Dr. Spufford gave an account of the private herald in the middle ages, taking the list in "The Complete Peerage" as a starting point.

The paper, previously delivered to the Society on Monday 29^th February 1988, argued that these heralds were not really "private" at all. It was argued that all those persons employing heralds were doing so not as private individuals, but in their capacity as holding some kind of office giving them a measure of delegated sovereignty.

Indeed, many of them had the power to create and employ heralds expressly granted to them with the office, and others presumably had this power implicitly.