The Academy of Armoury, printed in 1688, was compiled by Randle Holme III (1627-1700). The Holmes were a prominent Chester family who served as councillors, aldermen, sheriffs, and mayors of the city. They were painter-stainers and heralds by trade: heralds were members of the <a href='https://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/' target='_blank'>College of Arms</a>, and their job was to oversee ceremonies, such as funerals, of individuals that held coats of arms. It was also their job to monitor the use of coats of arms, ensuring that people did in fact have the right to use them, based on their lineage. This meant that heralds were great record keepers, and the Holmes’ family manuscripts take up 261 volumes in the British Library.<br /> <br /> The Academy of Armoury lays out the role of the herald and of all things relating to it, from clothing to food. In this drawing, Holmes depicts various ‘Mechanick Tools and Instruments’ used in the occupations he has previously discussed and which he encountered throughout his career in the city of Chester. The text forms a sort of encyclopaedia of the kind of objects that he thought might provide useful elements of heraldic bearings. Being based in Chester, a busy town, he was immersed in an environment of occupational imagery, in which the streets were negotiated by shop signs that used tools as symbols of their proprietors’ trade. Holmes had a documentary eye, interested in the detail of these objects as a way of showing the distinction between them; his work therefore coincidentally provides us with an important reference work for understanding occupations and the tools they employed in early modern England, even as he draws them into the book with the pen and ink of his own trade.
The Academy of Armoury by Randle Holme III (Sketches of trade tools), 1649

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The Academy of Armoury by Randle Holme III

The Academy of Armoury by Randle Holme III (Sketches of trade tools), 1649

The Academy of Armoury, printed in 1688, was compiled by Randle Holme III (1627-1700). The Holmes were a prominent Chester family who served as councillors, aldermen, sheriffs, and mayors of the city. They were painter-stainers and heralds by trade: heralds were members of the College of Arms, and their job was to oversee ceremonies, such as funerals, of individuals that held coats of arms. It was also their job to monitor the use of coats of arms, ensuring that people did in fact have the right to use them, based on their lineage. This meant that heralds were great record keepers, and the Holmes’ family manuscripts take up 261 volumes in the British Library.

The Academy of Armoury lays out the role of the herald and of all things relating to it, from clothing to food. In this drawing, Holmes depicts various ‘Mechanick Tools and Instruments’ used in the occupations he has previously discussed and which he encountered throughout his career in the city of Chester. The text forms a sort of encyclopaedia of the kind of objects that he thought might provide useful elements of heraldic bearings. Being based in Chester, a busy town, he was immersed in an environment of occupational imagery, in which the streets were negotiated by shop signs that used tools as symbols of their proprietors’ trade. Holmes had a documentary eye, interested in the detail of these objects as a way of showing the distinction between them; his work therefore coincidentally provides us with an important reference work for understanding occupations and the tools they employed in early modern England, even as he draws them into the book with the pen and ink of his own trade.

Object Type Sketches of trade tools
Year 1649
Material Manuscript
Discovered Chester
Owned By BL, Harley MS 2026
Keywords self-fashioning; recording; reading; administration; occupation; literacy; reputation; office-holding; print
Image Credit Drawing of Tools seen in Chester Shops by Randle Holme in one of his manuscripts for The Academy of Armoury (1649), Harley MS 2026. From the British Library Archive.

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