With over-generous granting of supporters and the arrival of landscape heraldry, the early 1800s were not the Lyon’s finest hour.
The second volume of the Lyon Register does not have the grandiose royal opening of Volume One but plunges, as advised by the poet Horace, in medias res with the immediate promise of a much mroe visual record as each brief blazon is accompanied by a small painting of the arms – indeed by the end of this volume, the number of coats blazoned and emblazoned on each page is reduced to two or even one, enabling the painting to be much more expensive.