Did C17 stonemasons have access to a book of heraldic templates?

[sticksville]

Thanks for the link.  I have tried registering but it doesn't seem to have remembered my password!

[hanes teulu]

When you click on the link does the screen show you 8 pages of coats of arms with a narrative of the content between each page.
If it is requesting you to register it's operating as a restricted site. You won't be able to register.

[Zaphod99]

I'm not sure what I was looking for but I got taken to the website of the National Library for Wales, and a Google prompt offering to translate it for me.

Zaph

1635

https://www.proquest.com/eebo/docview/2240901487/99852759/A481D7520C494C66PQ/1?accountid=12799&sourcetype=Books

Zaph,
A favour please - can you confirm the URL delivers ie. you are not locked out of viewing the end product.

[sticksville]

This looks like the DIY version?

https://www.proquest.com/eebo/docview/2240901487/99852759/A481D7520C494C66PQ/1?accountid=12799&sourcetype=Books

found the password! Yes I can see that after registering and it's the sort of thing I had in mind., though applying to London livery companies.

The scenario I had in mind was that the daughter of armigerous family dies and they don't want people thinking she was married to a commoner. So, they say to the masons, "There must be something you have for the Kitchingmans." Masons thumb through their reference books and find some grant by Camden in 1616 and say "That will do, who would know any different, it's from Yorkshire anyway."

Perhaps I am overthinking this! The alternative explanation would be that two branches of the family that I haven't been able to connect, treasure/remember the grant of arms and ensure it is set in stone. However,  William K, father of the Dorothy in St Peter Mancroft, has a 1719 memorial in Halifax St John absent any arms.

On a slightly different note, the grant of arms by Camden was in Helmsley but I don't have any Kitchingmen living there at that time. Helmsley is one of the places where the quarter sessions took place, so could it have been a central location for granting arms?

[Steve3180]

I think the question you should ask is how many C17 Stonemasons could read, and of those how many could afford to buy a book.

[sticksville]

I think the question you should ask is how many C17 Stonemasons could read, and of those how many could afford to buy a book.

The article below suggests that 30% of adult men were fully literate. As people learnt to read before they could write, more would have been able to read.

Put it another way, would you have engaged a highly skilled craftsman to carve a Latin inscription on an expensive piece of marble if they were illiterate?

https://manyheadedmonster.com/2014/10/13/the-rabble-that-cannot-read-ordinary-peoples-literacy-in-seventeenth-century-england/

[Zaphod99]

You don't need to be able to read or write to carve an ornate filigree design on a headstone, so you don't really need to be able to read or write to carve shapes that you and I would recognize as letters. To a skilled craftsman it is just another pattern.

Zaph

[hanes teulu]

My reply #5 is carrying the wrong URL - I was trying to pick p this tome by John Guillim, 1679.
https://archive.org/details/gri_33125009310737/page/n3/mode/2up

[Steve3180]

You may be right, I imagine there would be some literate stonemasons although those with Latin would be few. But to buy an illustrated book would be beyond the means of nearly everybody but the rich, not just stonemasons. Consider also that carving a letter is no different than carving a tree, the fact that one image is a symbol for something else is irrelevant. Perhaps a stonemason who regularly carved gravestones would have a working knowledge of what was required but to reproduce the arms from a description in a book seems to me several steps too far. It is more likely that the stonemason was given a paper copy of the required image and inscription for him to copy in stone.