SIR WILLIAM SEGAR is, I believe, the first of our heralds who published on the subject. His 'Book of Honor and Armes,' enlarged and republished in 1602, under the title of 'Honor Military and Ciuill,' relates as its designation implies, not to the art of blazon, but to dignities. His zeal for antiquity, like that of his contemporaries, outruns historical truth, as a proof of which it may be mentioned that he deduces the origin of knighthood from the fabulous Round Table of King Arthur. His work possesses, however, great merit, and exhibits much learning and profound research. Many of his unpublished MSS., genealogical and otherwise, are still extant. Segar, who was of Dutch extraction, was bred a scrivener, and obtained his introduction to the College through the interest of Sir T. Heneage, vice-chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth. Here, at length, his talents raised him to the post of Garter, the _ne plus ultra_ of heraldic ambition. He died in 1633. [Sidenote: 1592.] WILLIAM WYRLEY, author of 'The Trve Vse of Armorie,' is the next heraldric author who had any official connexion with the College of Arms, in which establishment he rose, however, no higher than the degree of a pursuivant. He was a gentleman by birth, a native of Staffordshire, and died in 1618. He did not confine his attention to heraldry, but studied antiquities at large: his collections he bequeathed to the College. The 'Trve Vse,' his only published work, is a scarce quarto of 162 pages, and is freer from the irrelevant rubbish which blemishes most of the treatises of this century than any one which preceded it, or any one which for a long time subsequently issued from the press. Sir W. Dugdale makes great use of this work in his 'Ancient Usage of bearing Arms,' 1681, and in return somewhat ungratefully, robs Wyrley of the honour of its authorship, ascribing it, upon hearsay evidence, to Sampson Erdeswicke, the historian of Staffordshire.