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The Heraldry Society

nonprofit organisation

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2025
Entity authorityQ7739421 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Heraldry Society is a British organization that is devoted to studying and promoting heraldry and related subjects. In 1947, a twenty-year-old John Brooke-Little founded the Society of Heraldic Antiquaries. This name was changed to The Heraldry Society in 1950. It was incorporated in 1956 and is now a registered educational charity, with the registered charity number 241456.

The principal object of the society is to extend interest in and knowledge of heraldry, genealogy, precedence, and related disciplines. The society also offers qualifications for heraldists: in conjunction with the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies three examination levels are offered – Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced – which when taken successfully in sequence lead to an award of the Society's Diploma and the post-nominal DipHS.

For fifty years, John Brooke-Little served as the chairman of The Heraldry Society. In 1997, as he was ending his career as an officer of arms, he changed roles in the society to become its president. He served in this role until his death in February 2006. In addition to being chairman and president of the society, Brooke-Little served as the Honorary Editor of the society's scholarly journal, The Coat of Arms. From the first publication of the journal until the middle of 1965, his mother, Constance Egan, served as the managing editor of The Coat of Arms, though Brooke-Little always had a guiding influence on the publication.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Heraldry Society” is nonprofit organisation. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Heraldry, Society and nonprofit, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1947, 1950, 1956, 1997—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1947-01-01. For this dossier, Heraldry, Society and nonprofit is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “nonprofit organisation” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7739421. VIAF identifies the subject as 9911149296220680670005. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1950, 1956 and 1997.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Heraldry Society”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Heraldry Society primary sources, The Heraldry Society archive and Heraldry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Heraldry Society”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Heraldry Society” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.