most humbly Dedicated
and presented, from him who is devoted yours
Randle Holme.”
This was probably a compliment paid to every subscriber, and it displays, as Mr. Moule observes, the finest illustration extant of the “œconomy of flattery.”
The following extract will give an idea of a large proportion of the contents of this famous ‘Storehouse,’ which, like many other storehouses, holds much that is of very little value. Honest Randle blazons one of his fictitious bearings for the purpose of introducing the names of the implements and terms employed by that useful personage the barber.
“LVII. He beareth Argent a Barber bare headed, with a pair of Cisers in his right hand, and a Comb in his left, cloathed in Russet, his Apron Chequé of the first and Azure, &c.
“Instruments of a Barber.