Although he contemplated remaining in the Ministry, he returned to the College of Arms in 1946 and took over the extensive practice of Alfred Butler, Windsor Herald.

[7] Howard said Wagner "is one of our most distinguished historians, the man who made heraldry respectable and who holds the sceptre of continuity in our changing times".

One, which arose from the Harleian Society, was an endeavour to list and describe the surviving English Rolls of Arms: to this series (CEMRA) Wagner contributed the first volume.

Another project, connected with the Society of Antiquaries of London, was a revised edition of the ordinary of arms originally produced by J. W. Papworth.

Genealogy occupied the foremost place in Wagner's affections, but his earliest publications made highly important contributions to the study of heraldry.

His Historic Heraldry of England (1939) derived initially from an exhibition of panels in America, but drew a stern and scholarly line between those great men who were truly armigerous and those who were not.

On the other hand, his Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages (also 1939) shed new light on the development of the functions of the earliest officers of arms.

His office had been highly mechanised from an early stage, but all the more so once he became blind in 1984, whereupon, making every use of the aids of modern science, he bore his affliction with patience and dexterity.

He was also a staunch supporter of hereditary peers and defended their presence in the House of Lords in an article in the Times on 30 January 1969 which became the foreword to the 1970 edition of Burke's Peerage.

Wagner's funeral service was held at the Church of St Benet Paul's Wharf, the religious home of the College of Arms since 1555.