Downloading Powell’s Roll

Powell’s Roll is one of the few extant fourteenth-century English illustrated armorials available online. It’s kept at the British Bodley Library, where it is indexed as Bodleian Ms. Ashmole 804, pt. IV.

The library has made their scans available through a “click to pan and zoom” interface, and although it doesn’t seem to be available as a combined download, they do helpfully allow you to download individual images — and as there are only 29 of them, that’s precisely what I have done.

You can find a compressed-quality PDF here (13.4 MB), or contact me if you need a copy of either the full-quality PDF or a zip file of separate JPEG images (both 48.3 MB).

[Update, November 2022:] I’ve uploaded this book to archive.org where it can be browsed or downloaded as a PDF or a ZIP of image files

For additional context, you might also be interested in an analysis that includes names and biographical details of each armiger, or a modern reproduction of the emblazons.

2 thoughts on “Downloading Powell’s Roll”

  1. Hello,

    I woul be in for a full-resolution download, especially the page with the arms of Dagworth (page 8 on archive.org). My main question is : ermines… or not ermines ? And which color(s) around the red stripe and yellow disks ?

    Best regards

    Daniel “Marcomir”

    1. Hello! I regret to report that the higher-resolution isn’t any clearer — that whole section of the page appears to have become badly smudged over the centuries.

      For what it’s worth, reputable sources describe this as “Dagworth: ermines, on a fess gules three roundels or” and I have no reason to doubt them.

      Cf. https://armorial.dk/english/WIL_PreEd.pdf

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