It comes as something of a surprise to a legal historian who is looking for the first time in detail at the different uses or functions of seals which have a direct connection with the law in the long thirteenth century that seals were used in so many different ways. The legal historian tends to think of them primarily as a means of authenticating deeds, the various different kinds of document relating to title to land and its tenure (including charters of feoffment, confirmations, quitclaims and the like), or relating to personal obligations such as acknowledgements of debt (whether in the form of written bonds or written tallies)1 or receipts for the payment of debts, agreements or covenants (typically bipartite, with both parties to the agreement having their own copy sealed by the other party) and grants of annuities; and also as a means of authenticating wills or testaments.2 But a second, and quite separate, legally significant function they also evidently performed was in simply securing chests or boxes which contained objects of value while they were in the hands of a custodian. The container or containers might be a chest or a strong box which contained charters or bonds. In 1296 John of Clinton and his wife Ida and Ida’s sister Margaret of Oddingsells, for example, sued the prior of Coventry in the Common Bench for the return of 60 charters, which the father of the two sisters (William of Oddingsells) had handed over on deposit (nomine depositi) and had contained grants of lands in four named places. The prior agreed that William had handed over a chest and a strong box closed with his seal but said that he did not know what they contained and he brought them into court with the seals still attached and unbroken. The sisters agreed they had been so delivered and that the seals on both were still intact and their attorney declared himself content, without apparently checking that all 60 charters were still there.3 It might be just a deed box (pixes) containing a deed that was being held in escrow and which had been sealed by both parties. In 1303 the royal clerk Adam of Osgoodby sued Ralph de Shirley for the return of a deed in the name of the prior and convent of Lenton granting Adam an annual rent, which Adam’s servant had, he said, handed over to Ralph earlier that year at Nottingham. Ralph, however, claimed that the deed had been handed over to him jointly by Adam’s agent and the prior’s steward in a deed box (in quadam pixide) sealed with their seals and on condition that, if the prior presented Adam’s agent to a specific church and he was instituted to it, the deed was to be returned to the prior.4 The container might also be a strong box which contained only money. In 1298 John of Walden sued John Clerk of Northallerton in the Common Bench for payment of £20 and explained that he had handed over the money to him at Northallerton in 1295 under his seal to look after and to restore to him whenever he wished. John, however, denied receiving the money under such terms.5 In a 1303 King’s Bench case Peter of Cave sued Fulk de Hotoft on the basis that he had entrusted a strongbox (forcerium) to him containing £11 under seal at Southwell but that Fulk had broken into it and taken the money.6 A third distinct category (though there is some overlap with the two previous categories) was the use of seals (both private and official) for various official purposes. When Jewish chirograph chests were established in 1194 as a safe place for a copy of all Jewish bonds for money loaned in England, the chests were to have locks but the Christian and Jewish chirographers were also to affix their seals to these locks.7 Subsequently when the chests were periodically closed, normally in connection with the levying of a tallage, the chests were also sealed by those who came to conduct the scrutiny of the chests. Sheriffs making distraints on defendants to secure their appearance in court commonly sealed barns and granges to secure their contents and show they had been seized into the king’s hands. This may have been an official seal for we also find references to precepts to levy a debt being issued ‘under the seal of the castle’ (sub sigillo castri) in Yorkshire in 1293,8 and to a written receipt given on the handing over of a writ of summons in the same year in Hampshire being made ‘under the seal of the exchequer of Winchester castle’.9 Royal justices also used their own private seals in the course of official business. Judicial writs issued in the course of legal proceedings seem initially to have been sealed with the personal seal of the justice who attested the writ, but were then supposed to be taken for sealing by chancery,10 and a statute of 1285 (Westminster II, c. 31) established a procedure under which a dissatisfied litigant (or more likely his lawyer) who had had an argument disallowed but not recorded was to produce a bill recording his argument and to request one of the justices of the court to seal it with his own (personal) seal.11 A different chapter of the same statute (Westminster II, c. 13) established a formal requirement that each sheriff when conducting enquiries into offences at his biennial tourn was to ensure that the written verdict of the jury making the presentment be sealed by the jurors’s seals.12 In a 1305 Common Bench case Agnes, who claimed to be the widow of Nicholas of Stainton, brought an action to recover substantial lands of hers in Yorkshire which had been alienated by Nicholas. The tenant of these lands argued that he was not obliged to answer the claim since Nicholas was still alive and living at Greystoke in Cumberland. Agnes said that he had died long ago at Stamford in Lincolnshire. The case was adjourned to allow both parties to produce evidence on this point. Agnes brought four individual witnesses who under examination agreed that Nicholas had been hanged at Stamford in 1300 for a robbery in Crowland marsh and also a writing to the same effect in the name of 13 burgesses of Stamford. This was sealed with their seals.13
My main concern in this paper, however, is with a somewhat narrower topic: the arguments about seals which were made during civil litigation, that is (in the main) arguments made by litigants, or more likely their professional lawyers, which impugned the validity of documents to which seals had allegedly been attached, and more broadly what these arguments have to tell us about how English thirteenth century law treated seals as a necessary form of documentary validation. I will start with arguments that impugned the validity of a ‘sealed’ document on the grounds of a defect in the seal impression or in the way an impression was attached to the document it was supposedly validating or (in one case at least) the lack of any impression at all. The latter seems quite anomalous, an example of something that did not normally happen, probably because normally the courts would simply have rejected any attempt to use an unsealed document in court for probative purposes. The case is a covenant case of 1291 in the Common Bench in which the plaintiff was suing on a 16-year lease made by the defendants’ father, which had been interrupted by a wardship after the father’s death, and which she was now seeking to have honoured. When asked for evidence of the lease the plaintiff produced the father’s deed to which a tag or tongue (cauda) was attached, but no seal. Not surprisingly, the defendants asked for judgment whether such a deed was binding. Surprisingly, the plaintiff was allowed to plead that a seal (impression) had been attached to the lease until the defendants and others had broken into her house and torn off the seal and was allowed to join issue on this claim so that it went to a jury.14 More common were claims that, even though there was an impression of a seal attached to the document, there were significant defects in that seal or in the way it had been attached. In a 1292 Common Bench case Walter Scarlet, a lawyer, sued the prior of Castleacre on a debt. When he proffered the prior’s bond (which had allegedly been made in 1285) as evidence of the debt it was noted that the impression was in two pieces, one of which was still attached to the writing, but the other quite separate from it. The prior challenged the validity of the bond as proof of the debt on the grounds that the bond was not sealed with the whole of the seal, but also on the ground that the wax was so decrepit (inveterata) that it was clear that the wax could not have been attached in 1285. The case was adjourned for judgment but none recorded.15 In a case the following year, however, where a warrantor was defending title to land in Cornwall and produced a charter in the name of the claimant’s uncle granting the land, the enrolment tells us that when it was first produced in court it was produced with the seal impression intact, but that it had subsequently accidentally (casualiter) become split into two parts, so that the face (impressio) had become separated from the rest, as a result of decay (putrefactionem) and age. There was no challenge to this but only as to whether it really had conveyed any title, a quite separate point.16 In a 1307 detinue of charters case in which the plaintiff was seeking the return of two charters from a relative the defendant produced a charter whose seal (impression) was broken and heavily damaged but subsequently repaired with what was evidently new wax on the back and said that it had come to his hands in this condition. The plaintiff, however, claimed that the charter had come to his hands with an undamaged seal (to which no suspicion attached) and refused to accept the charter since he was bound to restore it to her in the same state as it had been when he had received it. There is no sequel to this but she was apparently seeking some kind of compensation for his lack of care.17
There are two cases in which questions were raised about the way in which a seal (impression) was attached to the document it was said to be validating. In one heard in the 1286 Buckinghamshire eyre the record shows that the warrantor of the defendants produced a charter in the name of the claimant’s uncle Henry, granting the warrantor’s ancestor the land with a promise of warranty. The seal attached to the document was, however, bound up with a piece of string (quodam filo ligatur) and the justices untied (deligaverunt) the string in the presence of the parties and found the seal had been cut through the middle (scissum per medium) although the face (impressio) was whole and also the dorse (but they were separate from each other, I assume) and that part of the wax remained on the schedule from which the seal hung (pendebat), which agreed with the ends. It was then rebound by the same justices and handed over to the claimant to answer. He denied that what was there constituted a sealed document and characterised it as a schedule that was not ratified by Henry’s seal. The court did not have in the end to rule on this point, nor did a jury.18 A related, but different problem, was raised by a 1294 Common Bench case in which a former justice’s clerk (Henry [Gerard] of Guildford) sued the abbot of Bury St Edmund’s for arrears of an annuity the abbot had granted him. When Henry produced the bond which he asserted had granted him the annuity and had been sealed with the abbot’s seal attached to a tongue (cauda) it was noted that the tongue had become detached (eradicata) from the writing and then (evidently rather crudely) re-attached to it by a thread (quodam filo). The abbot at once challenged this attempt to bind him by a bond from which there was no seal hanging (dependens). At this point Henry removed his attorney John Loveday from suing on his behalf and brought an oral complaint against John in the Common Bench. He had entrusted him with the deed in order to prosecute the case but it had been damaged while in his hands and the tail broken (off). John did not deny that he had received the bond intact but did claim that it had been broken off as a result of a crush at the bar of the court (pressitudine etc. ad barram etc.). It may be assumed that it was John who had crudely reattached it to the deed. There the story seems to end, but Henry does not seem to have got his money and John is still to be found in practice as a professional attorney in 1300.19
In a rather larger group of cases there was no challenge to the seal itself or to the way it was attached to the deed, but only as to whether the seal had been validly or properly attached to the document concerned. In two cases, for example, the claim seems to be that a document had only been attached as a result of improper pressure to do so. In an Essex assize of mort d’ancestor heard before the baronial justiciar Hugh Bigod in December 1259, the tenant (Agnes) pleaded a quitclaim of the land from her stepdaughter Alice. Alice agreed that she had put her signum (which must here mean seal) to the deed but said she had done this by compulsion because Agnes and her relatives (amici) had kept her shut up in a chamber until she had done so. The jury, however, told a different story. Alice had made the quitclaim at her father’s request before he married her stepmother and had done so voluntarily. Evidently she had only repented later.20 In a second Essex case of 1294 (an attaint of an assize of novel disseisin) in which one Isabel, calling herself the daughter of Maud de Cloville, was suing William son of William of Feering for a substantial holding in Patching and Broomfield something similar was again alleged. A detailed jury verdict allows us to reconstruct what seems to have happened. Isabel had been the daughter of William of Feering by his first wife Maud and these lands had belonged to Maud. After Maud’s death William had only a life interest in the lands and they were to pass to Isabel after his death. William had then remarried (to a second Isabel, who was the defendant’s mother). Isabel had gone on living with her father and step-mother and her father had provided her with food and clothing. Over a two year period he had gone out of his way to cultivate his daughter’s favour. Then he had asked her to make a quitclaim of the land to him, which would allow the land to be inherited by any son he had by the second marriage (we are not told whether that son had yet been born). She refused. He beat her and ordered her not to leave her room. She was shut up in her room for three days until (through fear) she agreed to do what her father wanted. Her father then had a seal made for her and sent for his neighbours and told them that she was going to release her rights to the land. On his orders she came to the hall and in tears (lacrimando) agreed to the release but only on condition that her father observed a separate agreement under which he promised to arrange a marriage for her with a husband with land to the value of £20 a year or to give her 100 marks for her marriage. Her father then showed her the deed and asked her to affix the seal to it. She said she did not know how to, but agreed that one of the neighbours (John Benet) seal it in her name. Her father handed it over to John to affix the seal and he handed it on to Isabel. He told her to remove the seal [matrix] from the wax [impression] with her own hand and give her father the deed if she wished to make the grant. This was evidently the crucial part of the physical act of sealing a deed. She took the deed and removed the seal from wax and delivered the deed to her father. Eventually she sent for a kinswoman (presumably a relation of her mother’s) and they went to the county court at Chelmsford and there stated publicly that the deed had been obtained by coercion. The jury concluded that the deed had indeed been obtained by force and fear and this invalidated the quitclaim. The attaint jury upheld the original verdict in her favour.21
No physical force or threats were involved, however, in other cases. Ellis le Latimer claimed arrears of an annuity of £5 a year from William of Preston in the 1247 Northamptonshire eyre. William denied that the deed or the seal were his. He had promised Ellis a smaller annuity (of 40s a year) in return for service as his steward and he had so acted. Ellis had then gone to Northampton and drawn up the bond and had a seal made which he had then attached to the bond. He denied that the seal had ever been in William’s own custody prior to this (which suggests it may have been afterwards). Eventually the parties settled, with Ellis remitting the annuity in return for a small lump sum.22 In other cases it is quite clear that the seal is genuine but the defendant’s claim seems to be that the plaintiff was (like Ellis) an agent who had sealed the deed or bond while he had control of his master’s seal but without his knowledge. This may be the situation, for example, behind a case in the 1271 Sussex eyre in which William Graundyn sued William de Braose for four and half years arrears of an annual rent of £10 on the basis of a bond allegedly made on 12 December 1265, and Braose agreed the seal had once been his but denied that he had made the deed or the seal been appended to the bond with his knowledge (de consciencia sua) and that the plaintiff had ever been seised of it.23 It is certainly the situation in a 1280 case where Robert de Tibetot and his wife Eve sued John de Camoys for acquittance of services demanded by the earl of Oxford as chief lord and for which they had been distrained by the earl. As proof of John’s duty to acquit them they produced a charter in John’s name promising them and Robert’s heirs warranty and acquittance. John denied that it was his deed. He admitted that the seal attached had been his but claimed that he had entrusted it to one Walter de Fanecurt who had been in his service and who had made and sealed the charter without his knowledge. Robert and Eve took a firm line. He had acknowledged that the seal was his and the deed obliged him to acquittance. If he had entrusted its custody to someone who had betrayed his trust it was he should bear the loss, not them (et sibi debeat imputari quare minus secure illud tradidit in custodia).24
Less obviously an agent is the Thomas de Chaunceus who in the 1268 Dorset eyre sued Hugh Lovel for £100 on the basis of a bond made 4 years earlier by Hugh’s brother Richard, obliging himself and his heirs to payment. Hugh denied that he owed the money or that the deed had been properly made by his brother. He did not deny that it was his brother’s seal. What he did say was that the bond had been made either after his brother’s death, or while he was unable to speak or to have knowledge of the writing or the seal and it had therefore been made without his will or knowledge. A jury was summoned to determine whether or not this was true and it was drawn from the county where the bond had allegedly been made.25 This is one of a number of cases where the litigant attacking the validity of a sealed deed claimed the seal had been used by a third party without the knowledge or consent of the owner of the seal or even after his death. In a case of 1198 Robert de Pinkeny sued his brother or half-brother William for land which had been given to Robert by his father Ralph and of which Robert had been seised in the reign of Henry II. William denied that the charter of grant produced by Robert was genuine. He admitted that the seal attached to it might well have been his father’s but said that the charter had been made after his father’s death while Robert’s mother had retained his seal and before William had gained possession of it through a complaint made to the king.26 Almost a century later when Robert son of Thomas Utred sued Arnold de Percy of Kildale for the Yorkshire manor of Killingwick by Pocklington, Arnold claimed that the writ and suit should be quashed because he held the manor jointly with his wife Christine by the gift of William de Percy. Robert, however, argued that the charter Arnold produced to prove the joint feoffment was not as believable (adeo credibilis) in his hands as it would have been in those of a stranger since he was William’s son and heir and the seal had come into his possession after his father’s death and so he could seal whatever he liked with it.27 Suggestive also about what was supposed to happen on the death of the owner of a seal and what might happen to the seal if it did not is a Norfolk dower case brought by Lucy the widow of William son of William heard in the Common Bench in 1295. One of Lucy’s late husband’s heiresses defended her failure to endow Lucy on the grounds that Lucy had refused to hand over William’s seal and others alleged that Lucy had used the seal after his death to seal writings to their disinheritance. Lucy denied having kept the seal and said she had handed it over to the custody of master Richard of Ringstead, the official of the local ecclesiastical court. A jury found that Lucy had only kept the seal till the day of her husband’s funeral and had then been willing to hand it over to the husband of one of the heiresses but he had refused to accept it. Since he had refused she had handed it over to the official, presumably in a container that was sealed with his own seal. Her attorney then produced it in court with the official’s seal still intact. The seal matrix was then destroyed (cancellatur) in court and the pieces of silver (argentum inde confractum) handed over to the husband of one of the heiresses.28
Nor was there any doubt that the seal itself was genuine in a major case heard in the Common Bench in 1292–3. What was in doubt was whether it had properly been affixed to the obligation in question and in such a way as to make that obligation binding. The case was one brought by master Leonardo de Lavagna, an Italian (probably a member of the Fieschi family) in the service of master Giffred de Vezano, a papal agent in England, against the prior of St Swithin’s Winchester (Winchester cathedral priory).29 In it he laid claim to no less than 520 marks arrears of an annual rent of 40 marks a year (13 years of arrears). He based his claim on an obligation in the name of William of Taunton the late prior of the cathedral priory [1250–55] and the convent, which had been payable once a year 2 weeks after Easter at the New Temple in London. The prior denied the obligation was the deed of the convent and the question of whether it was or not went to a local (Hampshire) jury. When the jury appeared at Westminster in Michaelmas term 1292 the jury did not give a straight answer. They first explained that prior William had in fact been removed from office by the bishop-elect, Aymer de Valence, before the making of the writing and without the bishop-elect needing to go through any kind of process, since both he and his episcopal predecessors had enjoyed the freedom to appoint and remove priors and obedientaries in the priory. While still in office William and the convent had appointed four monks of the house to take custody of the common conventual seal (the seal that was capable of binding the convent in perpetuity) and after William’s removal they had sealed a blank piece of parchment without the consent of the convent and sent it to the Roman Curia (evidently to William, who was aggrieved at his removal from office and was suing there to reverse it) and it was only when it reached Rome that the bond had been written. The jury concluded that the writing was not the deed of the convent and so did not bind them. The court did not, however, give judgment. The formal record indicates that the parties reached a concord in Michaelmas term 1293. This confirmed that the obligation was binding on the priory but master Leonardo remitted his damages and a small part of the arrears. There are also two law reports of different stages of this case which add quite considerably to what we know. Master Leonardo (despite the unfavourable jury verdict) evidently complained to king and council about the delay in the case and the case was then discussed before the king’s council. There was then further argument in the Common Bench itself. Chief Justice Mettingham was all for disregarding the jury’s verdict. His main argument for doing so was that when a jury gave a verdict and some of it was relevant and some of it was not the justice hearing the case was at liberty only to take account of what was relevant. Here all that was relevant and within the jury’s knowledge was that this was the convent’s seal and that it had been affixed to the parchment in England (for the jury could only know things which had happened in England). Their finding that the document had been written at Rome was irrelevant because an English jury could (in the eyes of the law) have no knowledge of anything done outside England. The general legal rule to be applied then was that it was up to the possessor of the seal to take good care of it (hom deit bien garder soen seal) and that when someone avowed a seal as theirs [and by analogy when a jury found that a seal was a genuine seal] then this conceded or validated everything that was written on the document thus sealed (ceo est qe est suthe le seal contenuz). The serjeant Nicholas of Warwick, acting for master Leonardo, put it even more pithily: that one who acknowledges a seal as his deed also acknowledges the ink and parchment to which the seal was attached (il conust le enqe e le parchemin conteneuz sur le seal). Mettingham and Warwick had no direct answer to the argument put by the prior’s counsel that the jury had found (and this was a matter within their knowledge) that the seal had been affixed invalidly because without the consent of the convent. Mettingham did, however, have an indirect answer to this. This was that, whatever imperfections there might have been in the original bond had been cured in prior proceedings in an ecclesiastical court against the prior’s predecessor, where that predecessor had acknowledged owing the annuity.
A different kind of disconnect between the document and the seal was raised by a Common Bench case of 1301. Nicholas of Weyland was the custodian of a bond entrusted to him in 1298 jointly by Alina the widow of Thomas of Otley and Peter of Denardeston by which Peter had obliged himself to pay an annual rent of ten pounds a year. It was to be returned to him if by St Andrew’s day 1298 he had enfeoffed her of tenements belonging to him in Suffolk to the value of half the manor of Otley for life. Alina sued him for the return of the bond and Peter was then given notice to appear to make any argument he could against the return of the bond. On appearance Peter pleaded a subsequent agreement that had materially altered the conditions he had to meet and he proffered an indented schedule containing the terms which he asserted was her deed. However, the deed said nothing about her having put her seal to the deed and indeed a report of the case says that the end of the schedule simply said ‘in witness of which the parties have sworn on the saints’ (en tesmoygnaunce de ceo les parties unt jurez sur seintz) and that the seal attached to the deed had no writing in the margin (circumferencia) but simply an image of a lion couchant. Alina did not deny that it was her seal but said it could not be considered her deed since the writing made no mention of a seal being attached. Her counsel (Gilbert of Tothby) stated this as a general rule: every deed produced in court to which a party was required to answer ought to attest whose deed it was by the seal and by certain words about the sealing contained in the deed. This document failed that test. The court agreed. Peter was pleading an agreement to stop Alina from obtaining the bond but had failed to show any suitable deed (factum competens) and so it was adjudged that the bond be delivered to her.30
In only a small number of cases do we hear of forged, or allegedly forged, seals. In an entry in the roll of the 1292 Lancashire eyre we read that Adam son of Ralph Smith of Claughton and Walter sigillator had been attached by the marshal of the court for the forgery and counterfeiting (falsacione et contrafaccione) of the seal of Thomas of Singleton, apparently because it had come to the notice of the court while it was in session. Walter claimed that Adam had brought him a charter sealed with Thomas’s seal relating to a tenement Thomas had given Adam and asked him to make a similar seal in return for payment. He had agreed to do this for 6d. He seems to have had second thoughts after making it and because he feared Adam was going to use it to make a forgery he had refused to hand it over and the original charter back. Adam acknowledged the charter was his but claimed he had lost it in court, rather than handed it over to Walter, and he denied asking him to make a similar seal. The jury said that Adam had indeed handed over the charter to Walter and had asked him to make a similar seal so he could have another charter for additional lands. On this basis Walter was acquitted and Adam remanded to custody, securing his release only for a fine of 40s.31 The same year in Easter term in the Common Bench we hear of a second, and apparently more successful, attempt at the forgery of a seal in a case which was brought by Denise de Mountchesney, the great-granddaughter and sole heiress of the Richard of Anstey of the Anstey case. In her (civil) action Denise alleged that Robert Constable clerk had falsely composed a letter of presentation in her name and without her knowledge or consent to the vacant Yorkshire church of Foston [on the Wolds] which belonged to her presentation and had sealed it with a counterfeit seal (quodam sigillo adulterino) and had then handed it over to the archbishop of York, the local diocesan, as though Denise had presented him. No dates are mentioned but this was probably in 1291. A law report supplies a missing detail: that the archbishop had immediately suspected that there was something wrong with the letters and had delayed taking action on them. Robert, however, had proved that the seal was indeed her seal by the testimony of William Constable, Thomas of Holm and Thomas of Houton and the action was also brought against them for falsely providing that testimony. Robert had been admitted to the church and had gained corporal possession of it. In the oral presentation made to the court (her ‘count’) made by her serjeant Denise alleged that all the important things had happened at Denise’s place of residence in Hertfordshire (Anstey). It had been there that the counterfeit seal had been made, there that he had made the forged letter of presentation in her name and sealed it. This was almost certainly untrue, but may have been intended to ensure that Denise benefitted from a favourable local jury. The serjeant claimed the enormous sum of £1000 in damages. The enrolment also mentions that the vicar[-general] of the archbishop sent to court the letter of presentation as he had been instructed. The report adds that chief justice Mettingham said that a writ had been specially authorised by common council (par le commun consayl) to the sheriff of Yorkshire to warn the archbishop to send the letter to the court since the king (and this sounds as though it may have been Edward I in person who said this) wanted to convict (voleit atendre) not just the forgers of his seal but also the seals of the magnates of his realm (haut gent de sun realme), a category that evidently embraced Denise. Robert Constable, the main beneficiary of the forged letter, and also according to Denise the main actor in its forgery, denied doing so and asserted in his defence that Thomas of Holm (her Yorkshire bailiff) had handed over the letter of presentation to him at Fridaythorpe in Yorkshire (which was where Thomas came from) but could not budge the court into having this tried in Yorkshire. Thomas denied having given any testimony to prove the false letter and this went to a Yorkshire jury drawn from Doncaster (which was where Denise alleged the process of proving the seal had taken place) and also from Foston. William Constable and Thomas of Houton played for time and said they were not obliged to answer on this secondary matter until the primary cause was settled. No sequel is recorded but some kind of skulduggery on the part of William and Robert Constable can indeed be suspected since the record of an assize of darrein presentment and a letter from Geoffrey Aguillon to William of Thornton, the archbishop’s attorney, both indicate that William was a rival claimant to patronage of the living though the agreement which ended litigation between them and others apparently allowed William the first presentation.
Some interesting conclusions are suggested by the material discussed in this paper. The first is in relation to personal responsibility for the act of ‘sealing a document’. The 1294 Essex case suggests that the crucial element in this may have been not the affixing the seal or the pressing of the seal matrix to the warm wax, but the removal of the matrix from the wax, the first point at which neighbours witnessing an act could see the legend on the seal as imprinted on the wax, and the delivery of the deed with the wax seal impression on it to the intended beneficiary. The second (suggested by the 1301 case) is that for a document to be regarded as the sealed document of a particular individual it was essential that the document itself mention the fact that it had been sealed by him or her. A third, however, is that under certain circumstances (but perhaps only quite exceptional ones) the king’s courts might be willing (as in the 1292–93 case) to enforce the terms of a sealed document even when they knew that those terms had been written at Rome on what had been sent from England as a blank, but sealed, parchment. A fourth is that there were social, and perhaps even legal, rules about what was supposed to happen to someone’s seal after their death which we seem to see in a case of 1295: that a man’s widow might be thought to be acting correctly in keeping her husband’s seal until the day of the funeral but must then offer to surrender it to the heir (or to the heir’s husband) and, if he refused it, would sensibly entrust it to the official of the local ecclesiastical court, but that its eventual fate (as overseen in this case by the king’s court) was for the seal to be destroyed and its silver content handed over to the heir. A fifth seems to be that it was relatively common for landowners to entrust their seals, part of the time at least, to their men of business, and this made it possible for those agents to seal deeds without the seal-owners’ knowledge, and that even if it might be possible to plead this in defence if the agent relied on a deed thus sealed it might well not be allowed as a defence against a deed sealed in favour of a third party (as the 1280 case suggests). The cases mentioned at the start of this paper demonstrate one of the main disadvantages of sealing wax as a means of authenticating documents: the relative fragility of wax (especially in a crowded court room) and the tendency of wax to grow brittle with age; and the 1292 cases I discussed at the end of another, the relative ease with which seals could be copied and then used for gain, without there being in the thirteenth century any criminal sanctions against such an act, though forging the king’s seal was quite another matter.