Of the four sisters of these brothers, only one achieved real and enduring prominence, Ela, and only she has left seal evidence. That seal evidence is, however, copious and instructive. Ela married twice, first Thomas, earl of Warwick (d. 1242), and secondly Philip Basset, appointed Henry III’s justicar in 1261 (d. 1271), after whose death she lived on as a widow until her own death in 1298.³⁴ Since she had no children by either marriage, she was in her later years a wealthy widow and became a generous benefactor to a number of religious and scholarly institutions, including Reading Abbey and Merton College, Oxford.³⁵ She was buried in Osney Abbey, just outside Oxford, from where part of her carved funerary slab was eventually moved to Christ Church cathedral in Oxford, where it still survives.³⁶ We know altogether of three of her seals, as has been elucidated by Adrian Ailes, although it seems probable that only one actually survives today.³⁷ It is striking in each case that the seal is a double-sided seal, with an obverse and reverse of the same shape and dimensions, although the reverse has been described by some commentators as a counterseal, a usage which ought arguably to be eschewed for such situations as this. No original of the first seal survives, and its appearance has come down to us only in the form of two drawings, of the early eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, respectively.³⁸ It has on its obverse a very attractive image of an aristocratic lady slightly turned to the sinister, with a hawk on her left wrist and with her right hand placed on her breast; she stands between two rather exuberant trails of foliage (echoes of which we shall see in a later seal of another member of the family), the legend reading: + S’ ELE. LVNGESPEYE COMITISSE. WARWIC (Fig. 10.9). There is no visual reference otherwise to her Longespée birth; that only becomes apparent on the reverse, which displays in a beautiful design a shield of the Longespée arms within a cusped hexafoil and, above and below, a single lion passant, which is probably a reference to the lions of her grandfather, Henry II, and therefore of the royal family in general; similar individual lions passant occur on some queens’ seals.³⁹ The legend of the reverse is a repeat of that on the obverse. The only reference to her husband, the earl of Warwick, on either side of the seal is, indirectly, in the legend. In her second seal, however, produced after her marriage to Philip Basset in c. 1255, the images become more complex. The obverse is replaced by a new frontally standing figure of the countess holding out with her left hand a Longespée shield of arms, while to her right is set a shield of the arms of her late husband (chequey, a chevron ermine), the legend reading: + S’ ELE. BASSET. COMITISSE. WAREWYKIE. The reverse is very similar to that of the countess’ first seal, except that now it is the Basset arms that appear on the shield in the centre, within a quatrefoil (not a hexafoil), and the single lions above and below are rampant, the legend being the same as on the obverse (Fig. 10.10). A very fine specimen of this seal is appended to a deed to Merton College, dated 2 November 1266, which is also sealed by her then husband, Philip Basset.⁴⁰ For Ela’s third seal, used in her widowhood after her second husband’s death in 1271, we are largely dependent on another drawing in Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals (Fig. 10.11). This shows what looks like a simplified version of the first seal, with a very similar female figure on the obverse (but without the trails of foliage), and a reverse apparently identical to that on the first seal, showing the Longespée arms within a hexafoil and lions passant above and below (although only the lower survives).⁴¹

If we turn to the known seals of the wives/widows of two of these brothers, we find a picture of increasing diversity. William II’s wife was Idonea de Camville, daughter and heiress of Richard de Camville. She evidently had two seals, neither of which has been widely known until relatively recently. Both are found in a small group of deeds in the Berkshire Record Office concerning property which, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, became part of the endowment of the Eastbury, or Isbury, chantry and charity in the church and parish of Lambourn (Berkshire).⁴² The intriguing aspect of the matter is that the two seals are used on very similar deeds concerning the same land with the same witnesses (one minor change of name), although one has a few extra details. The first seal makes no allusion to Idonea’s Longespée marriage, but the second does so spectacularly, both on the obverse and (probably) on the counterseal (which the first seal lacks). The first seal simply depicts a noble lady, with the legend: SIGILLV(M). YD[…..]..[…]NVILE.⁴³ The second seal, however, to judge from the style of the lady’s elegant dress and headdress, is later than the first and depicts, moreover, her husband’s six lioncels, in two groups of three, one on either side of her figure (Fig. 10.12). This looks like an attempt to incorporate the lady’s married arms in a form which predates the widespread introduction of shields of arms, of the type we have already seen. The legend is: SIGILLVM YDONIE: D’. KAVNVILE. The counterseal is the lady’s secretum and depicts, in my view, a very free interpretation of one of the Longespée lioncels, although the possibility cannot be entirely excluded that it represents a Camville lion (for her father); the legend reads + SECRETVM: YDONIE: D’. KAMPVILE.⁴⁴ This little group of deeds includes three examples of the second seal with counterseal, in various states of completeness, one of which is attached to a deed in which the lady describes herself as the widow of William Longespée, but the other two deeds do not state this.⁴⁵ She died in 1251/2, within two years of her late husband.⁴⁶ The widow of Stephen Longespée, the seneschal of Gascony in 1254 and justiciar of Ireland from 1258, was Emeline de Lacy, widow earlier of Hugh de Lacy, earl of Ulster.⁴⁷ After Stephen’s death in 1260, and in anticipation of her own death, which was to take place in 1276, Emeline founded a chantry in the parish of Wanborough (Wiltshire) for the souls of themselves, their ancestors and successors, the possessions and copious deeds of which in the later fifteenth century came fortunately into the possession of Magdalen College, Oxford, by gift of the founder, William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, and there they remain. The collection contains several seals of Emeline and her relatives, including a magnificent specimen of her own seal with counterseal, appended by cords to one of the deeds establishing the chantry (Fig. 10.13).⁴⁸ On the obverse we see the countess’s elegant figure, in a dress and headdress very reminiscent of Idonea de Camville’s, a hawk on her left wrist, flanked by two sets of three lioncel faces (as we saw earlier, her husband, Stephen, had sported five such faces on his counterseal); the legend is: + SIGILL[VM] [EM]ELINE [CO]MITISSE: VLTONIE. The smaller counterseal, her secretum, depicts a shield bearing a single lion rampant, evidently a Longespée lioncel derived from her second husband, suspended from a branch or clump of foliage, the legend being: + SECRETVM EMELINE. COMITISSE: VLTONIE. The Wanborough archive at Magdalen College contains eight other deeds in Emeline’s name, dealing with antecedent or supplementary transactions relating to the formal foundation of the chantry; with one possible exception, these are all sealed on parchment tags with the countess’s secretum alone.⁴⁹