When analysing the distribution of livery collars which appear on memorials, it should be kept in mind that there were originally many more monuments across the country. Antiquarian notes and physical traces remind us that churches were once filled with tombs and memorial brasses. In the county of Cambridgeshire there are 163 extant brasses, although records show that a minimum of 582 have been lost over the centuries. Indents on church pavements, such as those at Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh (Suffolk), indicate where a proliferation of brasses once lay. The principal reasons for their disappearance are religious: the Reformations in England and Scotland and the ravages of the English Civil War witnessed the destruction of many examples. Some seem to have disappeared before the early modern period: the tomb of Catherine of Valois was broken up and her remains moved to make room for Henry VII's chapel at Westminster Abbey. The queen's coffin was left to languish next to her husband Henry V's tomb, and was still there in the eighteenth century. There were also cases of tomb effigies being commandeered and altered to commemorate other individuals during the late medieval period, and instances of brasses being turned over, the blank reverses being reused. Other tombs were simply neglected, their materials being used in building works. As there were once many more monuments, it would be safe to assume that so too were there more examples featuring livery collars. William Dugdale recorded several brasses, now lost, commemorating members of the Hugford family at All Saints’, Emscote (Warwickshire), in his Book of Monuments, compiled in 1640–41 in anticipation of the outbreak of the Civil War. They appear to be wearing collars of hearts, although it is conceivable that Dugdale may have mistaken them for Yorkist collars of suns and roses. However, it should be stressed that any conclusions to be drawn regarding the distribution of collars on church monuments can only be made from the evidence of extant examples.

As can be seen on Map 1 and 2, examples of collars on church monuments extend across England and Wales and over the Irish Sea. They stretch north into Northumbria, south-west into Cornwall, and there are two examples of what appear to be Yorkist collars in Ireland.