OXFORD UNIVERSITY ARMS | Origin

Heraldic art by Lee 
Lumbley © 2018 by 
Boissevain Books.

The following excerpt from Archaelogia Oxoniensis, published in 1895 or 1896 in London by Henry Frowde, is helpful on two points:

1. It describes the exemption from the authority over the University of the College of Arms, not just because the University predated the College of Arms but because Kings Henry IV and Henry VIII gave the university and its colleges a "charter of immunity"–an exemption from having to apply for a grant of arms or even to be subject to a visitation from the heralds.

2. It provides an authoritative history of the Oxford University coat of arms, which is said to combine the traditional symbol of a university, a book (a Bible in the earliest versions) with that of St Edmund the Martyr.

This source is provided to support statements in John Tepper Marlin, with Lee Lumbley, Oxford College Arms (East Hampton, N.Y.: Boissevain Books, 2018), 6 and a related note on Oxford University arms: .