What remains of the reverse of the seal – the equestrian side – again appears similar though not identical to that of the first great seal. Frustratingly the shield design is almost illegible, though very faint traces suggest a lion rampant to the sinister. If this is the case, and if Pouncey’s drawing is of the Exchequer seal, then the shield repeated Richard’s single-lion device. The main difference between the design of the reverse of Richard’s Exchequer seal and that of his first great seal is the lack of long flowing hauberk extending from beneath the king’s outer coat of mail; again this is reminiscent of the second great seal of Henry II. Also Richard’s visible (right) foot protrudes beyond the front of the horse’s right leg. The horse’s left front leg just touches a very faint edge of the legend border affording us an approximate measurement of the seal’s total diameter of about 88 mm. This compares with about 98 mm for the king’s first great seal thus making it about 10% smaller.
The Exchequer seal was kept in England whilst Richard was on crusade; here it acted in the same manner as the seal of absence which first appeared during the reign of Henry III.36 Howden tells us that before he left for Calais on 12 December 1189 Richard gave Longchamp ‘one’ of his seals by virtue of which he ordered his commands to be carried out in the kingdom whilst he was away; clearly then, there must have been at least one other royal seal which would have been Richard’s great seal kept with him during his time abroad.37 The contemporary chronicler Gervase of Canterbury adds that the seal left with Longchamp was the ‘small seal’ (sigillum parvum) engraved with the king in majesty.38 This must have been the Exchequer seal which Longchamp continued to use in England until the following March when he returned to Normandy.39 This covers the date of the only known extant example of the seal. It also covers the date of the charter of 18 January 1190 which, as we have noted, carried a smaller seal (such as the Exchequer seal) than a previous charter of 5 December 1189.40
From April 1190 to October 1191, when the high-handed Longchamp was deposed, there is, to quote Landon, no record of the use in England of a royal seal for purposes other than those of the Exchequer. In October 1191 Longchamp was forced to give up his functions and surrendered the Exchequer seal to the new chief justiciar, Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen. Henceforth, it was placed in the keeping of master Benedict, John’s sigillarius at the time, and put into immediate use.41 Coutances, however, abandoned Longchamp’s imperious ways for a more collegial style of governance preferring to use the Exchequer seal for royal business unlike his predecessor who, as previously noted, preferred to use his own personal seal.42 Beyond this we have no further information regarding Richard’s Exchequer seal until, perhaps, further impressions come to light.
We can now bring forward the date of Richard I’s second great seal from 1194/1195 to July 1197 and there is good reason to believe that it was actually produced sometime between late 1197/early 1198 and mid-May 1198. It may have been introduced at the behest of the king’s new keeper of the great seal, Eustace, to exact fees, and this extortion duly occurred in 1198. A change of seal design also allowed the king to display his new arms, three lions passant guardant, and thus link himself more closely with the kingdom he had inherited from his father who had almost certainly borne very similar arms: two lions passant possibly also guardant. It also permitted Richard to drop the star and crescent device as depicted on his first great seal, since this had featured so prominently on the personal seal of William Longchamp, which the hated chancellor had widely used in the royal service. Moreover, we can now be certain that Richard’s Exchequer seal was, as contemporaries claimed, smaller than and virtually identical in design to the king’s first great seal. Whether, for much the same reasons as already noted, Richard also produced a second Exchequer seal, possibly the sigillum regis referred to in 1195 and in mid-1197, remains to be discovered.