This is a substantial and heavyweight volume, the product of fifteen years’ work, but thwarted from the start by a convoluted and obfuscated heraldic history. The Canterbury cloister is the only complete (stone) roll of arms to survive from the reign of Henry iv. After an earthquake in May 1382 had severely damaged both the cloister and the chapter house, construction work continued in the 1390s, and the rebuilding of the south walk followed a bequest of £200 from Archbishop Courteney in 1396. The main rebuilding started after the accession of Thomas Arundel in 1397, and building accounts show it to have been completed by 1414.

In 1827 Willement attempted to explain some residual colouring through his own observations and earlier antiquarian work, but failed to give his sources. The author therefore starts with the records made by Scarlett in 1599, Philpott in 1613 and Faussett in the 1750s, placing them side by side and allocating Messenger and Willement numbers to each shield. But Faussett proved that Willement’s certainty was often misplaced, and it became apparent that partial repainting must have occurred before 1599, including some deliberate falsification of the colouring.

Loss of stonework, a few entire bosses, and, by 1914, all traces of original colour following whitewashing in the 1760s and a restoration in 1835, led to doubts as to whether colouring had ever existed, and the grave problems of secure heraldry without the original tinctures. Willement’s catalogue of errors, including his omission of twenty-three vault shields, barely compensates for his remaining as a unique source for some of the colouring, and the question remains whether we can ever know how many times the shields have been repainted and, therefore, what the original appearance of the cloister was in 1414.

A photographic record of the cloister heraldry was made in 1913 and the momentous decision taken in the 1930s to restore the shield colours after centuries of erosion and deliberate removal. The scheme was entrusted to Commander Messenger, whose severely limited timeframe led to an excess of best guesses and wrong attributions, including a number of non-contemporaneous families.

Three diagrams show the cloister and its thirty-six bays: the basic plan after Messenger; the key heraldic components (each bay is illustrated at <https://www.drpaulfoxfsa.com>); and, finally, the construction sequence with proposed dates for each bay between 1408 and 1414, adding in the original numbers of heraldic bosses. The Canterbury cloister is of course on the north side of the nave, but as Messenger placed south at the top of his plan, this rather confusing orientation has been retained. The south walk was built anti-clockwise and work then recommenced around May 1410 at its west end with the first fully heraldic bay, number 10, which shows the Arundel arms at its centre, part of the prelate’s grand plan for the cloister as a roll of arms which would need special displays in the three bays of the east walk facing the chapter house. The west and north walks now followed, but another change of direction occurred in early 1413 when Arundel, realising that the king’s death was imminent, oversaw the construction of the Royal Bay in honour of Henry iv, number 32, by the chapter house doorway, then carefully placing his own Arundel family shields in the adjacent Bay 33. All in all, Fox sees the Canterbury cloister as Archbishop Arundel’s unsung lasting memorial, although at his death in February 1414 two bays still remained to be built.

At its conception the cloister roll contained 856 heraldic shields, badges and devices representing some 365 families, principalities, foundations and individuals, about one-fifth of whom had Kentish connections, although in fact every English county is represented. Most were cathedral donors, about a third linked to Arundel and two-thirds to the king and the Duchy of Lancaster, the inference being that this is no mere list of wealthy visitors but individuals from whom donations were solicited by virtue of their archiepiscopal connections, which, in this instance, excluded all foreigners. Most remarkably, the Royal Bay contains no shields for the king’s father, John of Gaunt, or indeed for his wife, sister or daughter.

The author has studied each shield and offers many new attributions, partly based on the previously unexplored theme of arms placed in close proximity, a singularly productive line of enquiry. He sees the cloister not only as a roll-call of donors, but equally as a roll of arms with discernible themed sections and other groups of deliberately placed shields, all showing family interests guided by the hand and close personal interest of Archbishop Thomas Arundel.

A succinct survey of English heraldry in the fourteenth century together with alphabetical and numerical lists of all the cloister shields precede the lion’s share of the book: 600 full-colour pages of magisterially indexed arms with accompanying family histories and trees – a veritable cornucopia that will offer many new leads for medieval families.

Some necessary light proofreading aside (there is a spelling mistake on page 1, sundry itinerant commas, and the bibliography is a mixture of surnames and book titles), this is a splendid volume allowing the history and genealogy of the Canterbury cloister and its hundreds of associated individuals and families to stand in new and radiant light. It will remain as an indispensable vade mecum for long into the future.