For any of you who may be interested in ancient books on Heraldry, I bring the following to your attention:
"The Bokys of Haukyng and Huntyng; and also of coot-armuris", more
popularly known as The Boke of St. Albans, published in 1486, is a
book of three treatises written to guide "gentill men and honest
persones" in the arts necessary to an English gentleman. It was a
seminal work in several respects, not the least of which is that it
was the first treatise on heraldry published in English. It was
sufficiently important that James Dallaway reprinted the heraldry
portions of St. Albans as an appendix to his 1793 "Inquiry into the
Origin and Science of Heraldry in England".

A modern English rendition (I hesitate to use the word "translation"
when one is translating from English into English!) of the heraldry
portions of The Boke of St. Albans, which include a somewhat fanciful
history and philosophy of heraldry as well as such practical topics as
blazon and the transmission of arms, is now available, with the
illustrations from the original left out of Dallaway's reprint
recreated and reinserted into the text. The translation is in a
two-column "side by side" format, with the text from Dallaway's
reprint in the left column and the modern English in the right.

Three different versions are available: a black and white (with line
drawings of the illustrations); a version with color illustrations of
the arms; and an electronic copy of the color version in .pdf format
on CD-ROM. (This last comes packaged with the Adobe Acrobat® Reader
for Windows on the CD; Mac users may download the appropriate Acrobat
Reader for their particular operating system from Adobe's website.)

More information on this rendition of The Boke of St. Albans,
including price and ordering information, can be found on-line at: << www.appletonstudios.com/herald7.htm >>