File 108D. - Libellus de Officio Militari,

A transcript made by R[obert] Glover, Somerset Herald, in 1572 of a text of the 'Libellus de Officio Militari' of Nicholas Upton written by ('script per') Baddesworth in 1458. Blank spaces have been left for the appropriate blazons. The work was published under the title of Nicholai Uptoni de Studio Militari (Londini, 1654). The text is divided into the following four books 'Liber primus de Coloribus', 'Liber Secundus de Regulis et Signis in Armis depictis,' 'Liber tertius de animalibus et auibus in armis portatis ...', and 'Liber Quartus De Veteranis quos modo Heraldos appellamus'. At the beginning of the volume is a full-page blazon of the arms of Austen Steward, 1560 (or, a fesse chequy azure and argent, on an escutcheon of pretence of the last, a lion rampant gules debruised by a bend or), and at the end are seven folios of the biography and genealogy of the family of Steward (Stuard, Stuart, etc.) ('Transcriptum Geneologiae familiae Senescallorum in Anglia') ('...est geneologia Thome Steward et Rich'i filii sui breuiter extract' ex rotulis') compiled by John Moore, Norroy King of Arms, 1572, with later additions begun in 1714, and one page containing a list of English peers ('magnates Anglie') of the time of Elizabeth I and a scale of precedence. On the first page of the volume is an impression of a seal bearing a crest - before a stump of a tree, a sword, point downwards sinister, and the legend 'A.S. Fortiter defensa ob Scotica sceptra'. Each of the upper and lower covers bears four ornamental metal bosses, a blind tooling of the stump-of-tree crest, and additional gilt and blind tooling.