On the king’s return journey from the Holy Land disaster struck again. In December 1192 Richard was taken captive in Austria by duke Leopold V and handed over to the emperor, Henry VI. The seal was almost certainly with him at the time and was now in enemy hands. In England Richard’s brother, Count John, may have taken the opportunity to circulate a false (sophisticatum) great seal possibly in February or March 1193.¹² Longchamp was again with Richard in Worms in late June. This resulted in Longchamp’s resumption of activities and his renewed use of the great seal in August of that year whilst both he and the king were abroad; he was still using it in Brussels in late February 1194.¹³ On 13 March Richard returned (with his seal) to these shores. After his so-called second ‘coronation’ (it was probably more a glorified crown-wearing ceremony) Richard left England on 12 May 1194, never to set foot in his kingdom again. He took with him his first great seal which we know he was still using on 7 January 1198 but not after 16 May of that year by which time he was using his second great seal.¹⁴

According to Roger of Howden, a royal clerk who accompanied Richard on crusade, it was during the king’s brief stay in England in 1194 that he first ordered that all charters and confirmations under the old seal were to be renewed under a new great seal.¹⁵ Howden claimed that the change of seal was due both to its temporary loss in the shipwreck off the coast of Cyprus in April 1191 when Malcael was drowned, and also to Longchamp’s mishandling of the Truce of Tillières in July 1194, when Richard was so irritated by his chancellor’s handling of the negotiations that he took the same seal from him. The text of charters subsequently renewed under the second great seal at the end of the reign (which Howden, of course, may have seen before writing up his account of 1194) likewise claimed that the new seal had been introduced because of the temporary loss of the first great seal, but added the further reason that it had also fallen into enemy hands (in 1192–93), during the time when Richard was held hostage.¹⁶

None of this, however, explains why it was not until sometime between early January and mid-May 1198 that the second great seal was first put into use. Lionel Landon, who in the 1930s constructed a detailed itinerary of the Lionheart, suggested that this substantial delay was to avoid the inevitable outcry by those having to pay for the renewing of their charters initially issued under the former seal.¹⁷ In the process Landon revised Howden’s initial date for the change of seal from 1194 to mid-1195. He did so on the basis of two references taken from the annual accounts of the Exchequer. The first, in the pipe roll for 1195, states that the goldsmith, William, ‘who made the seal of the king [sigillum regis]’, was paid two marks to buy a robe and for the payment of his hire.¹⁸ The second, found in the chancellor’s roll for 1196, records that plate worth 5 marks was to be paid by order of a writ of Hubert Walter archbishop of Canterbury for the making of a new royal seal: ad sigillum R[egis] novum faciendum.¹⁹ This actually occurs in an account of payments made between 21 May 1195 and 6 July 1197 which was added to the roll after the account for the year to Michaelmas 1196 had been presented to the Exchequer. Since Landon believed both references were to the same seal, namely Richard’s second great seal, he concluded that its production must have been between 21 May 1195, the earliest date given in the chancellor’s roll, and Michaelmas 1195, the accounting date, and, therefore, the last date, of the pipe roll.