While heraldry was a living art, it obviously became necessary to keep some record of the numerous armorial bearings which were already in use, as well as of those that were constantly being invented. This seems to have been done by entering the arms on long rolls of parchment. In the earliest examples these took the form of rows of painted shields, with the owners' names written over (pl. [IV]); but in a few rare cases the blazon or written description of the arms is also given, while other rolls consist wholly of such descriptions, as in the well-known Great and Boroughbridge Rolls. These have a special value in supplying the terminology of the old heraldry, but this belongs to the science or grammar and not the art of it. The pictured rolls, on the other hand, clearly belong to the artistic side, and as they date from the middle of the thirteenth century onwards, they show how the early heralds from time to time drew the arms they wished to record.
Fig. 14. Heraldic paving tiles from Tewkesbury abbey. The three uppermost bear the arms of Despenser, Berkeley, and Beauchamp, and the large one the arms of Robert FitzHamon, the founder, impaled with the singular cross of the abbey.
PLATE IV. PART (REDUCED) OF AN EARLY ROLL OF ARMS BELONGING TO THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON.
[1] It would surely not be a matter of much difficulty or expense to equip the leading schools of art in this country with sets of casts of these beautiful objects.