There are, however, serious problems with both Howden’s and Landon’s datings. Howden may well have been in error to suggest 1194 since, when he refers to the edict again in 1198, he fails to refer to his earlier statement.²⁰ Maybe the idea of changing the seal had been mooted in 1194 but not enacted until 4 years later. 1198 is the date given by other chroniclers and the date when we know the second great seal was first used. The eminent Victorian genealogist and historian, J. H. Round, for one, was convinced that Howden’s earlier statement should be totally rejected.²¹ Landon’s dating too is suspect. Indeed, he admits that the first payment does not explicitly state that it was for making a new great seal – it might have been for something else and simply paid to William, a goldsmith who at some point in the past had made a royal seal. If then this was the case it allows us to accept the dates in the account of payments later added to the chancellor’s roll, namely, 21 May 1195 to 6 July 1197. This would allow us to bring forward Landon’s date of mid-1195 for the production of the second great seal by approximately 2 years, to July 1197.

Moreover, and Landon had not realised this, the pipe roll and the chancellor’s roll refer only to a sigillum regis and we know from the Dialogus de Scaccario, written in the late 1170s, that the Exchequer seal was also known as the sigillum regis.²² Could it be that the sigillum regis referred to in 1195, and again possibly as late as mid-1197, is not the second great seal at all, but a new Exchequer seal? If so, this would permit us to date Richard’s second great seal to even later, such as late 1197, or more probably between mid-January (the first great seal was still in use on 7 January) and 16 May 1198, by which time the second great seal had been produced. Above all, late 1197/early 1198, provided the perfect opportunity for Richard’s new keeper of the great seal, Eustace, later chancellor, to raise extra cash not only for the king but also for himself, since, as already noted, the Chancery could exact substantially higher fees for the resealing.²³ 1198 would also tie in with Howden’s second statement, the testimony of other contemporary chroniclers, and, of course, the introduction of the second great seal.

There may well be further, if less substantial, reasons for favouring late 1197 or early 1198 for the production of the second great seal. After Longchamp’s death in late January 1197 Richard may have been keen to exorcise from his great seal the device of the star and crescent. This was a religious symbol later adopted by his brother, John, on his Irish coinage, by John’s son Henry III on his great seal, and as far afield as Hungary by Andrew II on his famous Golden Bull of 1222.²⁴ The problem arose because in the 1190s this device was being prominently and widely used by the haughty William Longchamp as chancellor on his own personal seal, which he often used instead of the royal great seal (Fig. 7.5). A single sun and single moon as portrayed on Richard’s new second great seal may well have been seen as less offensive, bearing in mind Longchamp’s unpopularity.²⁵ Suns and moons decorated Richard’s cloak when he was in Cyprus, and his ally and nephew, Otto IV, bore a sun and moon on his seal of majesty as emperor.²⁶

A new great seal for Richard would also have afforded the king the opportunity to display (perhaps for the first time) his distinctive new heraldic arms, three lions passant guardant. The design of this shield may well have been a bold visual statement that he was still master of the kingdom he had inherited from his father, since it clearly reflected the two lions passant coat that Henry II had almost certainly borne. Assuming this was the case, Richard would have needed to add the third lion to distance himself from his brother Count John, and certain of his rebel brother’s allies who rather inconveniently also bore two lions passant or passant guardant on their shields. Interestingly, in 1199 John dropped his two-lion coat as depicted on his seal as lord of Ireland and, like Richard, depicted the distinctive new design of three lions on his new seal as king, probably for much the same reason, namely to demonstrate that he too had fully and rightly succeeded to his predecessor’s throne.²⁷

Exchequer seal

All this throws a sharp spotlight on that other, shadowy seal of King Richard’s reign: the Exchequer seal. This was used not only as a substitute royal seal for business purposes in the Exchequer but also performed the tasks of the great seal proper when (at least from the reign of Richard I) this was abroad with the king. We know from the Dialogus de Scaccario that Henry II had used such a seal and that, unlike the itinerant great seal of the king’s court, it was held in the treasury along with Domesday Book. Here it was kept in the custody of the chancellor, though he discharged its safe keeping to a deputy. The Dialogus also informs us that this Exchequer seal bore the same image and legend as the royal seal so that it would carry the same authority.²⁸ Thus, it would have borne the king in majesty on the obverse and in full armour on horseback on the reverse. Contemporary chroniclers add that it was not as large as the great seal, referring to it as the small(er) (parvum) seal.²⁹ A charter dated 18 January 1190 at Westminster makes reference to a second charter but that one issued with the magno sigillo implying that the January 1190 charter itself had been sealed with a smaller seal, which we can presume to be that of the Exchequer.³⁰

Size matters since a now lost seal appended to a charter issued by the chancellor, William Longchamp, at Winchester on Low Sunday, 17 April 1194, the day of Richard’s second ‘coronation’ in that ancient capital, was described by the antiquary Joseph Ayloffe in the 1770s as being unique in that it was smaller and red. The author, presumably unaware of the Exchequer seal, thought it to be a privy seal; the fact that it was red we now know to be insignificant.³¹ A rather naïve engraving of this lost seal by Benjamin Pouncy accompanies Ayloffe’s transcript of the charter (Fig. 7.6). It looks remarkably similar to Richard’s first great seal (as, indeed, contemporaries tell us the Exchequer seal was) except that the star and crescent and the elaborate curved spray of foliage, are missing from either side of the enthroned king. This omission may have been due to damage to the seal or a poor impression.³² The checky pattern of the floor and roundels might represent the checkered board and counters of the Exchequer.³³