The sharp eyes of the young also meant that, in 1963, an 8 year old girl, Margaret Rowley, far from Wales, discovered a Welsh seal on land once belonging to Leicester abbey in a waste tip of spoil from the construction of the M1 motorway: none less than the seal of the ecclesiastical college of Abergwili just outside Carmarthen (Fig. 14.10).¹⁹ The college was founded at Llangadog in 1283, but moved to Abergwili about 1292. A new constitution in 1334 meant that the precentor became the lead cleric in this college of some 20 priests: hence the legend – The seal of the Precentor and Chapter of the Collegiate Church of Abergwili. Was it stolen from the college? More likely it was lost by the precentor on a journey. There is evidence that Leicester was a central point for occasional gatherings of religious superiors.²⁰ The seal depicts St Maurice, a soldier martyr of the third century Theban Legion, and this reflects the Anglo-Norman influence common in parts of south Wales of adopting non-Celtic dedications.

Yet another seal spotted by a youngster was found by 5 year old Master B. Jones of Cardiff. Taken on an outing to Barry Island by his parents in 1948 what did he find on the beach, but the lead seal of Bishop Giraud, bishop of Vaison, in Vaucluse, France, from 1271 to 1295.²¹ The obverse shows the bishop in pontificals, the reverse a triple-towered castle as on the counter-seal of that town. Why this seal travelled so far from his diocese, we shall never know. It has been suggested that there were forgeries of this seal, but somehow the seal or a copy found its way to Wales. The legend is incomplete (Figs 14.11 and 14.12).

Indeed, several seals have been found on the south Wales coastline – the inference must be that they came by sea, and perhaps were lost in shipwreck or when the owners were clambering out of a boat. At least two seals have been found on the shore in Swansea Bay²² while in 1999, a metal detectorist found a silver seal of an abbot William of Neath on the beach at Aberavon, near Port Talbot (Figs 14.13 and 14.14).²³ Neath abbey lies several miles to the west, and it must be assumed that the abbot was travelling in one of his monastery’s boats, perhaps on a visit to Margam abbey a little to the east, but some how lost his seal from his waist belt whilst landing. Some of these coastal seals may have been a consequence of ship wreck.

Abbot William may have been the William of St Donat’s who was abbot of Neath from 1326 until at least 1341, but the black-letter legend would suggest a somewhat later date, while the list of Neath’s known abbots is far from complete. The seal has typical imagery of the period: the Blessed Virgin, patroness of the Cistercian Order, standing crowned beneath an elaborate canopy, with in the base a tonsured and cowled abbot holding his pastoral staff. The legend, in open Black Lettering, reads: Sigillū Willme abbatis de nāth