The splendid seal of Emeline Longespée, one of the daughters of Stephen Longespée and Emeline de Lacy, continues the practice of incorporating heraldic shields into the design (Fig. 10.17). Standing under an elaborate trefoiled canopy, the richly attired lady holds out with her left hand a shield of the Longespée arms with a label of four points, from her father, and with her right hand the shield of her husband, Maurice FitzMaurice (a saltire with a label of five points); below her arms on either side are an unsheathed sword pointing upwards and a lioncel passant, each lioncel facing inwards; the legend reads: S’ EMELINE LVNGESPEIE. More symbolism occurs in the secretum on the counterseal, which resembles with subtle differences the obverse of the seal of her father, Stephen Longespée. The shield of Longespée arms with a label of four points is the same, but the two flanking unsheathed swords point upward (instead of downwards as on the father’s seal) and a single lioncel walks across the top of the shield; the legend, in French, is very singular: + FOL. EST. KI. ME. BRISERA. FORCE. LI. A. KI. LA. LETTRE. VA., which has been aptly rendered by Adrian Ailes as: ‘Foolhardy is he who breaks me except him to whom this letter is sent’.⁵⁵ No fewer than five examples of this excellent seal survive among the Wanborough deeds in Magdalen College, Oxford. Emeline’s husband died in 1286, but she lived on until 1331, another case of a long-lived Longespée lady.⁵⁶

As regards the disposition of heraldic arms on the seals of Longespée ladies, whether they were so by birth or by marriage, no consistent pattern can be discerned. In the four cases where two shields are displayed, two show the lady holding her arms by birth in her right hand or set to her right, with her arms by marriage held in her left hand or set to her left – these are the seals of Matilda Clifford, wife of William Longespée III, and Ela Longespée, wife of James de Audley; the other two cases show the exact opposite – namely, the second seal of Ela Longespée, countess of Warwick, and the seal of Emeline Longespée, wife of Maurice FitzMaurice.⁵⁷ The heraldic devices on the other female seals in our group are not deployed in a similar way and are, therefore, not susceptible to this kind of analysis.

The seals of the first two generations of the family, after the earl and countess of Salisbury, have produced ample evidence of the vigour and adaptability of the family’s heraldic arms and symbols. The habit continued into later generations, although the age of the large pointed oval seal, with a depiction of the seal’s owner, was coming to an end in favour of a generally smaller circular seal on which the iconography was overwhelmingly heraldic, particularly for women, so that, while images of Longespée ladies and their female relatives by marriage had been very prominent hitherto, the fashion seems to have been abandoned after the early fourteenth century. I do not propose to take my detailed examination of the Longespée seals much further into the fourteenth century, but I should like to conclude with three examples, two male, one female, which show the same principles at work in a later period. The first is the seal of Alan la Zouche (d. 1314), the grandson of Stephen Longespée, through his mother Ela. She was the sister of the Emeline whose seals we have discussed and she married Roger la Zouche (d. 1285). The only known impression of Alan’s seal was attached, with many others, to the so-called Barons’ Letter to Pope Boniface VIII in 1301; it now survives, along with its fellows, as a detached seal (Fig. 10.18). It is circular and shows on the obverse a shield hanging from the neck of a lion and bearing the ten bezants of the arms of Zouche, surrounded by six lioncels passant in allusion to his maternal arms, three lioncels climbing up the dexter side, as it were, and three up the other; the legend reads: SIGILLVM: ALANI: LA SOVCHE.⁵⁸ The other male seal is that of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln and constable of Chester, who in 1256 married Margaret, daughter and heir of William Longespée III (who himself died the following year), and thus acquired through her the bulk of the Longespée inheritance. His seal is a splendid example of the great circular equestrian type, with the earl galloping to the sinister, his shield displaying a single lion rampant, most probably an adaptation of the Longespée lioncel in recognition of his marriage, which he appears to have adopted as his arms in place of his own inherited arms; the legend reads: S’ HENRICI DE LACI COMITIS LINCOLNIE ET CONSTABVLAR’ CESTR’ (Fig. 10.19).⁵⁹ The counterseal, which the earl also used frequently on its own, is a smaller circular seal showing the same shield with lion rampant and flanked by a single lioncel on each side, of unmistakable Longespée type (with their sleek, lean bodies and excessively long tails), facing outward and each with its head turned inward toward the shield, the legend reading: SIGILLVM SECRETI.⁶⁰ I have found no evidence for other husbands of Longespée ladies adopting Longespée devices in this way; it is no doubt the case here because the husband in question has married a Longespée heiress. The final seal to be discussed here is that of Henry de Lacy’s daughter, Alice de Lacy, great-great-granddaughter of the earl and countess of Salisbury in the senior line, and hereditary countess of Lincoln and holder of the lands of the earldom of Salisbury, the former title inherited from her father (d. 1311), the latter position from her mother, Margaret Longespée (d. 1306/1310). The surviving impression of her seal was appended to a deed made after the death of her husband, Thomas, earl of Lancaster, cousin and principal opponent of King Edward II, executed at Pontefract after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322.⁶¹ The seal makes no reference to this marriage, but celebrates her parents’ marriage (Fig. 10.20). Moreover, it exemplifies the more fashionable type of seal for a lady of her rank, being circular and displaying an heraldic shield, in this case with the impaled arms of Lacy (dexter), a lion rampant, for her father, and of Longespée (sinister), for her mother, and surrounded by three wyverns; the legend is barely legible on the very damaged original in The National Archives, dating from 1322, but the drawing in Bowles and Nichols shows it clearly as: * SIGILLVM ALAYS DE LACY.⁶²