There is vast disparity between the survival rates of Henry’s two apparently authentic royal seals. Only a single example of the so-called ‘first’ great seal is known, used to authenticate an original charter issued at Northampton early in the reign, apparently in 1155, witnessed by Geoffrey the King’s brother and therefore certainly before the King’s departure for France early in 1156.²³ The charter in question was written by a recognised chancery scribe and must be assumed authentic.²⁴ Its imagery follows that of King Stephen’s first great seal, including the use of a crown with Byzantine-style ornaments, described by W. de Gray Birch as ‘ansula or trefoiled pendant fastenings’.²⁵ If this was indeed the King’s ‘first’ great seal, then it could have been manufactured around the time of Henry’s coronation, perhaps used to authenticate the King’s coronation charter of December 1154.²⁶ By contrast, save for the unique use of the first great seal recorded above, and save for a single instance discussed below, the so-called ‘second’ great seal was used in the sealing of all other letters and charters of Henry II with surviving seal impressions. This ‘second’ seal had certainly been introduced by the summer (June/July) of 1155, when it was used to seal an original charter issued at the siege of Bridgnorth.²⁷ It occurs in at least 22 impressions attached to charters certainly issued before 1158, and in more than 200 all told.²⁸ Its very first appearance may indeed be earlier than June 1155, attached to charters for Holy Trinity Priory London, issued at London, probably very soon after the King’s coronation in December 1154.²⁹ It continued in use thereafter, through to the end of the King’s reign. This raises problems. It suggests that the ‘second’ great seal may already have been in use by the time that Henry II came to issue letters under his supposed ‘first’ great seal, at Northampton in 1155. As I shall argue below, it may suggest that what we have here are not ‘first’ and ‘second’ great seals but two seals used simultaneously, one of them surviving in only a single impression, the other in more than 200.

Why, if there was indeed a ‘first’ attempt to provide Henry II with a great seal, was this first matrix so swiftly set aside? As with the seal used by Henry II before 1154, both ‘first’ and ‘second’ great seals are competently engraved, of much the same standard of workmanship as the seals of Henry’s contemporaries in northern France. The ‘second’ seal is thus not markedly more refined than the ‘first’.³⁰ Both appear crude when compared to the seals engraved for Henry’s sons Richard and John, after the mid-1180s. This great leap forwards in seal engraving from the 1190s has been widely noticed by the historians of art, but perhaps had technological origins that have not been sufficiently explored. In particular, it may suggest advances in the use of rock crystal, water-refracted or even ground glass lenses that allowed goldsmiths to work with a microscopic precision not previously obtainable.³¹

Perhaps Henry’s ‘first’ royal seal was lost. Another possibility lies with its inscription, where the spelling of the King’s name on the front and back was inconsistent, HENRICVS versus HENR’. When later dictaminal treatises deal with such matters, they tend to emphasise the need for agreement between seal inscription and style in the written intitulatio.³² This insistence can be traced back at least as early as the 1160s, when the Pope and his lawyers had sought for the first time to define what constituted authenticity in a document, both in terms of authentica scripta and sigillum authenticum.³³ Even so, although there were inconsistencies to the legend of this so-called ‘first’ great seal, incongruities persisted. As Léopold Delisle long ago pointed out, the legends to none of Henry II’s seals accord precisely with the versions of his name written at the head of each of his charters.³⁴ As duke of Normandy after 1150, Henry had employed a seal that incorporated the words DEI GRATIA, even though only a minority of his ducal charters, barely one in ten, employed Dei gratia in their opening intitulatio.³⁵ As we have seen, the charters issued by Henry II as duke of Normandy credit him, following his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, with title as ‘Duke of Aquitaine’, yet no change was made to his seal for the next two years to acknowledge this promotion.³⁶ Even then, when Henry acquired a new seal as King of England, after 1154, the majesty sides of both his ‘first’ and ‘second’ great seals continued to use the Dei gratia formula, not added to the intitulatio of the charter texts for a further 20 years. Both sides of both great seals name the King HENRICVS or HENR’ (with or without capital initial).³⁷ Not so the scribes writing his charters, who almost invariably used only the initial ‘H’. The appearance of the form Henr’ in the written intitulatio to an original charter of Henry II can, indeed, be employed as a fairly reliable proof of forgery.³⁸

Such disparities affected other members of Henry II’s family. His younger brother, William, for example, employed an equestrian seal describing him as FILIUS IMPERATRICIS, even though the majority of his charters credit him with title as frater Henrici regis Angl(orum) (Fig. 2.6).³⁹ Henry’s eldest son, Henry the Young King, was supplied after 1170 with a single-sided seal, very much in the Capetian French style, without either sword or banner, with legend as HENRICVS REX ANGLOR’ ET DVX NORMANNOR’ ET COMES ANDEGAVOR’. Despite the absence of Dei gratia from the legend, however, the majority of the Young King’s charters, including all those with surviving seal impressions, employ the title H(enricus) Dei gratia rex.⁴⁰ Henry’s youngest son, the future King John, from 1185 to 1199 employed a seal describing him as son of the King of England and lord of Ireland, even though from 1189 he was technically not son but brother of the King, and even though his charters from this period style him first and foremost as count of Mortain, employing his title as lord of Ireland only in charters relating to specifically Irish business.⁴¹

On Henry’s ‘second’ great seal, the phrase DEI GRATIA, whilst retained for the King’s title as King of England, has been omitted from the reverse legend listing Henry’s titles to Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou. This may imply underlying concern about Henry’s claim to authority over his wife’s lands. More likely, it reflects the simple practicality of fitting a longer than usual legend onto the back of a seal, from which the omission of the letters DEI GRATIA allowed for more extended emphasis upon the lands/peoples over whom Henry claimed to rule. In using Dei gratia on his seal but not in the written texts of his letters, Henry’s chancery merely followed the practice of his father, Geoffrey, whose seal as count of Anjou had incorporated the Dei gratia formula, absent from the seal of Geoffrey’s father, count Fulk. Like those of Henry before 1173, Geoffrey’s charters rarely incorporate Dei gratia within their opening intitulatio.⁴² A claim to rule by God’s grace (Dei gratia) is also found on the seals, but only rarely in the charter texts, of all kings of England from William II onwards and also on the seal of Henry’s mother, Matilda, who from the time of her marriage to the emperor Henry V had used a seal whose legend described her as DEI GRATIA ROMANORVM REGINA.⁴³ To this extent, and as was so often the case, dictaminal theory seems to have parted company with chancery practice. In other words, we have no clear explanation here for why Henry’s ‘first’ great seal should have been replaced by his ‘second’.

Here I would like to explore an alternative possibility, linked to the other seals of Henry II recorded or inferred. The most significant and yet most elusive of these is the Exchequer seal, several times referred to in Richard fitz Nigel’s Dialogue of the Exchequer, described there as being identical to the great seal both in image and inscription.⁴⁴ It has been assumed by the modern authorities that no impression of this Exchequer seal of Henry II survives. The first surviving impression of a royal Exchequer seal is supposedly that of Richard I attached to a charter of January 1190, itself dealing with matters that directly concerned the Exchequer, dated at Westminster, and described in detail in this volume by Adrian Ailes.⁴⁵ It is slightly smaller than Richard’s great seals and thus corresponds to Gervase of Canterbury’s description of the Exchequer seal as the sigillum parvum, regia tamen maiestate signatum.⁴⁶ As such it might well remind us of the disparity between the sizes of the so-called ‘first’ and ‘second’ great seals of Henry II. It is at least a possibility, never before explored, that these are not both ‘great’ seals, but in reality great seal (the ‘second’, known from more than 200 impressions) and Exchequer seal (the ‘first’ seal, a single impression). Just as Gervase of Canterbury reports of the great and Exchequer seals of Richard I, Henry’s ‘first’ (possibly Exchequer) seal is slightly smaller (90 mm versus 94 mm) than the ubiquitous ‘second’ great seal. Problems nonetheless remain. The legend of Henry’s ‘first’ seal is clearly distinct from that of the second, as are its devices. The ‘first’ seal makes its unique appearance at Northampton attached to a document that has no obvious connection to the Exchequer, and at a location distant from either Westminster or Winchester, the usual centres of Exchequer activity. We must therefore tread with caution. In future we should be wary of writing of Henry’s ‘first’ and ‘second’ great seals, not least because the ‘second’ may well have been in use before the unique appearance of the ‘first’. Even so, we lack any firm proof that the ‘first’ seal is the Exchequer seal. All that we can report with certainty is that the ‘second’ was Henry’s standard ambulatory great seal.