Grants of new arms have been made to worthy applicants, on payment of fees, since the fifteenth century. The practice continues to this day and, in addition, grants of honorary arms are occasionally made to foreign citizens of British descent through either the male or female line. There is no complete printed list of families granted arms in England prior to 1687 but an index of many surviving grants from that early period will be found in Grantees of Arms (Harleian Society, vol. 66, 1915). For the period 1687-1898, the great majority of persons to whom grants of arms were made are listed in Grantees of Arms II (Harleian Society, vols. 67 and 68, 1916-17). These do not describe the arms granted.

Records of original grants are kept at the College of Arms, though the reason for a particular grant and the rationale behind a design of arms are not normally mentioned, although the reasoning behind designs may have been recorded in later years.

The majority of families using arms in the period 1530-1687 established their heraldic rights at the Visitations made by heralds from the College of Arms who periodically toured the country for that purpose. The office copies of pedigrees recorded at Visitations are at the College of Arms. Many of them have been printed, often from unofficial (and sometimes inaccurate) copies in the Harleian Manuscripts preserved at the British Library. Many of these editions can be found at the  Society of Genealogists. References to printed pedigrees of visitation families will be found in G W Marshall, The Genealogist’s Guide (1903), J B Whitmore, A Genealogical Guide (1953), and G B Barrow, The Genealogist’s Guide (1977). All three works need to be consulted.

C R Humphery-Smith’s Armigerous Ancestors (1997) catalogues and indexes the surnames recorded at the Visitations and shows in which county a family of that name was recorded. In the years since 1687, many pedigrees have been officially registered at the College of Arms, sometimes in order to establish a right to arms by descent and sometimes for purely genealogical interest.

There are a number of published armorials in existence, listing descriptions of arms by surname. The most comprehensive and regularly used is the General Armory, compiled by Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster King of Arms (last edition 1884). This contains arms, both of official and unofficial, buts its coverage is not exhaustive and contains virtually no genealogical information. A W Morant’s additions and corrections to Burke’s list are to be found, edited and augmented by C R Humphery-Smith, in General Armory Two (1973). It is not possible to determine a right to arms through these books alone but they may provide a starting point for research. In the case of arms adopted without authority, these may be traced through looking at earlier heraldic directories, such as William Berry’s Encyclopaedia Heraldica (4 vols. 1828-40). Many families with an established right to arms in the period 1890-1929 are detailed in the various editions of A C Fox- Davies, Armorial Families (last edition 1929).

The formal description or ‘blazon’ of a coat of arms proceeds along certain well defined lines, and an unknown coat of arms on a signet ring or monument, for example, may be identified by using an ‘ordinary’. This indexes arms by design and gives the names of families to whom they have been attributed. The best known of these is J W Papworth, Ordinary of British Armorials (1874, reprinted 1977) but a knowledge of heraldic terminology is needed to consult it and it is not in any case a complete index of British coats of arms. Many crests (the portion appearing above the helmet) may be identified from the series of plates in James Fairbairn, Book of Crests (4th edition, 2 vols. 1905, reprinted 1986). The same crest may have been used by several unrelated families.

Thus, this part of the heraldic device cannot always be used to identify a specific family. A more extensive collection of manuscript volumes at the College of Arms, known as Garter’s Ordinaries, enables the heralds to check whether any coat of arms or crest is to be found in their official records.The Dictionary of British Arms - Medieval Ordinary(Vol.1 1992, Vol.2 1996) edited by T Woodcock et al. are the first two in a series of four volumes of a project to revise Papworth’s Ordinary by concentrating on pre-visitation arms recorded prior to 1530, and, with the addition of sources and a name index, acting as a combined ordinary and armorial.

Mottoes are often associated with heraldic devices and may provide a useful clue in the identification of arms. However, there is no monopoly on the use of a particular motto and the same motto may therefore be used by many different families. Since mottoes do not form part of an English grant of arms, they can be adopted and changed at will, but in Scotland they form an integral part of the grant and must be unique. Numerous mottoes are listed and identified (and foreign ones translated) in C N Elvin, A Handbook of Mottoes(1860, revised edition 1971). Indexes of mottoes also appear in the Burke and Fairbairn volumes mentioned above.