Notes
1 AHRC project code: AH/G010994/1. Principal investigator, Phillipp Schofield; co-investigator, Sue Johns; Senior Research Officer, Elizabeth New, and Research Officer, John McEwan.
2 For brief details, see http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=5326 (accessed 5 June 2014) and for a selection of images gathered as part of the project: http://seliau.llgc.org.uk/ (accessed 5 June 2014). An associated publication is J. McEwan et al., Seals in Context: medieval Wales and the Welsh Marches (Aberystwyth, 2012), which is available on-line at http://seliau.llgc.org.uk/. A volume arising from the project, Seals and Society. Medieval Wales and the Welsh Marches (University of Wales Press) will be completed in 2014 and will be coauthored by the project team.
3 Good Impressions. Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, eds N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2008).
4 On this point, see especially P. D. A. Harvey, ‘Personal seals in thirteenth-century England’, in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages. Essays Presented to John Taylor, eds I. Wood and G. A. Loud (London, 1991), pp. 117–27; A. F. McGuiness, ‘Non-armigerous seals and seal-usage in thirteenth-century England’, in Thirteenth-century England, V, eds P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 165–77; also T. A. Heslop, ‘Peasant seals’, in Medieval England, ed. E King (London, 1988), pp. 214–5; P. R. Schofield, ‘Seals and the Peasant Economy in England and Marcher Wales, ca. 1300’, in Medieval Coins and Seals: Constructing identity, signifying power, ed. S. Solway (Turnhout, forthcoming).
Notes
1 M.-A. Nielen, Les sceaux des reines et des enfants de France, Corpus des sceaux français du Moyen Âge 3 (Paris, 2011), p. 164.
2 W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 6v., 1887–1900), iv, p. 272.
3 C. Neveus et al., Medeltida småkonst: Sigill i Riksarkivet, Skrifter utgivna av Riksarkivet 19 (Stockholm, 1997), p. 23.
4 F. Menéndez Pidal de Navascués et al., Sellos medievales de Navarra: Estudio y corpus descriptivo (Pamplona, 1995), p. 494.
5 [L. C.] Douët d’Arcq, Archives de l’empire: inventaires et documents. Collection de sceaux (Paris, 3v., 1863-8), ii, pp. 457 (no. 6298), 491 (no. 6506).
6 Birch, Catalogue of Seals, i, p.1.
7 E. Okasha, ‘The third supplement to Hand-list of Anglo-Saxon non-Runic inscriptions’, Anglo-Saxon England 33 (2004), pp. 225–81, here pp. 244–5 (no. 232), pl. xia.
8 A. B. Tonnochy, Catalogue of British Seal-dies in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1952), p. 1.
9 Tonnochy, Catalogue of British Seal-dies, pp. 2–3.
10 Tonnochy, Catalogue of British Seal-dies, pp. 1–2.
11 R. Linenthal and W. Noel, Medieval Seal Matrices in the Schøyen Collection, Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection 4 (Oslo, 2004), pp. 3–4, pl. xx.
12 T. A. Heslop, ‘English seals from the mid ninth century to 1100’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 133 (1980), pp. 1–16, ps i–iv, here pp. 7–8, pls I, iv.
13 Nielen, Les sceaux des reines, pp. 57–9.
14 P. D. A. Harvey and A. McGuinness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London, 1996), pp.3–5.
15 T. A. M Bishop and P. Chaplais (eds), Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to a.d.1100 Presented to Vivian Hunter Galbraith. (Oxford, 1957), pl. xix.
16 S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 24; and see the charters reproduced in E. A. Bond, Facsimiles of Ancient Charters in the British Museum (London, 4v., 1873–8), iii, ad 939–66.
17 This conclusion is all but anticipated by Henry Ellis, ‘Observations on the history and use of seals in England’, Archaeologia 18 (1817), pp. 12–20, here p. 18. I am grateful to Miss E. A. Danbury for telling me of this article.
18 D. F. Johnson, ‘The crux usualis as apotropaic weapon in Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. C. E. Karkov et al. (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 80–95, discusses the importance and power of the sign of the cross in Anglo-Saxon England.
19 Birch, Catalogue of Seals, i, p.1.
20 Okasha, ‘The third supplement’, pp. 244–5 (no. 232), pl. xia.
21 S. E. Rigold, ‘Seals and titles’, British Numismatic Journal, 44 (1974), pp. 99–106, here pp. 99–100.
22 Revelation 5.1; 6.1–12; 8.1; but they are signacula in Revelation 5.2, 9. In other passages where the Authorised Version has the noun seal the Vulgate has signum (Jeremiah 32.44; Romans 4.11; Revelation 7.2) or signaculum (Job 38.14; Song of Solomon 8.6; Romans 4.11; 1 Corinthians 9.2; 2 Timothy 2.19).
23 T. Wright, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, 2nd edn, ed. R. P. Wülcker (London, 2v., 1884), i, col. 126.
24 J. Roberts, ‘Guthlac of Crowland and the seals of the Cross’, in The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. C. E. Karkov et al. (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 113–28, especially pp. 115–23.
25 Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, p. 4. The references are all in volume 1, the Large Domesday; thus ‘De hoc habent canonici sigillum regis Edwardi et regis Willelmi’ (f. 374) clearly refers to sealed documents, the testimony of ‘ipse qui sigillum regis detulit’ (f. 169) probably to authentication of the messenger.
26 See, for instance, M. Dalas, Les sceaux des rois et de régence, Corpus des sceaux français du Moyen Âge 2 (Paris, 1991), pp. 80–127.
27 G. Demay, Inventaire des sceaux de la Picardie (Paris, 1875), pp. 117 (no. 1057), 130 (no. 1161); R. Rodière, ‘Catalogue des sceaux-matrices des musées d’Amiens et d’Abbeville et de quelques collections picardes’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de Picardie 38 (1939–40), pp. 183–215, here pp. 186–7 (no. 13); Heslop, ‘English seals’, pp. 8–9, pl. ivd.
28 Douët d’Arcq, Collection de sceaux, ii, p. 491 (no. 6506).
Notes
* What follows is an abbreviated version of material to be presented in due course as part of the introductory volume to The Letters and Charters of Henry II, ed. N. Vincent and others (Oxford, forthcoming). For their assistance, I am indebted to Adrian Ailes, Richard Allen, Julie Barrau, Hugh Doherty, Kathryn Dutton, Henry Fairbairn, Olga Mendez Gonzalez, Martin Henig, Sandy Heslop, Brian Kemp, Lars Kjaer, John Mitchell, and Jörg Peltzer.
1 N. Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, eds C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 278–334, esp. pp. 323–34.
2 The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. E. Searle (Oxford 1980), 214, and for the chronicler’s reliability on this as on other matters.
3 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. M. R. James and revised by C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), pp. 494–5.
4 Matthew Paris, ‘Gesta Abbatum’, in Chronica Monasterii S. Albani, ed. H. T. Riley, 7 vols (London 1863–76), 4 part 1, pp. 150–6, esp. p. 156, Rex manum apposuit, nam laqueum pallii sui pro testimonio apposuit. The same word, laqueus, is used in the Pipe Roll for 1182 to describe the cords, or ‘laqueii’, purchased for the charters by which the bishops of England were expected to guarantee the King’s last will and testament: Pipe Roll 28 Henry II, p. 28.
5 The standard authority here, pending Letters of Henry II, remains W. de Gray Birch, ‘On the Seals of King Henry the Second, and of his Son the so-called Henry the Third’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, 2nd series xi (1878), 301–37. For other standard descriptions, see A. B. Wyon, The Great Seals of England from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (London, 1887); W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London, 1887–1900), i.
6 P. Bony, Un Siècle de sceaux figurés (Paris 2002), pl. 3, nos 12–13; pl. 4 no. 19, 10–11 nos 52–3, 55, 58.
7 Paris, Archives nationales J219 no.1, and London, BL Harley Charter 84.C.3, with the legend reconstructed with the help of fragments from other exemplars. For full details, see Birch, ‘Seals of Henry II’, 307; Birch, Catalogue, ii, 337 nos 6320–2; Letters of Henry II, ed. Vincent.
8 Sandford, Genealogical History of the Kings of England (London, 1677), also in the 2nd ed., as A Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (London, 1707), p. 54, pl. 1.
9 G. Demay, Inventaire des sceaux de la Normandie (Paris, 1881), p. 4, no. 20, from an original now at Rouen, Archives départementales Seine-Maritime 20HP5, whence Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154, vols. iii–iv (1135–1154), ed. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis (Oxford, 1968–71), no. 77, with a further facsimile in C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions (New York, 1918), pl. 7b; Birch, Catalogue, ii, 336 no. 6317 (from BL Seal Casts lxxx. 46–7, perhaps from the same impression as Demay); Bony, Un Siècle de sceaux figurés, p. 27, pl. 10–11, nos 52–3, 58.
10 J.-F. Nieus, ‘L’Hérédité des matrices de sceaux princiers au XIIe siècle, entre conscience lignagère et discours politique’, in M. Gil and J.-L. Chassel (eds), Pourquoi les sceaux? La sigillographie, nouvel enjeu de l’histoire de l’art, (Lille 2012), 217–39, esp. p. 223, for the likelihood that Henry’s ducal seal was made anew rather than merely recut
11 Regesta, iii, no. 635.
12 Regesta, iii, nos 43, 111, 372.
13 Regesta, iii, nos 320, 420, 666, 704, 735 (with date that could be interpreted as early as Easter 1147), 795.
14 Regesta, iii, no. 304: ‘a(u)ctoritate sigilli nostri confirmamus’, from an original prepared for sealing with only a single seal.
15 See below, pp. 14–16.
16 The seals of William IX and William X dukes of Aquitaine appear to have been single sided, equestrian shown with sword, horse at the gallop, the figure itself bare headed rather than helmeted as in English or Norman equivalents: F. Eygun, Sigillographie du Poitou jusqu’en 1515 (Poitiers 1938), 159 nos 1–2 and pl. 1 no.1.
17 Regesta, iii, no. 90: ‘Si annuente Deo regnum Angl(ie) adeptus fuero …. regali auctoritate confirmabo et sigilli regii attestatione corroborabo’.
18 The best comparative descriptions here are now supplied by Bony, Un Siècle de sceaux figurés, esp. pl. iii–xi.
19 For alternative descriptions, see Birch, ‘Seals of Henry II’, 308–9 and plate; Wyon, Great Seals, 15 no. 30–1 and pl. v.
20 Here described after BL Additional Charter 5719 (Letters of Henry II, no. 2567). For alternative descriptions, see Birch, ‘Seals of Henry II’, 309–11 and plate; Wyon, Great Seals, pp. 15–16, nos 32–3; p. 149, appendix B, plate v; Birch, Catalogue, i, pp. 11–12, nos 56–76 and pl. 1, and esp. by Sandy Heslop, in G. Zarnecki (ed.), English Romanesque Art 1066–1200 (London, 1984), p. 304, no. 333. An online facsimile is available at http://reed.dur.ac.uk/xtf/view?docId=ead/dcd/dcdmseal.xml#ERs no. 3021 [accessed: 6 June 2014].
21 BL Seal Cast li.2, whence Birch, ‘Seals of Henry II’, 308, whence Wyon, Great Seals, p. 16; Birch, Catalogue, p. 12, no. 77, ‘believed to be derived from a leaden matrix found in an advanced state of decay’.
22 A. B. Tonnochy, Catalogue of British Seal Dies in the British Museum (London, 1952), p. 4, no. 4 and pl. ii, no. 4, the cast described by Birch, ‘Seals of Henry II’, 308, whence Wyon, Great Seals, p. 16; Birch, Catalogue, i, pp. 12–13 no. 78.
23 Letters of Henry II, no.1817, from an original first noticed by John Doubleday in Archaeologia, xxvi (1836), 460–1, misidentifying the shield strap as a torque and suggesting that the pendants from the crown were used to tie it, like a bonnet, beneath the chin.
24 T.A.M. Bishop, Scriptores Regis (Oxford, 1961), pl. xxvi(b), scribe xxviii, recorded as writing 15 surviving original charters of Henry II, all of them issued in England, all of them almost certainly before August 1158, six of them still carrying legible impressions of Henry II’s second great seal.
25 W. de Gray Birch, ‘On the Great Seals of King Stephen’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, 2nd series xi (1878), 5; Regesta, iii, pp. xvi–xvii; Regesta, iv, pls i–ii. For clasps on the crown recorded as breaking, see the story told by Eadmer, in Eadmeri Historia Novorum, ed. M. Rule (London, 1884), p. 293.
26 W. Stubbs, Select Charters, 9th edn (Oxford, 1913), p. 158.
27 Letters of Henry II, no. 290.
28 ibid., introduction.
29 ibid. nos 1633–4. Heslop’s attempts to date two other charters with this seal to February 1155 (English Romanesque Art, p. 304, no. 333) are based upon too restrictive a series of dating criteria. In reality these charters could date from any time between 1155 and August 1158.
30 For a contrary opinion, see Heslop, English Romanesque Art, p. 304, no. 333, describing the first matrix as ‘of rather poor quality … hastily produced’.
31 For preliminary work here, drawn to my attention by Sandy Heslop, see the remarks of G. Kornbluth, Engraved Gems of the Carolingian Empire (Philadelphia, 1995), p. 20 and figures 14.3, 18.1, 18.3, on the magnifying properties of cabuchon rock crystal, already known to engravers in Carolingian and presumably Roman times. See also the suggestions by J. Gage, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism (London, 1999), pp. 90–1, that the words cauilla and spectaculum, as employed in Alexander Neckham’s De nominibus utensilium, refer to magnifying tools used in manuscript illumination, perhaps even to a ground glass magnifying lens and to glass spectacles. This runs contrary to the definition supplied in the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources: Fascicule II, C, ed. R. E. Latham (Oxford 1981), 307, sub ‘cavilla’ (3rd definition), which cites Neckham’s own use of the word (Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, ed. T. Wright (London, 1863), p. 279, c.168) to refer to a peg or pin, in this instance the peg of a stringed musical instrument, the ‘rheda’.
32 See here Konrad von Mure (d.1281), Die Summa de arte prosandi, ed. W. Kronbichler (Zürich, 1968), p. 166, as cited elsewhere in this volume by Jörg Peltzer, to whom I owe this reference. See below, p. 63.
33 See here J. Peltzer, ‘Bildgewordene Autorität: Annäherungen an einen Vergleich der Siegel der Reichsfürsten und der Earls im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert’, in Autorität und Akzeptanz. Das Reich im Europa des 13. Jahrhunderts. Festschrift für Stefan Weinfurter, ed. W. Bomm, H. Seibert and V. Türck (Heidelberg forthcoming).
34 L. Delisle, Recueil des Actes de Henri II roi d’Angleterre et duc de Normandie concernant les provinces françaises et les affaires de France: Introduction (Paris, 1909), p. 236.
35 Only 15 of Henry’s 145 surviving ducal charters employ the Dei gratia formula. Of these, Regesta, iii, nos 206, 326, 332 (merely an inscription) which survive as originals, appear to be authentic. Others (ibid., nos 126, 310, 996–7, 999/311, from the circle of St Augustine’s Abbey Bristol, or no. 325 for Fontenay) are probably or definitely spurious.
36 Found in 70 instances noted in Letters of Henry II.
37 Birch, Catalogue, i, pp. 11–12, nos 56–76 and plate 1; idem, ‘Seals of Henry II’, 309–11 and plate
38 N. Vincent, ‘Henry II and the Monks of Battle: The Battle Chronicle Unmasked’, in R. Gameson and H. Leyser (eds), Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: Studies Presented to Henry Mayr-Harting (Oxford 2001), pp. 272–4.
39 Amongst William’s 30 surviving charters, frater regis is the formula used in all instances save for a single case in which William describes himself as imperatricis filius frater regis: Grenoble, Bibliothèque Municipale mss. 3909/3 fo.44r; 3909/13 fo.53v. For his seal, itself attached to a document in which he is styled frater H(enrici) reg(is) Angl(orum), see below n. 102. I am grateful to Adrian Ailes for drawing these anomalies to my attention.
40 R.J. Smith, ‘Henry II’s Heir: The Acta and Seal of Henry the Young King, 1170–83’, English Historical Review 116 (2001), 302–7, with facsimile in Facsimiles of Early Charters in Oxford Muniment Rooms, ed. H.E. Salter (Oxford, 1929), no. 37.
41 As noted by A. Ailes, ‘The Seal of John, Lord of Ireland and Count of Mortain’, The Coat of Arms, n.s. iv (1981), 343–4. For examples of post-1189 Irish charters with joint title to Mortain and Ireland, most often, although not invariably, in that order, see G. Mac Niocaill ‘The Charters of John lord of Ireland’ Repertorium Novum, iii (1963–4), 289–304, nos 3–11; K. W. Nicholls ‘A Charter of John Lord of Ireland in favour of Matthew Ua Hénni archbishop of Cashel’ Peritia, ii (1983), 269.
42 G. de Manteyer, ‘Le Sceau-matrice du comte d’Anjou Foulques le Jeune (1109– 1144)’, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France, 6th series x (1901), 308, 323, 326, which reconstructs the legend of Geoffrey’s seal as +G[AUFRIDVS DEI GRATIA COMES ANDEGAVOR]VM, as drawn to my attention by Kathryn Dutton.
43 Birch, Catalogue, i, 5 no. 22 (William II), 5–10 nos 23–42 (all of the seals of Henry I and Stephen), 10 no. 54 (Matilda).
44 Richard fitz Nigel, Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, ed. E. Amt (Oxford 2007), 20–1, 28–9, 94–7; P. Chaplais, English Royal Documents: King John – Henry VI, 1199– 1461 (Oxford 1971), 46–7.
45 Ailes, [this volume], pp. 105–7.
46 The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London 1879–80), i, 509, as cited by Chaplais, English Royal Documents, 24.
47 For the French fleur-de-lys as counterseal, derived from the majesty side of the seal where the kings of France were shown from the time of Philip I onwards seated on a throne holding a fleur de lys in their right hand, this image itself derived from the flowery head of the sceptre held in the right hand of earlier kings, from at least the time of Rudolf III (993–1032), see M. Dalas, Corpus des sceaux français du Moyen Age. Tome II: Les sceaux des rois et de régence (Paris, 1991), esp. pp. 39–42, 149n., 150 no. 70bis; C. Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France, trans. S. R. Huston (Berkeley, 1991), p. 202. For England, see C. R. Cheney, English Bishops’ Chanceries 1100–1250 (Manchester 1950), 50–1; T. A. Heslop, ‘Seals’, in Zarnecki (ed.), English Romanesque Art 1066–1200 (London, 1984), p. 299, 317 no. 371; idem, ‘The Seals of the Twelfth-Century Earls of Chester’, The Earldom of Chester and its Charters, ed. A. T. Thacker (Chester, 1991), pp. 187–92; D. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: The Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 210–11; D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London, 1992), pp. 244–6; A. Ailes, ‘The Knight’s Alter Ego: From Equestrian to Armorial Seal’, in N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (eds), Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, British Museum Research Publications clxviii (London, 2008), pp. 8–9.
48 N. Vincent, ‘Les Normands de l’entourage d’Henri II Plantagenêt’, in P. Bouet and V. Gazeau (eds), La Normandie et l’Angleterre au Moyen Age (Caen, 2003), pp. 75–8, esp. pp. 78–82
49 Materials for the History of Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. J.C. Robertson and J.B. Sheppard, 7 vols (London, 1875–85), iii, p. 18.
50 Cambridge University Library EDC 1/H/1, loose seal impression from an unidentified charter of Henry I. Thereafter, no impressions in green wax are noted for King Stephen, in Regesta, iii.
51 Letters of Henry II, introduction.
52 As in Herbert of Bosham’s description of the fees payable to the sigillifer, the signator or the notary in Becket’s chancery, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, iii, 224, with discussion in Letters of Henry II, introduction.
53 For the spigurnel, first recorded in 1193, perhaps an office that developed from that of the four serjeants of the King’s Chapel mentioned in the reign of Henry I, see H.C. Maxwell-Lyte, Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (London, 1926), pp. 287–8; Rotuli Chartarum, ed. T. D. Hardy (London 1837), p. 169. For the possibility that a man named Martin de Capella can be identified as Henry II’s spirgurnel, see Letters of Henry II, introduction. For the equestrian seal of a kinsman and namesake of Martin, see Birch, Catalogue, ii, 262 no. 5795, +SIGILLV[M MAR]TINI DE LA CHAPELE.
54 Becket Materials, iii, p. 114, where the serviens de curia regis could be either a ‘servant’ or a ‘serjeant’. It is perhaps worth noting here that the lands of Martin de Capella, putative ‘spigurnel’ in the 1150s, were confiscated in the aftermath of Becket’s murder: Letters of Henry II, no. 2811n.
55 Epistolae Cantuarienses, ed. W. Stubbs (London, 1865), pp. 281–3, no.297, whence the abbreviated account, which also preserves the form of the royal letters as authorised by the archbishop, in Gervase of Canterbury, i, 439–40, as noted in Letters of Henry II, no. 480.
56 Map, De Nugis Curialium, pp. 486–7. For Adam, see the full biographical note in Letters of Henry II, introduction.
57 Here, bearing in mind the remarks of Paul Harvey, above [this volume], pp. 1–4.
58 English Episcopal Acta, hereafter, EEA, ii, p. l, for Becket’s counterseal, with legend as +SIGILLVM TOME LVND’, for which see below n. 85. EEA, i, pp.lx–lxi; EEA, xx, pp.cxxv–vi, for Geoffrey’s counterseal, showing him dressed as a clerk and carrying what may be a stylus and writing tablet, legend +SIGILLVM GALFRIDI CLERICI REGIS ANGLOR’ FILII, later used, in slightly modified version, as counterseal to his seal as archbishop of York. It is worth questioning whether the CLERICI of the present counterseal represents a recutting of a word that might originally have read CANCELLARII.
59 For Nicholas, see Letters of Henry II, nos 1002n., 1226n.; Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. Searle, pp. 176–7.
60 Bishop, Scriptores Regis, 25–6, whence Regesta, iii, p. xi, and cf. T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, 6 vols (Manchester 1920–33), i, 129n.
61 Oxford, Bodleian Library ms. d.d. Queen’s College 343 (Nicholas to Berta, oval, natural wax); Warwick, Warwickshire Record Office CR 895.13.1 (Nicholas to Richard of Portland, oval, dark green wax), and TNA E 326/3292 (Nicholas to St Denys’ Southampton, oval, natural wax varnished brown, whence fig. 2.7), seal interior 25mm., exterior 40mm. diameter, legend: <+N>ICOLAI DE SIGILLO. I am indebted to Hugh Doherty, Martin Henig and Sandy Heslop for their assistance here.
62 Charters of the Redvers Family and the Earldom of Devon, 1090–1217, ed. R. Bearman, Devon and Cornwall Record Society n.s. 37 (1994), 50–1; Monasticon Anglicanum, W. Dugdale, (rev ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel; 6 vols. in 8, London, 1817–30), hereafter Dugdale, Monasticon, v, 106, and for other examples used by the Clinton and Berkeley families, see below n. 121.
63 Walter is not recorded with counterseal as bishop of Lincoln: EEA i, p. lxi. For his archiepiscopal counterseal with the Pascal lamb facing to the right and flag behind, round, approx. 28mm. diameter, legend +S’WALTERI DE CONSTANTIIS, see Paris, Archives nationales L974 no. 942 (12 June 1202), as drawn to my attention by Richard Allen, with a further example from Ibid. J213 described in Douët d’Arcq, Collection de Sceaux des archives de l’Empire, 3 vols (Paris 1863–8), ii, no. 6364. The failure to specify title as archbishop perhaps suggests the reuse of a pre-episcopal seal. Set against this, the Agnus Dei was closely associated with the city of Rouen, cf. B. Bedos, Corpus des sceaux français du Moyen Age I: les sceaux des villes (Paris 1980), pp. 443–5, nos 592–5. It may therefore have been newly chosen by Walter after his election as archbishop in 1184.
64 EEA xxxi, p. cxlvii; Demay, Sceaux de Normandie, no. 2228.
65 EEA xxxi, p. cxlviii and pl. 4, a sunburst with a crescent moon, legend +DOMINI REGIS ANGLIE CANCELL’, with the name W. DE LONGO CAMPO in the bend of the crescent moon. William’s successor as bishop of Ely, Eustace, vice-chancellor under Richard I, seems to have adopted an entirely new counterseal, with Ely references, after his election as bishop. The same seems to be true of Hubert Walter, whose archiepiscopal counterseal commemorates the martyrdom of Thomas Becket: EEA, ii, p.lii; EEA xlii, pp. cx–xi. For the suns and moons, see Ailes, [this volume], p. 104.
66 Chaplais, English Royal Documents, pp. 2, 23–5, citing Gerald, ‘De Vita Galfridi archiepiscopi’, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer and others, 8 vols (London, 1861–1891), iv, p. 426, and for the later privy seal of King John, known only from reports rather than from any surviving impressions, see Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, pp. 20–1, with notes on the appearance of later privy seals, from the reign of Edward I onwards, at p. 42ff., noting that these were invariably single-sided, displaying the arms of England.
67 P. E. Lasko, ‘The Signet Ring of Richard I of England’, Journal of the Society of Archivists ii (1960–4), 333–5, and cf. Chaplais, English Royal Documents, p. 24. Lasko identifies the figure as Minerva engraved in green plasma. It has more recently been identified as Mercury engraved in chrome chalcedony, by M. Henig, ‘The Re-use and Copying of Ancient Intaglios Set in Medieval Personal Seals’, in Good Impressions, eds Adams et al., p. 27.
68 Ms.3475, c. 1220. For the Distinctiones, at one time (falsely) attributed to Ralph of Coggeshall, see most recently A. Wilmart, ‘Un Répertoire d’exégèse composé en Angleterre vers le début du XIIIs siècle’, Mémorial Lagrange (Paris, 1940), pp. 307–46; R. W. Hunt, ‘Notes on the Distinctiones monasticae et morales’, in Liber Floridus: Mittellateinische Studien. Paul Lehmann zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. B. Bischoff and S. Brechter (St Ottilien, 1950), pp. 355–62; R. Sharpe, A Handlist of the Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland Before 1540, 2nd ed. (Turnhout, 2001), p. 446, noting the general consensus that this is not the work of Ralph of Coggeshall but that it has a Lincolnshire, perhaps Louth Park connection. The endpapers to the Mazarine manuscript carry a s.xvi ownership mark for the abbey of S. Nicolas at Angers. It is worth noting that S. Nicolas was the mother house of Spalding Priory in Lincolnshire, between Lincoln and Peterborough.
69 Spicilegium Solesmense, ed. J. B. Pitra, 4 vols (Paris 1852–8), iii, p. 233, and cf. iii, p. 625, where Pitra cites (and in one instance translates into Latin) his correspondence with the antiquaries Paul Marchegay, Sir Francis Palgrave, Cosmo Innes and Albert Way.
70 Delisle, in Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes xvii (1856), p. 536; xviii (1857), pp. 80–5. By the time that he came to compile his own edition of the charters of Henry II, Delisle seems to have forgotten the reference from Pitra, although remaining convinced of the existence of a royal signet, or perhaps of several such signets: Delisle, Introduction, p. 237.
71 Tout, Chapters, i, p. 147, although admitting the likelihood that Henry II had some sort of privy seal, similar perhaps to the seal of Philip Augustus, distinct from Philip’s great seal. that Richard I is said to have seized at Fréteval in 1194. Chaplais, English Royal Documents, p. 23 n., cites the reference to Pitra by Tout, but seems to confuse the seal, as noticed by Pitra, with another noticed by J. Boussard, Le Gouvernement d’Henri II Plantegenêt (Paris, 1956), p. 347 n. 1, and cf. p. 548, whence G. Tessier, Diplomatique royale française (Paris 1962), p. 295, n. 3. Boussard sought to identify this latter seal, attached to a charter of Alice de Courcy, showing an eagle with legend SIGILL<VMS>ECRETI, as the secret or small seal of Henry II, which he suggested was in the custody of Alice’s husband, Warin fitz Gerald, as royal chamberlain before his death c. 1158. In reality, Alice de Courcy was the wife not of the Warin fitz Gerald who died in the 1150s but of his son, born c. 1167–d. 1215/16. The seal is Alice’s and has nothing to do with the King’s, a conclusion reached independently, and on other grounds, in a review of Tessier’s book by Chaplais, in English Historical Review lxxx (1965), 343–4.
72 Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine ms. 3475 fo.35v, here deriving its ideas of the triumph or ‘trophaeum’ from some such source as Isidore ‘Etymologies’ xviii.2 (Isidori hispalensis episcopi Etymologiarum, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford 1911), ii, 18.2, sections 1–7), and for ‘currus’, see ibid. xviii., 25 (ed. Lindsay, ii, 18.35 sections 1–2).
73 T.A. Heslop, ‘The Seals of the Twelfth-Century Earls of Chester’, in The Earldom of Chester and its Charters: A Tribute to Geoffrey Barraclough, ed. A.T. Thacker, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society lxxi (Chester 1991), 188–9 and pl. 6, from an original charter destroyed in 1879, whence The Charters of the Anglo-Norman Earls of Chester, c. 1071–1237, ed. G. Barraclough, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 126 (1988), 189–90, no. 184.
74 Dalas, Sceaux des rois, p. 148, no. 68.
75 ibid., p. 149, no. 69, noting at least eight examples of its use. The use of Diana here is instructive. It raises a query, first drawn to my attention by Adrian Ailes, as to whether the counterseal of the English Exchequer baron, Nigel bishop of Ely, is in fact of a male figure with staff and sheep, or rather of Diana with bow and deer, see below n. 85.
76 Spicilegium Solesmense, ed. Pitra, iii, p. 625.
77 For John’s counterseal, which may or may not be synonymous with the paruum or priuatum sigillum mentioned subsequently during his time as King, see Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals, ed. L. C. Loyd and D. M. Stenton (Oxford 1950) [hereafter Hatton’s Seals], no. 82; Birch, Catalogue, ii, pp. 337–8, nos 6323–7; Crouch, Image of Aristocracy, p. 245, n. 53; A. Ailes, ‘The Seal of John, Lord of Ireland and Count of Mortain’, The Coat of Arms, n.s iv (1981), 341 (suggesting a female rather than a male figure). For a similar antique intaglio, showing an imperial bust facing to the right, legend …E.LEGE:A TEGE., used as the counterseal of Hamelin earl of Warenne, Henry II’s bastard half-brother, see Birch, Catalogue, ii, 336 no. 6319, from BL Harley Charter 43.C.14.
78 Gerald of Wales, ‘De Principis Instructione’, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, viii, pp. 301–2, 309, and for the circulation of the Mélusine legend within the Plantagenet domain, see J. Le Goff, ‘Mélusine maternelle et défricheuse’, Annales xxv (1971), 587–603, reprinted in Le Goff, Pour un autre Moyen Age (Paris 1977), pp. 307–31.
79 Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, ed. E. Baumgartner and F. Vielliard (Paris 1998), pp. 70–1 ff., esp. p. 70, ll.1217–22: Mout sot d’engin, de maïstrie, de conjure, de sorcerie … Astronomie et nigromance sot tote par cuer dé s’enfance.
80 ibid.., esp. pp. 90–2, ll.1677–1702, p. 102, ll.1929–32, p. 106, ll.2030–42, at p. 636 noting that Benoît clearly had access to both Ovid, Metamorphoses, 7 (where Medea’s chariot features prominently) and to Ovid, Heroides, 12 (Medea’s fictitious letter to Jason). Ovid’s portrait of Medea in Metamorphoses, 7, was perhaps known to Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, pp. 250–1, 310–11.
81 Letters of Henry II, nos 188, 1002, 1020, and cf. no. 843n.
82 ibid.., no. 1002, where Nicholas appears together with his brother William as heir to their father Roger.
83 Above n. 61.
84 Cambridge, St John’s College Archives D19.142, a grant of property by Laurentius domini re(gis) de s(c)accar(io) hostiarius, witnesed by William of Ely as King’s treasurer et ceteris baronibus de scaccar(io. Small vesica-shaped seal in green wax, a standing figure in left-facing profile, carrying a round object in its right hand and an indeterminate ?weapon in its left, legend: SIGILL’ <LA>URENTII FIL’ GALFRID<I +>.
85 M. Henig, ‘Archbishop Hubert Walter’s Gems’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association cxxxvi (1983), 56–63, esp. pp. 57–8; EEA ii, p.l (suggesting Mercury); F. Barlow, Thomas Becket (London 1986), pl. 1 (suggesting Mercury, Mars or Perseus), and for many further examples, see C. Roach Smith, ‘Medieval Seals Set With Ancient Gems’, in Roach Smith, Collectanea Antiqua, 7 vols (London 1848–80), iv (1857), pp. 65–79 and pls xviii–xx; G. Demay, Inventaire des sceaux de l’Artois de la Picardie (Paris 1877), pp. iii–xxiv; W. Greenwell and C. H. Blair, Catalogue of the Seals in the Treasury of the Dean and Chapter of Durham, 2 vols (Newcastle 1921), i, pp. l–liii; EEA viii, pp. lxxx–i; EEA xxxi, pp. cxlvi–vii (Nigel of Ely’s classical counterseal, indentified for me by Sandy Heslop and John Mitchell as an Arcadian scene of male figure, sacred pillar, staff and grazing animal, apparently reinterpreted as the good shepherd. For an alternative identification, as Diana with bow and deer, see above n. 75); Henig, ‘The Re-use and Copying of Ancient Intaglios’, pp. 25–34. Richard fitz Nigel employed a counterseal of St Paul, perhaps in use during his years as treasurer as well as his time as bishop of London: R.L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century (Oxford 1922), p. 8, n. 2, noting the counterseal on a document printed in EEA xxvi, no.7, but there without notice of the counterseal.
86 Roach Smith, ‘Medieval Seals’, p. 72, and cf. M. Lovatt in EEA xx, p. lxvi
87 Gerald, ‘Vita Galfridi’, in Gerald, Opera, iv, p. 372.
88 ibid., iv, 371, also referring to a precious sapphire ring that the King ordered be given to Geoffrey himself.
89 L.F. Salzman Henry II (London 1914), 173.
90 Geoffrey of Vigeois, in Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M. Bouquet and others, 24 vols, (Paris, 1738–1904), xviii, p. 220: Epistolam rex moriens patri transmisit, sigillo suo et annulo superius memorato signatam.
91 See, for example, H. S. London Royal Beasts (Heraldry Society 1956), pp. 9–10; A. Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England: Their Development to 1199 (Reading 1982).
92 Isidore, ‘Etymologies’, xii.2, ed. Lindsay, ii, 12.2 sections 8–9. The entry on the panther in Roberti Crikeladensis Defloratio Naturalis Historie Plinii Secundi, ed. B. Näf (Bern 2002), pp. 173–4, a digest of Pliny dedicated to Henry II, is disappointingly thin.
93 Isidore, ‘Etymologies’: viii. 42, xii. 2.
94 Ailes, Origin of the Royal Arms, p. 47, and cf. John of Marmoutier, in Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou, ed. L. Halphen and R. Poupardin (Paris 1913), p. 179, commenting on the ceremonial reception by Henry I of Geoffrey at Rouen in 1127, that he was clothed in sandals decorated with ‘leunculos aureos’ and supplied with a shield to hang around his neck: ‘clipeus, leunculos aureos ymaginarios habens, collo eius suspenditur’, and cf. p. 201, remarking again on Geoffrey’s arms, ‘pictos leones preferens in clipeo, veris leonibus nulla erat inferior feritudo’. A similar shield with lion rampant appears in the opening illustration to the mid s.xii copy of Pliny’s ‘Natural History’, now Le Mans, Bibliothèque Municipale ms.263, heavily decorated with purple, which may or may not imply a royal provenance. See here P. Stirnemann and A. Ritz-Guilbert, ‘Cultural Confrontations’, in Under the Influence: The Concept of Influence and the Study of Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. J. Lowden and A. Bovey (Turnhout 2007), pp. 65–7, 206.
95 Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, ed. H.-F. Delaborde, M. Nortier and others, 6 vols (Paris 1916-), vi, pp. 51–2, nos 24–5, where Henry is given the nicknames rufus and vulpecula. For his ruddy colouring, see Peter of Blois, Letter 66, in Petri Blesensis Bathoniensis archidiaconi Opera Omnia, ed. J. A. Giles, 4 vols (Oxford 1846–7), i, pp. 192–7, esp. p. 193, dominum regem subrufum hactenus extitisse, noting that King David himself was described as rufus (1 Reg. 16:12 and 17:42).
96 Gerald, ‘De Principis Instructione’, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, viii, pp. 320–1, as noticed by A. Ailes, ‘Heraldry in Medieval England: Symbols of Politics and Propaganda’, Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. P. Coss and M. Keen (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 85.
97 H. Cam, ‘An East Anglian Shire-Moot of Stephen’s Reign, 1148–53’, English Historical Review 39 (1924), pp. 568–71, esp. p. 570, as drawn to my attention by Hugh Doherty. For the purported grant by Henry II to Baldric fitz Gilbert, keeper of the King’s gaol at Rouen, before 1162, of what may have been an annual livery of a shield (unum scutum in redditu scutorum meorum Rothomagi per manum turrensis mei), see Letters of Henry II, no. 954.
98 D. Crouch, ‘The Court of Henry II of England in the 1180s, and the Office of King of Arms,’ The Coat of Arms, 3rd ser. 5 (2010); Vincent, ‘The Court’, p. 324.
99 J. Cherry and J. Goodall, ‘A Twelfth-Century Gold Brooch from Folkingham Castle, Lincolnshire’, Antiquaries Journal lxv (1985), 471–2; D.A. Hinton, Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins: Possessions and People in Medieval Britain (Oxford 2005), pp. 192–3.
100 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, 7 vols (London 1872–83), iii, p. 324 (sub 1235): Misit ergo imperator regi Anglorum tres leopardos in signum regalis clipei in quo tres leopardi transeuntes figurantur. Two of these beasts were apparently sent to hunt in the King’s forest as late as 1237: Calendar of Liberate Rolls 1226–40, p. 287.
101 For the King’s 1251 Christmas robes cum tribus paruis leopardis in parte anteriori et aliis tribus in parte posteriori, see Close Rolls 1251–3, p. 14, as drawn to my attention by Lars Kjaer. For Paris’ attempts to represent the arms of kings William I, William II, Henry I, Stephen, Henry II and Henry the Young King, in each case as three gold lions (or leopards) passant, following on from the supposed arms of Harold, a lion rampant, see ‘The Matthew Paris Shields c. 1244–59’, ed. T. D. Tremlett, in Aspilogia II: Rolls of Arms Henry III, ed. A. Wagner (London 1967), pp. 11–14, nos 1–5, 10–11, 13–14, 17–19.
102 Burghley House, Marquess of Exeter ms. Muniments ExB 76/80: Sealed sur double queue on white silk cords, single-sided seal impression in natural wax varnished reddish brown, 65mm. diameter, an equestrian figure facing to the right with helmet, shield and sword (in right hand), much rubbed, faint traces of a rampant leopard or lion on the shield and perhaps also on the rump of the horse’s coat, legend rubbed and partially illegible: SIGI.<LLUM WILLELMI FILII IMPER>ATRICIS.
103 F. M. Stenton, Facsimiles of Early Charters from Northamptonshire Collections, Northamptonshire Record Society 4 (1930), 24–6, no. 6; Hatton’s Seals, pp. 299–300 no. 429; London, College of Arms ms. Glover A fo. 132r (from a lost original), this charter and its seal noticed from Glover by J. R. Planché, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association xii (1856), 100–2 and plate; Heralds’ Commemorative Exhibition 1484–1934 Held at the College of Arms (London 1936), p. 69, no. 99 (also noting the seal at Burghley), and from a slightly later copy of Glover’s drawing, by W. Smith Ellis, The Antiquities of Heraldry (London 1869), p. 184.
104 As noted by N. Rogers, ‘The Shrine of St Mengold at Huy and its Heraldic Importance’, The Coat of Arms n.s. v no. 127 (1983), 177.
105 Ailes, ‘The Seal of John’, 341–50, at p. 343 suggesting 1185 as the date of its introduction.
106 For particularly clear impressions of the three lions on the shield of the equestrian side of King John’s seal, see London, The National Archives DL 10/52, 58.
107 Letters of Henry II, no. 2715 A1.
108 Bedos, Sceaux des villes, p. 441, no. 590, reproduced on the front and rear covers to Records, Administration and Aristocratic Society in the Anglo-Norman Realm, ed. N. Vincent (Woodbridge 2009). For the second seal of Rouen, showing an even more magnificent lion, used to seal the surrender of the city to Philip Augustus in 1204, the matrix itself still extant, see Bedos, Sceaux des villes, pp. 442–3, no. 591.
109 Cf. Letters of Henry II, no. 2278.
110 Cf. Letters of Henry II, nos 50, 2221. For castles, towers or battlements, often combined with the lions or leopards of England, see for example Birch, Catalogue, ii, nos 4664, 4679, 4782, 4825, 4919, 4950, 5062, 5068, 5177, 5193, 5217–27, 5234, 5241, 5331, 5380, 5432, 5510, 5542–3.
111 Birch, Catalogue, ii, nos 4584, 4587, 4705, 4852, 4993, 5031 (Hull, showing Edward I trampling a lion), 5064, 5392.
112 Bedos, Sceaux des villes, 54–5 nos 36–7, 435–8 nos 582–4.
113 Letters of Henry II, no.2748; Bedos, Sceaux des villes, p. 520 no. 714, and cf. the seal of the men of Eu, and from much further south, the very impressive lion counterseal in use by the men of Bayonne by the 1290s, ibid., 94 no. 85 bis, 229 no. 269 bis. No impression of the seal of Caen survives earlier than 1600, or of Avranches and Bayeux before the s.xviii: Demay, Inventaire des sceaux de la Normandie, pp. 166–7, nos 1631–2, 1635.
114 The seal survives in a unique impression, round green wax, 45mm. diameter, legend: +SIGILL’[P]REPOSI[T]UR’DE[NORHAMT]ON’, attached to letters of the balliui domini reg(is) de Norht’ addressed to the sheriff and bailiffs of Lancaster, dispatching a copy of an undated charter of King John granting privileges to the burgesses of Northampton including the election of two of their own number to have custody of the prepositura of the vill, known from other sources to have been issued on 17 April 1200, the Lancaster copy apparently issued before the death of King John in 1216. John’s charter, however, merely confirms privileges already granted by Richard I by a charter of 18 November 1189, allowing for a single elected prepositus rather than the two envisaged by John: Preston, Lancashire Record Office Lancaster City Charters 3, and for the Northampton charters, see The Records of the Borough of Northampton, ed. C. A. Markham, i (1898), 25–33. The royal reeves of Northampton were already operating in the time of Henry II, being addressed in a royal mandate issued 1155 X 1157: Letters of Henry II, no. 1938.
115 M. M. Archibald, ‘The Lion Coinage of Robert Earl of Gloucester and William Earl of Gloucester’, British Numismatic Journal lxxi (2002), 71–86, and pls 6 and 7, from a hoard first found in Wiltshire in 1993–4, as drawn to my attention by Henry Fairbairn. For a very similar (and similarly magnificent) lion, painted in oil colours on a linen seal bag, or on gules, attached to letters patent of Edward I, 5 November 1281, see the facsimile in F. Palgrave, The Antient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasury of His Majesty’s Exchequer, 3 vols (London 1836), i, pp. cxxxvii–viii, cxlviii, and pl. 5.
116 Earldom of Gloucester Charters, ed. R. B. Patterson (Oxford 1973), p. 24 and pl. xxxi a–b, with counterseal a helmeted bust facing to the left between two figures of Nike, an eagle below rising regardant between two standards, legend: +AQVILA SV’ ET CVSTOS COMITIS, itself later adapted as the counterseal of the countess Isabella, William’s daughter. Archibald (‘Lion Coinage’, 73) identifies the branch behind the lion of William’s seal as the rod of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1), and suggests that the matrix of earl William’s seal had simply been recut from that originally made for earl Robert, for which tradition see Nieus, ‘L’Hérédité des matrices de sceaux’, pp. 217–39.
117 This interpretation, shared with Adrian Ailes, Origins of the Royal Arms, esp. p. 47, is disputed by Brigitte Bedos Rezak reviewing Ailes, in Speculum lx (1985), 373–6. Bedos Rezak suggests that the lion was derived from the counts of Anjou rather than from Henry I, and that the testimony of authorities such as John of Marmoutier, writing thirty years after the events they describe, cannot be trusted for events of the 1120s.
118 For Geoffrey fitz Peter, see Oxford, New College Muniments 13019 (Takeley Charter 156), with round seal impression in natural wax, showing a lion passant with long trailing tail, legend defaced (?1198 X 1199), and cf. Westminster Abbey Muniments 3564, apparently the same seal but here with the lion holding a creature, perhaps a deer under its right front leg, with counterseal of a six-petalled flower, distinct from Geoffrey’s equestrian seal and counterseal (also a sixpetalled flower) as earl of Essex, ibid. 3775. For Brice the Chamberlain, with title as seneschal of Anjou, see the charter and drawing of its seal reproduced by Roger Gaignières in BN ms. Latin 5480 part 1 pp. 71–2, from a lost original, double sided seal impression: obverse, round, a shield charged with two lions passant facing to the left, the shield bordered by what appear to be eight lions’ heads, legend +S………….AN; counterseal, small oval, a single lion passant, SIGILLUM BRI….. For further, later examples, see A. Ailes, ‘Powerful Impressions: Symbols of Office and Authority on Secular Seals’, in J. Cherry and A. Payne (eds), Signs and Symbols: Proceedings of the 2006 Harlaxton Symposium, (Stamford, 2009), p. 20.
119 BN ms. Latin 5480 part 1 p. 257, a drawing by Gaignières from a charter of 1181 granting the nuns of Fontevraud an annual rent of 1 mark in Anglia meo schecario, showing all of these lions facing to the left, the equestrian side legend +SIGILL’ BERNARDI DE SANCTO WALERICO, the counterseal legend +SECRETUM BERNARDI, with facsimile in Bony, Un Siècle de sceaux figurés, pl. xlii no. 277, and cf. Oxford Charters, ed. Salter, no. 81. See Bony, Un Siècle de sceaux figurés, pl. xxvi, no. 169 for the seal of Reginald de St-Valery, his father, with deviceless shield but a counterseal of a single lion passant, from a drawing by Gaignières in BN ms. Latin 5480 part 1 p. 259. Cf. the seal of Thomas de St-Valery (1208), equestrian with shield of two lions passant, described by the Marquis de Belleval, Les Sceaux du Ponthieu (Paris, 1896), p. 262, no. 696 and pl. ix, with an original exemplar surviving as Oxford, Magdalen College Archives Harwell Charter 20, and cf. Oxford Charters, ed. Salter, no. 93. The seal of Fulk Painel of Bampton, attached to TNA DL 27/28 and 81, shows a pair of lions passant facing to the right: R.H. Ellis, Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office: Personal Seals, 2 vols (London 1978–81) ii, p. 82, no. P1853 and pl. 23.
120 For Richard de Canville, see BL Additional Charter 28326, with a fragmentary round seal impression in white wax, an animal with head twisted back along its back (1156 X 1162). For Ralph fitz Stephen, BL Lord Frederick Campbell Charter XXIII.20, small oval seal impression in green wax, a ?cat or other animal passant, legend: SIGILL’ RADULFI…. (temp. Henry II).
121 For the seal of William, showing a mitred figure riding on the back of a lion passant, using the lion’s mouth as a bit and bridle, the lion’s left front paw pointing forwards to the right, legend +SIGILLVM WILLELMI ARCHIEPISCOPI, see the drawing by Gaignières in BN ms. Latin 5480 part 1 p. 357, dated by Eygun, Sigillographie du Poitou, p. 236, no. 532, and plate lviii no. 532 to the time of William V (c. 1170 X 1187), and cf. the similar seal adopted by Hugh I l’Archévêque (before 1216), ibid., p. 236, no. 533 and pl. xviii. For further examples, see the cases of Roger de Berkeley (BL Seal Cast xciv.51), Geoffrey Clinton (Oxford Charters, no.71), and, from a later date, Roger de Quincy earl of Winchester (d. 1264) (Birch, Catalogue, ii, nos 6346–52), itself recut from the counterseal that his father, Saher de Quincy, had adopted after his promotion as earl of Winchester during the reign of King John, as in Oxford, Magdalen College Archives Brackley Charter A22, with legend DOMINE COMENDO SPIRITVM MEVM, changed by earl Roger (Ibid. Brackley Charter D247) to read SIGILL’ ROGERI DE QVIN<CI CONST>ABVLARII SCOTIE.
122 For the seal of William de Hauville, son of Henry II’s chief falconer Ralph de Hauville and a member of the King’s hunting establishment in the 1160s and 1170s, see Chelmsford, Essex Record Office D/DRu T1/9, with a photograph by J.S.A. Macaulay, ‘Colchester Hall (Takeley) Charters’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society n.s. xxii (1940), plate facing p. 74, and cf. Dugdale, Monasticon, iv, pp. 609–10, no. 3. For the seal of Stephen de Marçay, attached to a charter in which Stephen describes himself as domini Henr(ici) regis Anglie senescallus Andegauen’, the equestrian image facing to the left, legend +SIGILLVM STEPHANI DE MARTHAIO SENESCAL’, see the drawing by Gaignières in BN ms. Latin 5441 part 2 p. 448.
123 Two surviving examples of seal and counterseal, both attached to charters in Northampton, Northamptonshire Record Office Montagu of Boughton Box 7 nos 3/4 and 3/6. The seal itself is round (55mm diameter), showing a bare headed figure on horseback in a long flowing cape, riding to the left, foot in the stirrup, his right hand holding the reins, his left arm outstretched behind him with a hawk on his glove, legend: +SIGILL’:WILLELMI: OSTRICARII:REGIS:HENRICI. For William, see Letters of Henry II, no. 2831.
124 Attached to BL Lord Frederick Campbell Charter XIV.24, vesica shaped in white wax, a pike, legend illegible, reproduced in facsimile in Facsimiles of Royal and Other Charters in the British Museum, ed. G.F. Warner and H.J. Ellis (London 1903), no. 34 and pl. xxii, and cf. Birch, Catalogue, iii, p. 210, no. 11439, which claims to read the legend as +SIGILLVM RICARDI DE LV…..V…A…. There is a further drawing of a lost impression, without legend, in Oxford, Bodleian Library ms. Dugdale 18 fo.41v. For the same pun, used as the basis for the seal of the men of Lucheux (Somme, cant. Douliens), see Bedos, Sceaux des villes, p. 293, no. 371. Not surprisingly, and on the same basis, William Herring is found c. 1180 using a herring as the device on his seal, attached to TNA DL 27/53, whence Ellis, Catalogue, ii, p. 56, no. P1551 and pl. 18.
125 Neckham, De Naturis Rerum, cc. 32–3 (ed. Wright, 147–8): Lucius, qui et lupus aquaticus dicitur, in aquis tyrannidem exercens, popularium piscium populator est. Senecias eius quis euadet? Ipse nempe a sui dominatione quam inter pisces exercet, senes senecis dicitur. Unde et fauces eius dicuntur senecie. Inuidus igitur qui aliorum successibus tabet, senecias comedere dicitur, pre nimia sui anxietate. Although Neckham in part derives his account from Pliny and Isidore on the fish named ‘lupus’ (Isidore, ‘Etymologies’ xii.6, ed. Lindsay, ii, 12.6 sections 5, 23–4: et lupi quod inproba voracitate alios persequantur … lupum, ut dictum est, auiditas appellauit, piscem in captura ingeniosum), Pliny and Isidore’s ‘lupus’ is not necessarily a pike. The most recent Loeb translation of Pliny (Historia Naturalis 9:74 c.162, and 9.88 c.185) suggests ‘bass’ or ‘sea-bass’: Pliny, Natural History III: Books 8–11, trans. H. Rackham, 2nd ed. (Cambridge Mass. 1983), 273, 287.
126 Battle Chronicle, 214–15, quod regibus et precipuis tantum competit personis.
127 London, College of Arms ms. Vincent 88 p. 120, copy by Augustine Vincent (d. 1626) from a lost original relating to Richard’s rights at Stowmarket. That the words de iuris pace did indeed appear on Richard’s seal is to some extent supported by Richard’s funerary monument at Lesnes Abbey in Kent, where his memorial is said to have carried the inscription: Rapitur in tenebras Richardus lux Luciorum, iusticie pacis dilector et vrbis honorum, as reported by John Weever, Ancient Funerall Monuments (London 1631), 336, with an account of the discovery of Richard’s effigy at pp. 777–8 (2nd ed. by W. Tooke (London 1767), 129, 509), and cf. W. Stukeley, ‘Account of Lesnes Abbey’, Archaeologia i (1804), 52.
128 The Oxford English Dictionary, sub ‘pike’, records the Middle English form only from 1314. However, the related word ‘pickerel’, meaning a small or immature pike, occurs in Latin (pikerellus) from at least as early as the 1250s, probably from much earlier.
129 Birch, Catalogue, i, 353 nos 2245–6; EEA, viii, p.lxxxii, legend: +PRESVLIS 7 GENERIS SIGNO CONSIGNOR VTROQ’, with a fine impression still attached to Winchester College Muniments 10631.
130 The seals of Thurstan fitz Simon (before 1191) and Aimery Dispenser his son are attached to Oxford, Brasenose College Muniments, Rollright Charters nos 8, 40, as described in Cartulary of Oseney Abbey, ed. H. E. Salter (Oxford Historical Society lxxxix– xci, xcvii–viii, ci (1929–36)), vi, pp. 141–2, nos 1061, 1063, noticed by N. Vincent, The Lucys of Charlecote: The Invention of a Warwickshire Family 1170–1302, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers xlii (Stratford, 2002), 6.
131 Robert’s seal is attached to TNA DL 27/50, whence the description by Ellis, Catalogue, 9 no. P1013 and pl. 4. It is very similar to that of his nephew and fellow courtier, Master Michael Belet, butler to the court of King John, attached to BL ms. Harley Charter 45.H.45, whence Hatton’s Seals, pp. 104–5, no. 147. For commentary here, see Vincent, ‘The Court’, pp. 300–1, 329, acknowledging a phenomenon first drawn to my attention by Adrian Ailes.
132 The seal impression is attached to Stafford, Staffordshire Record Office D798/1/1/1, round green wax, 40mm. diameter, legend +SIG……TOME…… For an earlier example, see the seal of Robert Grimbald, sheriff of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire in the early 1150s, drawn by Dugdale and apparently showing Robert seated on a throne or chair with a sword held upright in his right hand with a broken sword in his left, legend +SIGILLVM ROBERTI GRIMBALD, see Dugdale, Monasticon, vi, 424–5 no. 7, as drawn to my attention by Hugh Doherty.
133 Attached to Keele University Library ms. Sneyd 739, oval, green wax, only the left hand side surviving, legend …………BA<SS>ETI, whence Facsimiles of Early Cheshire Charters, ed. G. Barraclough (Oxford 1957), 13–14 and pl. 5(2), where the charter is misattributed to Thomas’s son, Thomas the Younger (d. 1220). For the elder Thomas’ more conventional equestrian seal, attached to London, TNA E 40/4612 and E 40/4828, see Basset Charters c. 1120 to 1250, ed. W. T. Reedy (Pipe Roll Society n.s. 50 (1995)), pp. 114–16, nos 177–8.
134 Oxford Charters, ed. Salter, nos 43, 86 (with facsimile from Oxford, Merton College Muniments 2545), although for a standard equestrian seal used by Henry d’Oilly I, see ibid., nos 73, 75.
135 From a charter printed in Rufford Charters, ed. C. J. Holdsworth, 4 vols., Thoroton Society Record Series 29, 30, 32, 34 (1972–81), ii, 413–14 no. 768 (1175 X 1181), with another seal of the same Osbert noticed at iii, 437–8 no. 822, 440–1 no. 826, 446 no. 837, device a quatrefoil, with legend +S’ OSBERTI DE CHAPELE AGRTOA. Against the possibility that the first seal was that of Emma, Osbert’s wife, joint grantor of the charter to which it is appended, see Emma’s seal attached to ibid., iii, 447 no. 839, a fleur de lys with legend SIGILL’ EMME FILIE ANGOTI. For Osbert as King’s clerk, see Letters of Henry II, nos 1889, 1993.
136 Attached to charters of Combwell Priory, now London, College of Arms, Combwell Charters nos 40, 66, 94, 98, 106. For a description from a cast, misreporting the legend as DEVS SALVET CVI TE MITTO, see Birch, Catalogue, ii, p. 361, no. 6488.
137 ‘Charters of Combwell Priory’, Archaeologia Cantiana v (1863), 206, 208, and cf. Vincent, ‘The Court’, p. 332.
138 Vincent, ‘The Court’, pp. 332–4.
139 Beaune, Birth of Ideology, passim, esp. p. 202 for the counterseal, for which see also Dalas, Sceaux des rois, 149n., 150 no. 70 bis, and for Gerald, above n. 96. Note also the way in which the document acknowledging the surrender of Rouen to Philip Augustus in 1204 is itself sealed with the magnificent second version of the city’s lion seal, first awarded under Plantagenet rule, but set with a counterseal of a fleurs de lys: Bedos, Sceaux des villes, pp. 442–3, no. 591–591 bis, from a surviving matrix still in Rouen.
140 See Birch, Catalogue, vi, pp. 619–20, nos 23025–30, noting the castle on the leaden seal of Alfonso VIII of Castile (1186), now BL ms. Additional Charter 24803, and the castle and lion rampant on the leaden seal of Alfonso X of Castile/Leon (1254), now BL Additional Charter 24804. As pointed out to me by Olga Mendez Gonzalez, by the 1180s King Fernando II of León was authenticating his charters with a monogram drawing of a lion gardant.
141 Birch, Catalogue, iv, pp. 2–7, nos 14769–88, from the time of Alexander I onwards.
142 R. Turvey, ‘The Death and Burial of an Excommunicate Prince: The Lord Rhys and the Cathedral Church of St David’s’, Journal of the Pembrokeshire Historical Society viii (1998–9), 5–26.
143 London, College of Arms ms. Vincent 53, p. 45, a single paper sheet, on the back blank save (in the same hand): ‘releses of the countes (i.e. the countess) of Shrewesby’. On the recto, transcripts and abstracts c. 1600 of various Talbot charters, s.xiii/xiv, followed by a description apparently of two distinct seals, as below n. 145.
144 Turvey, ‘Death and Burial’, 13–20.
145 ‘Resius the sonne of Griffyn prynce of Southwales in greene waxxe, a man of armes armed in male about the which was wrytten SIGILL’ RESI FILII GRIFINI PRINCIPIS SUDWALLIAE. In greene waxxe a horse passant his mayne and tayle caryed with the wynd about the which was wrytten SECRETUM RESI’.
146 Gerald, ‘Topographica Hibernica’, III. 25, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, v, p. 169, and cf. E. FitzPatrick, Royal Inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c. 1100–1600: A Cultural and Landscape Study (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 25ff.
Notes
1 I am enormously grateful to Ghislain Brunel, conservateur au département du Moyen Âge et de l’Ancien Régime at the Archives Nationales de France, for allowing me to consult this precious document and numerous other sealed documents and for discussing them with me. I also wish to thank Phillipp Schofield for his invitation to me to speak at the Medieval Seals and their Context conference, Richard Allen, Mathilde Geley, John Stevenson and Kathleen Thompson for their assistance, and the reading group of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research (MEMO) at Swansea University for its comments upon a draft of this article. The following abbreviations are used below: AD = Archives Départementales; ADC = Caen, AD du Calvados; ADE = Évreux, AD Eure; ADO = Alençon, AD de l’Orne; ADSM = Rouen, AD de la Seine-Maritime; AN = Paris, Archives Nationales de France; BM Rouen = Rouen, Bibliothèque Municipale; BNF = Bibliothèque Nationale de France; CA = dépt. Calvados; SM = département de la Seine-Maritime; Demay = G. Demay, Inventaire des Sceaux de la Normandie (Paris, 1880); Douët d’Arcq = Archives de l’Empire. Collection des Sceaux, ed. L. Douët d’Arcq (3 vols, Paris, 1863–8); Layettes = Layettes du Trésor des Chartes, ed. A. Teulet et al. (5 vols, Paris, 1863–1909); RHF = Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. D. Bouquet et al. (24 vols in 25, 1738–1904); TNA = Kew, The National Archives. In this article, I have used the term ‘seal’ to refer to the wax impression, in accordance with contemporary usage of the term sigillum.
2 AN, J 210, no. 2, edited in Layettes, i, no. 785. The act was also copied into all the registers of Philip Augustus (Les Registres de Philippe Auguste, ed. J. W. Baldwin, i (texte) (Paris, 1992), i, pp. 56–9, Inquisitiones, no. 14), with very few scribal variations, and was translated at an early date into French, and it was published several times before Teulet’s edition: see Cartulaire Normand de Philippe Auguste, Louis VIII, Saint Louis et Philippe-le-Hardi, ed. L. Delisle (Caen, 1852), no. 124, and Catalogue des actes de Philippe-Auguste, ed. L. Delisle (Paris, 1856), no. 961. An incomplete and defective copy was recorded in the cartulary of the lazarhouse of St-Gilles de Pont-Audemer (BM Rouen, Y 200, fols 43v–44v).
3 BNF, ms. lat. 5464, catalogued in Sceaux de l’abbaye de la Noë conservée à la Bibliothèque Nationale: Inventaire, ed. M. Dalas (Paris, 1993).
4 AN, L 966 – L 978 (cf. L 979, the muniments of the priory of Notre-Dame de Mortain, alias the Abbaye-Blanche), and BM Rouen, Collection Leber 5636. For a study based upon the collection, see B. Poulle, ‘Renouvellement et garantie de sceaux privés’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 146 (1988), 369–80.
5 B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘L’apparition des armoiries sur les sceaux en Île-de-France et en Picardie (1130–1230)’, Les origines des armoiries, ed. H. Pinoteau, M. Pastoureau and M. Popoff (Paris, 1983), pp. 23–41, repr. in her collected essays Form and Order in Medieval France: studies in social and quantitative sigillography (Aldershot, 1993), no. VII; N. Civel, La fleur de France. Les seigneurs d’Ile-de-France au XIIe siècle (Turnhout, 2006).
6 M. Billoré, ‘Pouvoir et noblesse Normandie (fin XIIe–début XIIIe siècles) : de l’autocratie Plantagenêt à la domination capétienne’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Poitiers, 2005): ‘Catalogue des sceaux de l’aristocratie possessionnée en Normandie (mi-XIIe – fin XIIIe siècles)’.
7 E.g. P. Bony, ‘L’image du pouvoir seigneurial dans les sceaux: codification des signes de la puissance de la fin du XIe au début du XIIIe siècle dans les pays d’Oïl’, Seigneurs et seigneuries au Moyen Age: Actes du 117e Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes, Clermont-Ferrand, 1992 (1993), pp. 489–523.
8 See the works cited below, nn. 44 (Crouch), 48 (Johns).
9 J.-L. Chassel, ‘L’essor du sceau au XIe siècle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 155 (1997), 221–34.
10 For the seals of William the Conqueror, see Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum. The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D. Bates (Oxford, 1998), pp. 21 (Normandy), 36–7 (Maine), 102–5 (general), and sources cited there. It seems clear that William I’s adoption of the sealed writ from Anglo-Saxon tradition was the most important factor, but a few of his diplomas in Normandy were also sealed.
11 E. Z. Tabuteau, Transfers of Property in Eleventh-Century Norman Law (Chapel Hill, 1988), pp. 220–1, and notes, 389–91. Her argument that the seal’s initial purpose in Normandy was to verify the authenticity of signa has not been universally accepted (e.g. B. M. Bedos-Redak, ‘Medieval identity: a sign and a concept’, American Historical Review 105 (2000), 1489–1533, at p. 1507, n. 51).
12 E.g. Tabuteau, Transfers of Property, pp. 221 n.76 and 390 n.76, nos 538 (Gilbert de Vascœuil), 796 (Robert de Poissy), which date respectively from the late twelfth and the early thirteenth centuries.
13 For example, Cartulaire de l’abbaye bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034–1227), ed. D. Rouet (Paris 2005), pp. 209–10, no. B2, a conventio between Count Simon of Évreux and Count Waleran of Meulan, makes no mention of a seal. For this agreement, see D. Crouch, ‘A Norman conventio and bonds of lordship in the Middle Ages’, Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, ed. G. Garnett and J. Hudson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 299–324, at pp. 303–4.
14 ADC, H 1201 (Say), H 667 (Mandeville, c. 1153 x 1166).
15 ADSM, 14 H 915 (Rouen, 1153).
16 E.g. AN, L 979, no. 78 (William fitzEmpress, brother of Henry II, for the nuns of Mortain, 1154 x 1164), was sealed, but also inscribed with a single large cross, without an identifying name: this may have been intended as a signum, although it differs in appearance and size from most signa.
17 B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Les sceaux au temps de Philippe Auguste’, La France de Philippe Auguste: le temps des mutations, ed. R.-H. Bautier (Paris, 1982), pp. 721–36 (repr. in her Form and Order, no. II) (for France in general); N. Civel, La fleur de France, pp. 253–64 (aristocratic seals in the Île-de-France).
18 Tabuteau, Transfers of Property, p. 221.
19 For a nice example of hierarchical sealing from just outside Normandy, see AN, S 2238, an act of Count Rotrou III of Perche (1190): it is sealed from left to right by him and his sons Geoffrey, Rotrou, and Stephen, in order of their birth.
20 E.g. D. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: the roots and branches of power in the twelfth century (Cambridge, 1986), p. 153 (chancery of the counts of Meulan).
21 ADSM, 1 H 26: act of Robert, knight of Gauville (dépt. Somme, cant. Poix-de-Picardie), and his son Ralph, for the abbey of Aumale (slit for one seal only): et quia proprium sigillum non habuimus, hanc donationem sigillo Roberti constab(ularii) confirmauimus et sigillatam super altare posuimus. Cf. ADE, H 395, an act of Enguerrand Pilavoine (Pilauene) for the canons of Île-Dieu near Rouen (s.d., late twelfth century): et ne aliqua in posterum contrarietas oriatur, sigilli domini mei Gisleberti de Wascolio impressione confirmaui; the sealing lord, Gilbert de Vascœuil, was also the first witness.
22 ADSM, 8 H 100: Robert de Rétonval confirms all the gifts at Campneuseville (SM, cant. Blangy-sur-Bresle) made by his grandfather Robert and father Oelardus, which they granted et carta Iohannis comitis Augi confirmari et sigillari fecerunt (1196).
23 ADC, H 6679: Will(el)mus Pantulfus iunior, Rogerius et Philipus (sic). filli Will(elm)i Pantulfi de Sameella et Burga uxor eius … hanc autem donationem concedimus ratam. et patris nostri consignamus sigillo et munimus. Samesle: dépt. Orne, cant. Vimoutiers, cne. Le Sap. William Pantulf also held Breedon-on-the-Hill (Leics.): Early Yorkshire Charters, i–iii, ed. W. Farrer (Edinburgh, 1914–16), and iv–xii, ed. C.T. Clay (Leeds, 1935–65), ix, p. 25.
24 E.g. AN, L 967, no. 152: notice of dispute between Leonesius de Fougères and the abbey of Savigny over the church of Brécey (dépt. Manche, chef-lieu du cant.), with slits for a lost single seal, but the text does not state whose it was (s.d., c. 1195). Cf. nos 152–4, and BM Rouen, Coll. Leber 5636, no. 10, for sealed acts concerning the same dispute, issued respectively by Leonesius’ lord William de Fougères, Bishop William of Avranches, and papal judges-delegate (all undated), and Bishop Herbert of Rennes (Sept. 1195).
25 ADSM, 1 H 23, agreement between Enguer-rand, viscount of Aumale, and Abbot Natalis of Aumale (c. 1144 x c. 1152, seal lost), concerning Aumont (cne. Gauville, for which, see n. 21 above). ADO, H 3912: agreement between the abbeys of Saint-Ouen de Rouen and Almenêches (1157, two lost seals at top of chirograph), concerning Cinq-Autels (CA, cant. Bretteville-sur-Laize, cne. Cinq-Autels).
26 For the remainder of this paragraph, see D. Power, ‘En quête de sécurité juridique dans la Normandie angevine: concorde finale et inscription au rouleau’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 168 (2010), 327–71.
27 See the final concords transcribed into a roll of chirographs (Rotuli Normanniæ in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T. D. Hardy (London, 1835), pp. 1–22), which lack any form of sealing clauses, and ADO, H 3333, a rare example of an extant unsealed final concord (although it does have a plica), both discussed in Power, ‘En quête de sécurité juridique’.
28 Curia Regis Rolls, Richard I – Henry III (20 vols to date, London, 1922 –), vi, pp. 397–9. Engelger de Bohon petit sibi allocari quod cirographum illud non est factum in forma aliorum cirographorum factorum in curia domini regis et quod sigillum appositum est illi cirographo et similiter quod non fit mencio in cirographo in cujus regis tempore factum fuit. The text of the chirograph recorded in the plea roll shows that each party had sealed the other’s half: Ad majorem vero securitatem Radulfus de Arderne apposuit sigillum suum illi parti cirographi que remanet Evingero (lege: Eniugero), et Evingerus (lege: Eniugerus) apposuit sigillum suum illi parti que remanet predicto.
29 E.g. ADO, H 1749, a chirograph between the abbots of Perseigne (dioc. Le Mans) and Silly-en-Gouffern (dioc. Sées) for which both halves survive (1211): sicut in ciragrapho (sic) a nobis mutuo assensu conscripto et sigillato plenius ordinatum est. Each abbot sealed his own act, and both halves were also sealed by the abbots of St-André-en-Gouffern and Ardenne, i.e. another abbey from each of the orders involved (respectively the Cistercians and Premonstratensians).
30 Philippe de Beaumanoir, Les coutumes de Clermont-en-Beauvaisis, ed. A. Salmon and G. Hubrecht (3 vols, Paris, 1899–1974), e.g. i, p. 78 (§§ 144–5); ii, pp. 44–5, 48–9, 56–59, 119–20, 124–5 (§§ 1076, 1084–5, 1097–9, 1202–3, 1214–16); The Coutumes de Beauvaisis of Philippe de Beaumanoir, trans. F. R. P. Akehurst (Philadelphia, 1992), pp. 59, 382–3, 385, 390–1, 434–5, 438–9.
31 ADC, H non classée 70 (Plessis-Grimoult, Carton 8 (2)), liasse 8: act of John de Ovna, clerk, stating that his father resigned the church of Feuguerolles (CA, cant. Évrecy, cne. Feuguerolles-Bully) to the priory (s.d., c. 1200); Cum uero sepedictus pater meus ante sigillationem huius resignationis decessisset ego primogenitus ipsius resignationem eius approbans, iam dicto juri patronatus similiter caritatis intuitu penitus resignaui.
32 ADC, H 6636 (dictum of arbiters), ed. in RHF, xxiv, I, préface, pp. 291*–292* (preuves, no. 78, from which the missing letters are supplied below): Abbas uero pro se et conuentu suo plures cartas demonstrauit, quas habent de antecessoribus prefati Geruasii, super donis et elemosinis quas habent dicti abbas et conuentus ex donis eorundem antecessorum, et etiam quandam cartam sigillis Johannis prefati Geruas(ii) patris, et etiam Will(elm) i fratris sui primogeniti et ipsius Geruasii sigillatam (…) Dictus Geruasius aduersarius prefati abbatis cartam istam negauit dicens quod confirmationem istam nunquam fecerat, nec carte illi sigillum suum apposuerat, asserens quod si pater eius et frater eius .W. primogenitus cartam illam fecerint, quod tempore illo quo carta illa facta fuit, sigillum non habebat neque etatem habebat ita quod factum eius finem deberet reportare ad usus et consuetudines Normann(ie). Gervase de Joué was one of the many heirs of Gervase de Montgaroult, his maternal grandfather, whose inheritance had been divided between four daughters.
33 Postea amici nominati ad preceptum bailliui domini Regis dictum suum declarauerunt. qui d[ixe] runt, quod per inquisicionem super premissi[s diligenter facta]m certissime cognouerunt, quod dictus Geruas(ius), tempore illo quo carta predicta tribus sigillis sigillata, confecta fuit, etatem vinginti et duorum annorum habebat, et quod carte illi sigillum suum apposuerat, et quod donationes et elemosinas in cartis illis contentas, gratas et ratas habuerat: sicut in carta illa continetur.
34 ADC, H 6635: act of John Le Sor of Jouédu-Plain and his sons William and Gervase, ‘the sons of Mabel, daughter of Gervase of Montgaroult’ (s.d., late twelfth or early thirteenth century), with slits and tags for three lost seals.
35 ADC, H 6679 (concerning Samesle, for which, see above, n.23): Ego uero, post obitum predicti Will(elm)i de Bouquetot mariti mei … patronatum prefate ecclesie predictis monachis habendum et possidendum in perpetuam elemosinam, per propriam cartam meam confirmaui, sed sigillum qui tunc temporis habebam, me sciatis perdidisse.
36 AN, L 974, no. 852: grant of servitium equi and other rights at Oisseau (dépt. Mayenne, cant. Mayenne) to Savigny; eam presentis scripti et sigilli noui mei munimine, quoniam uetus sigillum meum in tempore guerre perdideram, roboraui. The grant was confirmed by Juhel de Mayenne (AN, L 967, no. 139).
37 Manchester, John Rylands Library, R.48430/38/161 (grant to the abbey of Aunay, 1236): Et quia sigillum meum antiquum mutaui de quo cartam unam sigillatam quondam eisdem feceram: presentem cartam sigillo meo nouo confirmare dignum duxi. The earlier act and seal do not survive. For William (II) de Semilly, a scion of the Hommet dynasty, see D. Power, ‘The charters and letters of the Du Hommet constables of Normandy’, Anglo-Norman Studies XXXV, ed. D. Bates (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 259–86, at pp. 271, 285–6.
38 AN, L 969, no. 427 (William de Husson, knight, son of Guy d’Husson, concerning Fontaine-Étoupefour, CA, cant. Évrecy, 1237): In cuius elemosine testimonium, pro me et matre mea dicte abbacie dedi cartam meam sigillatam sigillo meo quod tunc habebam. quod sigillum non post multum temporis confregi, aliud qu(od) nouum fieri mihi feci (…) Ne igitur pro diuersitate sigillorum dicta elemosina mea impediri possit, ambo dicta sigilla presentibus cartis meis appensa, mea propria fuisse recognoui et auocaui. Et ad maiorem certitudinem dicte recognitionis et auocationis mee, venerabilis Guill(elmu)s de Teleolo tunc temporis Decanus de Valle Moreton’, una cum duobus dictis sigillis meis, presentibus cartis meis sigillum suum ad instanciam meam apposuit. The act has parchment tags for two lost seals, either side of a much narrower leather tag for a third seal – presumably the dean’s. A thirteenth-century endorsement states that the act was not to be used in court except as proof of the seal, as the charter had been superseded by another: Carta ista non debet ostendi nisi ad probandum sigillum quia habemus alteram in episcopatu Baiocensi pertinentem ad Thaon. For William de Husson, see Power, Norman frontier, p. 506.
39 N. Civel, ‘Sceaux et armes de Simon comte de Leicester et de la maison de Montfort’, Revue française d’héraldique et de sigillographie, 66 (1996), pp. 83–106 (which follows the traditional, erroneous genealogy of the Montforts); idem, La fleur de France, pp. 262–4 (which follows the correct genealogy). For the Montforts as grierii of Yvelines, see Power, Norman frontier, p. 86 and n.27.
40 AN, L 969, no. 339 (Douët d’Arcq, iii, no. 10115).
41 Douët d’Arcq, i, no. 2625 (Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Saint-Germain-des-Prés des origines au début du XIIIe siècle, ed. R. Poupardin (2 vols, Paris, 1909–30), i, no. CCI (wrongly dated by Douët d’Arcq to c. 1216). For William Louvel (d. c. 1162), see Power, Norman frontier, pp. 226, 379, 396, 483.
42 BNF, ms. lat. 5464, I, no. 1 (temp. Rotrou archbishop of Rouen, 1164–83), calendared in Sceaux de la Noë, no. 2. This must be Richer II (d. 1176), not his son Richer III (d. 1183 x 87).
43 BNF, ms. lat. 5464, I, no. 4, reproduced in Sceaux de la Noë, no. 3.
44 J. H. Round, ‘The introduction of armorial bearings into England’, Archaeological Journal 51 (1894), 43–8; Crouch, The Beaumont Twins, p. 212.
45 A. R. Wagner, Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1939), pp. 14–15; Complete Peerage, xii, I, App. D; Crouch, The Beaumont Twins, pp. 211–12; idem, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain 1000–1300 (London, 1992), 223–34; however, Civel, La fleur de France, pp. 266–9, argues that these were not yet hereditary devices.
46 AN, J 216, Vernon, no. 1 (Douët d’Arcq, ii, nos 3862–3; Layettes, i, no. 441). For a photograph of Richard I de Vernon’s seal, formerly in the Archives de la Manche, see Cartulaire de Jersey, Guernesey, et les autres Îles Normandes (Jersey, 1919), ii, Planche VI (cf. pp. 390–1). Cf. AN, S 1498, no. 1 (Douët d’Arcq, ii, no. 3860), for the equestrian seal of Richard II’s son William de Vernon, on which the horseman’s arms on the obverse and the shield on the counterseal are both charged with a saltire (1236).
47 ADC, H 6515bis (act of ‘William son of Count John’, 1190 x 1203?), depicting a seal charged with three bendlets. Recueil des actes des comtes de Pontieu (1026–1279), ed. C. Brunel (Paris, 1930), pp. lxxvii–lxxvii, 665, and pl. II, nos 4, 5, for Count William II of Ponthieu (acts of 1212–13 and 1221), with counterseals depicting three bendlets within a bordure. Both men were sometimes called William Talvas after their common ancestor William Talvas, count of Ponthieu (d. 1171). The counterseal of the equestrian second seal of Robert, count of Alençon, bore arms of three bendlets, overall a canton: AN, J 226, no. 2 (Douët d’Arcq, i, no. 885; Layettes, i, no. 988).
48 S.M. Johns, Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Realm (Manchester, 2003), pp. 122–51; cf. pp. 203–30 (catalogue).
49 Le premier cartulaire de l’abbaye cistercienne de Pontigny (12e–13e siècles), ed. M. Garrigues (Paris, 1981), no. 6 (Auxerre, AD Yonne, H 1405).
50 Sceaux de la Noë, nos 5, 15, from BNF, ms. lat. 5464, I, nos 9 (first version, pre–1201), 39 and 83 (second version, 1203–7); P. Pacaud, ‘Le sceau de Basilie de Glisolles’, Revue française d’héraldique et de sigillographie, 64 (1994), pp. 91–104.
51 TNA, E 40/6865: the seal is a rounded oval (rather than vesica), with the image of a bird on a branch.
52 M. Six, ‘De la Vicomtesse Emma et de son entourage’, Tabularia «Etudes», 4 (2004), 79–103, [<http://www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/craham/revue/tabularia/print.php?dossier=dossier3&file=04six.xml>], at pp. 90–1, 95. See Demay, nos 2078 (Geoffrey filius vicecomitisse), 1711 (Matthew le Gros), 1710 (his sons Amaury and Roger le Gros); cf. Douët d’Arcq, ii, no. 4119 (Matilda la Grosse).
53 See the paper by Nicholas Vincent in this volume.
54 Power, Norman frontier, pp. 77, 135–6, 138. A damaged heraldic seal of Ralph l’Abbé (1205) survives in ADC, H 6611: its shield on the obverse bears two croziers, and the reverse depicts a man and woman facing each other. Acts of the l’Abbé family which have lost their seals include AN, S 5053A (Ralph, 1206; Herbert, 1227); ADC, H 6599 (Herbert, 1220); ADO, H 1741 (Herbert, 1225).
55 E.g. Crouch, The Beaumont Twins, p. 212: the armorial counterseal of Robert IV, earl of Leicester, probably before his succession to the earldom in 1190.
56 Sceaux de la Noë, nos 4 (Thomas de St-Jean, 1180, 47 mm), 6 (Richard de Quatremare, 1190, 48 mm), 58 (Geoffrey le Blanc, 1218, 46 mm). Cf. P.D.A. Harvey and A. McGuinness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London, 1996), pp. 15–17, for comparable groups of seal matrices.
57 Demay’s inventory lists over 1600 examples before 1300 from Norman archives and other collections, but these represent only a small proportion of the extant seals: in addition to those in the BNF, AN, and some other French repositories, not catalogued by Demay, we must include duplicates and those now in British and North American collections.
58 For discussion, see D. Power, ‘L’établissement du régime capétien en Normandie’, 1204: La Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens, ed. A. Flambard-Héricher and V. Gazeau (Caen, 2007), pp. 319–43, and the sources cited there.
59 Power, Norman frontier, pp. 450–1.
60 Layettes, i, no. 716; Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, roi de France, ed. H.-F. Delaborde et al. (6 vols, 1916–2006), ii, no. 803. The knights in the Rouen garrison in 1204 included three of the jurors of 1205, namely Henry d’Étoutteville, Robert d’Esneval, and Thomas de Pavilly, and they were commanded by Peter de Préaux, whose brothers John and William were jurors in 1205.
61 Layettes, i, no. 785: the text begins nos juravimus super sacrosancta quod jura que Henricus et Ricardus, quondam reges Anglie, habuerunt in Normannia adversus clerum, et apud Lexovium et alibi, et jura nostra diceremus, and includes a clause concerning the pleas of the sword in the banleuca of Lisieux. After 1204 French royal scribes inserted a copy of King John’s resolution of his dispute with the bishopric over the pleas of sword into the first royal register (Registres de Philippe Auguste, pp. 481–2, Carte, no. 36).
62 J. W. Baldwin, ‘Philip Augustus and the Norman Church’, French Historical Studies, vi (1969), 1–30; idem., The Government of Philip Augustus: foundations of French royal power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 318–26.
63 Baldwin, ‘Norman Church’, pp. 12–26; idem, The Government of Philip Augustus, pp. 317–28, where he argues that concessions made by Richard I to the church in 1190 were rolled back by Philip Augustus, who thereby recovered powers exercised by Henry II.
64 Et quia jura domini regis et nostra nobis memorie non occurrebant, et quia quidam de baronibus Normannie presentes non erant, decrevimus inter nos quod ad aliam diem conveniremus et barones absentes advocaremus, si domino regi placeret, et tunc jura domini regis et nostra, que hic scripta non sunt, per sacramentum nostrum scriberemus.
65 Baldwin, ‘Norman Church’, pp. 14–30.
66 The act bears the fourteenth-century endorsement, Testimonium plurimorum Baronum super Jure patronatus et presentacionibus ecclesiarum Normannie dat(um) mense nouembr(i) mo. CCo. vo.
67 A letter of 41 leading French barons to Pope Gregory IX in 1235 (AN, J 350, no. 3: Layettes, ii, no. 2404) has a plica on each side of the document as well as the foot, with slits for 41 seals (9 down each side, 23 along the foot), of which 18 survive.
68 Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, p. 18, pl. 16. It is unlikely that this method was being used in France as early as 1205.
69 Cartulaire Normand, no. 124 (notice only; cf. Catalogue des actes de Philippe Auguste, no. 961, for a more scientific notice).
70 See Appendix. Roger de Meulan’s seal is now detached.
71 Registres de Philippe Auguste, p. 56, explicitly states that the act still had 13 seals in 1992, but it is more likely that this statement was relying upon Teulet’s edition.
72 Teulet assumed that the ‘William du Hommet’ in the document was William II (d. 1240), constable of Normandy, rather than his grandfather of the same name; but the date of William I’s death is uncertain. See below, p. 43.
73 F. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy 1189–1204: Studies in the History of the Angevin Empire (2nd edn, Manchester, 1961), p. 332; Liber Feudorum: the Book of Fees commonly called Testa de Nevill (3 vols, London, 1920–31), i, 88–90, 238; ii, 754, 1431. The uncertainty over his English lands stems from the difficulty of distinguishing him from his cousin William Martel (d. 1224) of Tattenhoe (Bucks.).
74 Demay, nos 550 (Aude d’Auffay, lady of Tancarville, 1273: armorial counterseal), p. 551 (William de Tancarville, 1283). Both depict eight rather than six estoiles on their arms. For the Tancarvilles, see A. Deville, Histoire du château et des sires de Tancarville (Rouen, 1834); Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, p. 353; for their English lands, Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, ed. T. D. Hardy (2 vols, London, 1833–44), i, pp. 9, 37; Calendar of Charter Rolls (6 vols, London, 1903–27), i, pp. 77, 132.
75 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, pp. 334–5; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus, p. 217; Power, Norman frontier, pp. 252, 277, 419, 486. For Stephen’s background, see D. Balfour, ‘The origins of the Longchamp family’, Medieval Prosopography, xviii (1997), pp. 73–92.
76 Dictionary of British Arms: Medieval Ordinary, ed. D. H. B. Chesshyre et al. (3 vols, London, 1992–2009), iii, pp. 86, 90–1. A crescent and estoile also appear on the seal of Stephen’s brother, Bishop William: see the article by Adrian Ailes in this volume.
77 For the Préaux brothers, see Powicke, Loss of Normandy, pp. 341, 350; The History of William Marshal, ed. A. J. Holden, S. Gregory, and D. Crouch (3 vols, London, 2002–6), i, lines 4662–74; The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. and trans. M. Ailes and M. Barber (2 vols, Woodbridge, 2003), e.g. i, lines 4729–30 (‘des compaignons reials’); ii, p. 97.
78 Ibid., i, lines 7108–24, 12228–34; ii. pp. 128, 192.
79 Rotuli Litterarum Patentium in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T.D. Hardy (London, 1835), p. 36; Great Roll of the Pipe for the Fifth Year of the Reign of King John, ed. D. M. Stenton (London, 1938), p. 79. The evidence concerning the succession of Okehampton in the 1200s is too complex to be discussed here.
80 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, pp. 341–2.
81 Douët d’Arcq, ii, no. 3303, describes the elbow of each of the eagle’s wings as ending in a lion’s muzzle.
82 Douët d’Arcq, ii, no. 3305: Peter’s shield-shaped seal, c. 48 mm across (AN, J 213, Rouen, II, no. 2: Layettes, i, no. 716). Cf. ii, no. 3306, and Demay, no. 483, for the armorial seal of another Peter, a successor of John as lord of Préaux (1294, 1303), likewise charged with an eagle displayed. In 1247 Enguerrand, son of John de Préaux’s youngest brother Enguerrand (who had remained in England after 1204), was using a seal with an eagle passant to sinister reguardant (TNA, DL 25/215).
83 Power, Norman frontier, pp. 278, 428.
84 Defender of Verneuil for Richard (1194): Cambridge University Library, ms. Ii.VI.24, fol. 46v (in a prose history of the dukes of Normandy); History of William Marshal, ii, lines 10472–80. Defender of Arques for King John (1202): ibid., ii, lines 12051–4. See Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, pp. 101, 152, 347; for his English lands, lost in 1204, see Rot. Claus., i, p. 6.
85 ADSM, 9 H 30 (cf. Demay, no. 422, which does not mention the counterseal): grant to the abbey of St-Léonard-de-Chaumes (Aug. 1224).
86 Early Yorkshire Charters, vi, pp. 24–7.
87 Douët d’Arcq, ii, no. 3146: Pierre gravée. Une femme assise sur une chaise à dossier, tendant à un personnage debout devant elle un objet indistinct.
88 AN, J 395, no. 91 (Layettes, ii, no. 2129). Douët d’Arcq, ii, no. 3147, assumed that the two seals belonged to the same man, but Fulk II had been succeeded by Fulk III by 1230 (EYC, vi, 24–9). Fulk III’s tiny counterseal depicted a beast (probably a lion) passant to sinister.
89 The seal on a chirograph concerning the honour of the Vallée de la Sée (Manche), recording a concord between Fulk II Paynel and Roger (de Lacy), constable of Chester, a few years earlier (TNA, DL 25/43, 1198 x 1203), has been assumed to be Fulk’s (Early Yorkshire Charters, vi, no. 20 and pl. iii): but although its inscription has been lost, its geometric design corresponds to Roger de Lacy’s counterseal (see BL, Harley Charter 52.H.43A, repr. in Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, p. 52).
90 Robert d’Esneval was still under age in 1197–8, when his mother Heloise had custody of his father’s land, but he was of age by 9 June 1202: Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ, ed. T. Stapleton (2 vols, London, 1840–44), ii, pp. cxlvii, 444 (cf. i, pp. 133, 139, 157, for Heloise’s custody in 1194–5); Rot. Norm., p. 48.
91 Esneval, SM, cant. and cne. Pavilly (variously Vesneval, Wendeval, etc.). For Robert, see RHF, xxiii, pp. 614b, 643de, 684g, 707g, 728f; Powicke, Loss of Normandy, 338; Layettes, i, no. 716 (surrender of Rouen), where Teulet renders his surname as Hivesneval, although Huiesneval seems more likely. In 1172 Robert’s father had 12¼ knights in his service and owed 3 knights; Tancarville’s father had 94¾ and owed 10 knights.
At an unknown date Robert and Heloise issued acts concerning her Norfolk property (BL, ms. Cotton Claudius D.xiii, fols 19v–20r); in 1233 Henry III promised that Robert might inherit Heloise’s English lands after her death, but after Robert’s own death in 1247 his lands in Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent were confiscated (Calendar of the Charter Rolls of Henry III, i (1226–1257)(London, 1903), pp. 175, 329; Close Rolls of the reign of Henry III, 1247–1251 (London, 1922), p. 11).
92 ADC, H 667 (s.d., but the act’s hand suggests post-1220); AN, J 395, no. 92 (1235); BL, Seals xxxix.64 (detached). I intend to publish reproductions of the Hommet seals in my edition of the Hommet charters (currently in preparation for the Pipe Roll Society).
93 ADC, H 667: act of Will(elmu)s de Humeto filius Ricardi iunioris de Humeto constab(ularius) Norma(n)nie, dated ‘1204’ (i.e. Christmas 1203 x Easter 1205, depending upon the dating system used). William II had come of age by 1200–1, when he inherited the land of his deceased parents, with his grandfather the constable as surety (Rot. Norm., p. 39).
94 ADC, H 667: an act of Jordan, bishop of Lisieux, for Aunay, refers to his father William I du Hommet as ‘Brother William’ (c. 1204). William I’s father Richard I du Hommet had certainly retired to Aunay in 1178–9. The Capetian chancery did not always accord the title of constable to the head of the Hommet dynasty.
95 RHF, xxiii, pp. 611jk, 619a; Rot. Norm., p. 129; Rot. Claus., i, p. 7; Rot. Chart., 163b (Essex, Hants., Oxon.).
96 For Roger, see D. Power, ‘L’aristocratie Plantagenêt face aux conflits capétiensangevins: l’exemple du traité de Louviers’, Noblesses de l’espace Plantagenêt (1154–1224), ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2001), pp. 121–37, at pp. 129–30.
97 AN, J 394, no. 2bis (Layettes, i, no. 440); Douët d’Arcq, i, no. 2833.
98 AN, J 216, no. 7 (Layettes, i, no. 736), an act of Roger de Meulan in favour of the king of France (Easter 1204 x Easter 1205); Douët d’Arcq, i, no. 2834. For the seals of Roger’s descendants, see ibid., i, nos 2826–32; the lion was sometimes queue fourchée, like their kinsmen the lords of Montfort-l’Amaury, or reguardant. Cf. Civel, La fleur de France, pp. 125, 266–8; Power, Norman frontier, pp. 453, 509.
99 Early Yorkshire Charters, ix, pp. 51–5.
100 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, pp. 352–3 (lands in Kent, Gloucs. and Notts.).
101 Douët d’Arcq, ii, no. 3679, describes this as ‘Un fascé de diapré et d’hermines de six pièces’, i.e. barry of six of diaper and ermine, but the ‘ermine’ looks more like roundels charged with fleurs-de-lys than ermine spots. However, later arms attributed to the Taisson family were barry of six vert and ermine.
102 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, p.338; Power, Norman frontier, p. 316; BNF, ms. lat. 13905, fol. 51v; ADE, H 846.
103 For canting symbols on Norman seals, see above, p. 38. Complete Peerage, iv, 190 (note d), states that later heralds attributed arms of sable, six horseshoes argent (or vice versa) to the twelfth-century earls of Derby, but this ‘English’ branch of the Ferrières family subsequently used vairy or and gules.
104 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, p. 337.
105 Douët d’Arcq, i, no. 1891, identified it as a tarasque, or mythical Provençal dragon, but it could equally be a hound.
106 H. Malo, Un grand feudataire, Renaud de Dammartin, et la coalition de Bouvines (Paris, 1898), remains a valuable study of his career.
107 Cf. Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, pp. 52–3.
108 Douët d’Arcq, i, no. 1059 (from AN, J 238, no. 1; Layettes, i, no. 750). For another example of Renaud’s seal, see San Marino (California), Henry E. Huntington Library, HAD 3502, which also bears a fine example of the seal of his wife Countess Ida of Boulogne, with a typical feminine figure on the obverse, and a counterseal comprising the arms of Boulogne (three roundels, most probably tourteaux, i.e. roundels gules) inverted above the arms of Dammartin (see above), the two shields together forming a waisted oval (cf. Douët d’Arcq, i, no. 1058, describing Ida’s seal from AN, J 238 no.1, i.e. Layettes, i, no. 613). The bordure of the Dammartin arms is clearer on Renaud’s and Ida’s counterseals than on the equestrian obverse of Renaud’s seal.
109 ADC, F 5690, fol. 128v; Demay, no. 541. I am grateful to Richard Allen for providing me with photographs of both the extant photograph and the moulage. An extant act of William de Serans (1189–90) has lost its seal (ADC, H 6635).
110 D. Power, ‘Between the Angevin and Capetian courts: John de Rouvray and the knights of the Pays de Bray, 1180–1225’, in K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (ed.), Family Trees and the Roots of Politics, (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 361–84. Peter de Préaux was the commander of the Rouen garrison, and John’s elder brother Osbert was one of the knights in the city (Power, ‘L’établissement du régime capétien’, p. 330 n. 49).
111 Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame de Vauxde-Cernay, ed. L. Merlet and A. Moutié (2 vols, Paris, 1857), i, no. CCCI (Aug. 1229), describing the seal design as à l’écu burelé de … au lion de … brochant sur le tout. The counterseal apparently bore a shield with the same arms. The original (Montigny-le-Bretonneux, Archives des Yvelines, 45 H 12, no. 17) now bears only traces of green wax on its seal tag. I am grateful to Mathilde Geley for sending me a reproduction of this act.
A seal of John de Rouvray from an act dated 1215 is catalogued in ‘Collection supplément : sceaux des Archives nationales non repérés par Douët d’Arcq, sceaux d’autres services publics ou collections particulières. Cahier d’entrée ms.’, ed. L. Douët d’Arcq et al. (typescript, 4 vols, 1870–1999), ii, nos 2686, 2686bis; it was allegedly in the former AD Seine-et-Oise, so may also survive in the AD Yvelines. The catalogue entry appears to represent the two sides of a single seal.
112 Recueil des chartes et pièces relatives au prieuré Notre-Dame de Moulineaux et à la châtellenie de Poigny, ed. A. Moutié (Paris, 1846), p. xcii: act of Henry de Rouvray, lord of Auffargis (1250): the seal is described as sur un écu triangulaire burelé de huit pièces, un lion rampant à gauche [i.e. to dexter], lampassé, vilainé et la queue fourchée, brocant sur le tout. John de Rouvray had received Auffargis and Poigny, in the Forest of Yvelines, from Philip Augustus in 1197 (Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, ii, no. 556). ADSM, 16 H 183 (Demay, no. 501): act of a later John de Rouvray, lord of Grainville-en-Vexin (1280), with an equestrian seal depicting barruly, a lion rampant on the shield and horse-trappings; the counterseal shows a shield with arms of barruly of 14, a lion rampant. According to the Wijnbergen armorial roll (mid-1280s?), this John de Rouvray bore barry of 14 or and azure, a lion rampant gules (P. Adam-Even and L. Jéquier, ‘Un armorial français du XIIIe siècle. L’armorial Wijnberghen. Part III’, Archives héraldiques suisses 66 (1952), I, 28–36, at p. 32 no. 362); cf. p. 35 no. 439 (giving barry of 16).
113 BNF, ms. lat. 5425, p.119: equestrian, with arms of barruly on the horseman’s shield. John’s addition of a lion queue fourchée to this coat probably reflects his early acquisitions in the Forest of Yvelines, adjacent to the lands of the lords of Montfort-l’Amaury, whose lion queue fourchée was widely adopted in the region (Civel, ‘Sceaux et armes de Simon comte de Leicester’; idem, La fleur de France, pp. 266–8).
In 1255, however, the equestrian seal of another John de Rouvray, lord of Écalles – probably Osbert’s descendant – had a heraldic counterseal bearing a cross charged with five scallops (ADSM, 14 H 714; Demay, no. 500). These were apparently the same arms as the castellans of Beauvais in the 14th century: A. Caix de St-Aymour, ‘Les châtelains de Beauvais’, Mémoires et documents pour servir à l’histoire des pays qui forment aujourd’hui le Département de l’Oise (Paris, 1898), pp. 79–126, at pp. 87n., 96 and n.1, 97–8, 101. The gaps in our knowledge of the Rouvray and Beauvais genealogies prevent any certainty, but it is possible that the later castellans were descended from the senior Rouvray branch. The origins of the arms with the cross and scallops are unknown.
114 ADC, H 1193 (grant for the abbey of Aunay, c. 1200).
115 O. Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et comes: affirmation et déclin de la seigneurie épiscopale au nord du royaume de France (Beauvais-Noyon, Xe – début XIIIe siècle) (Geneva and Paris, 1987), pp. 113–15, 148–9, 264.
116 For Odo, see Caix de St-Aymour, ‘Les châtelains de Beauvais’, pp. 87–9 (identifying two Odos, father and son, between 1161 and 1219); Guyotjeannin, Episcopus et Comes, pp. 148–9 (who treats ‘Odo the castellan’ as a single person between those dates). For the castellans’ Norman concerns before 1204, see BM Rouen, Y 13, fol. 96r (Odo or his father as benefactor of the abbey of Foucarmont, 1164); ADE, H 395 (Odo witnesses an act for the abbey of Île-Dieu, pre-1194); Cartulaire de l’abbaye bénédictine de Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux (1034-1227), ed. D. Rouet (Paris, 2005), pp. 342–3, 422–3, nos B112, B190 (which must be pre-1219). In 1238 the land of the castellan of Beauvais in the diocese of Rouen yielded 60 li. tournois (RHF, xxi, p. 255d).
117 Powicke, Loss of Normandy, p. 350; W.B. Stevenson, ‘England and Normandy 1204– 59’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1974), pp. 455–7; Curia Regis Rolls, Richard I – Henry III (20 vols. to date, London, 1922–), xvi, nos 1397, 1758.
118 ADSM, 2 H 63, no. 53. I wish to thank John Stevenson for providing me with a reproduction of this act.
119 Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, p. 20.
120 RHF, xxiii, pp. 682–4 (Registres de Philippe Auguste, pp. 327–35). Comites: the count of Boulogne (who also appears as ‘the count of Mortain and Aumale’). Barones: Fulk Paynel, (William du Hommet) the constable of Normandy, and Ralph Taisson; the only other Norman in this group was the ‘lord of Orbec and Longueville’, i.e. the absent William Marshal. Castellani: [John] the lord of Préaux; and William the lord of Tancarville, the ‘lord of La Queue’(-en-Brie?) may well refer to Roger de Meulan. Vavassores: Henry de Ferrières, William de Préaux, [Robert] the lord of Courcy, and William de Mortemer. Omitted: Étoutteville, Longchamps, Martel, Montagny, Coulonces, Vassy, Esneval, Rouvray, Pavilly, Serans, and the castellan of Beauvais.
121 RHF, xxiii, p. 684 (Registres, pp. 308–10): [William du Hommet] constable of Normandy, Ralph Taisson, Fulk Paynel, Philip de Vassy, Robert de Courcy, Henry de Ferrières, John and William de Préaux, William de Mortemer, [William] chamberlain of Tancarville, the heir of William Martel, John de Rouvray, Henry d’Étoutteville, Thomas de Pavilly, Stephen de Longchamps, Robert d’Esneval, Nicholas de Montagny, Hugh de Coulonces. Roger de Meulan may be the ‘Roger de la Queue’ (-en-Brie?) (Rogerus de Cauda) who appears in the list of French knights. The count of Boulogne headed the list of the knights of Boulogne. William de Serans and the castellan of Beauvais were not mentioned.
122 Philip de Vassy, Nicholas de Montagny, John de Rouvray, Odo castellan of Beauvais, William de Serans, Roger de Meulan.
123 For Roger’s brother Count Robert of Meulan, see Powicke, Loss of Normandy, pp. 344–5. Roger’s sister Isabella was married into the Anglo-Manceau family of Mayenne. For John’s brothers Osbert and William in Warks. (1203) and Northants. (1200) respectively, see Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et Præstitis, ed. T. D. Hardy (London, 1844), p. 74; BL, Add. Ch. 6109.
Notes
1 The European Research Council provided financial support under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 204905 (RANK) for the research and writing of this paper. I am grateful to David Crouch and Johanna Dale for having commented on this paper.
2 Die Summa de arte prosandi des Konrad von Mure, ed. W. Kronbichler (Geist und Werk der Zeiten 17) (Zürich, 1968), p. 166.
3 This study is part of a larger project comparing English earls and Imperial princes in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It takes further the points outlined in the second part of J. Peltzer, ‘Bildgewordene Autorität: Annäherungen an einen Vergleich der Siegel der Reichsfürsten und der Earls im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert’, in Autorität und Akzeptanz. Das Reich im Europa des 13. Jahrhunderts, (Ostfildern, 2013), eds H. Seibert, W. Bomm and V. Türck, pp. 267–83, at pp. 276–83. Inevitably there is some overlap between these two papers.
4 M. Pastoureau, Les sceaux (Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 36) (Turnhout, 1981); M. Pastoureau, ‘Les sceaux et la fonction sociale des images’, in L’image. Fonctions et usages des images dans l’occident médiéval. Actes du 6e International Workshop on Medieval Societies, Centre Ettore Majorana (Erice, Sicile, 17–23 octobre 1992) (Cahiers du Léopard d’Or 5) (Paris, 1996), eds J. Baschet and J.-C. Schmitt, pp. 275–308; B. Bedos-Rezak, Form and Order in Medieval France. Studies in Social and Quantitative Sigillographie (Variorum Collected Studies 424) (Aldershot, 1993); B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Medieval identity: a sign and a concept’, American Historical Review 105 (2000), 1489–1533; B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Du sujet à l’objet. La formulation identitaire et ses enjeux culturels’, in Unverwechselbarkeit. Persönliche Identität und Identifikation in der vormodernen Gesellschaft (Norm und Struktur. Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit 23) (Cologne, 2004), ed. P. von Moos, pp. 63–83; B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘L’au delà du soi. Métamorphoses sigillaires en Europe médiévale’, Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 49 (2006), 337–58; P. D. A. Harvey, ‘Personal seals in thirteenth-century England’, in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages. Essays presented to John Taylor (London, 1991), eds I. Wood and G. A. Loud, pp. 117–29; P. D. A. Harvey and A. McGuiness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London, 1996); T. A. Heslop, ‘English Seals in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in, Age of Chivalry. Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400 (London, 1987), eds J. Alexander and P. Binski, pp. 114–17; T. A. Heslop, ‘The Seals of the Twelfth-Century Earls of Chester’, in The Earldom of Chester and its Charters. A Tribute to Geoffrey Barraclough = Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 71 (1991), 179–97; D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000– 1300 (London, 1992), pp. 242–7; N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (eds), Good Impressions. Image and Authority in Medieval Seals (London, 2008), in particular A. Ailes, ‘The Knight’s Alter Ego: From Equestrian to Armorial Seal’ in ibid., pp. 8–11; J. Cherry and A. Payne (eds), Signs and Symbols. Proceedings of the 2006 Harlaxton Symposium (Harlaxton Medieval Studies 18) (Donington, 2009); T. Diederich, ‘Prolegomena zu einer neuen Siegeltypologie’, Archiv für Diplomatik 29 (1983), 242–84; T. Diederich, Siegelkunde. Beiträge zu ihrer Vertiefung und Weiterführung, (Cologne, 2012); L. Fenske, ‘Adel und Rittertum im Spiegel früher heraldischer Formen und deren Entwicklung’, in Das ritterliche Turnier im Mittelalter. Beiträge zu einer vergleichenden Formen- und Verhaltensgeschichte des Rittertums (Veröffentlichungen des Max Planck-Instituts für Geschichte 80) (Göttingen, 1985), ed. J. Fleckenstein, pp. 75–166; A. Stieldorf, Rheinische Frauensiegel. Zur rechtlichen und sozialen Stellung weltlicher Frauen im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Rheinisches Archiv 142) (Cologne, 1999); E. Gönner, ‘Reitersiegel in Südwestdeutschland’, in Aus südwestdeutscher Geschichte. Festschrift für Hans-Martin Maurer. Dem Archivar und Historiker zum 65. Geburtstag (Stuttgart, 1994), eds W. Schmierer, G. Cordes, R. Kieß and G. Taddey, pp. 151–78; W. Schöntag, ‘Das Reitersiegel als Rechtssymbol und Darstellung ritterlichen Selbstverständnisses. Fahnenlanze, Banner und Schwert auf Reitersiegeln des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts vor allem südwestdeutscher Adelsfamilien’, in Bild und Geschichte. Studien zur politischen Ikonographie. Festschrift für Hansmartin Schwarzmaier zum fünfundsechzigsten Geburtstag (Sigmaringen, 1997), eds K. Krimm and H. John, pp. 79–124; W. Schöntag, ‘Amts, Standesbezeichnungen und Titel in den Siegellegenden im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 147 (1999), 145–69; M. Späth (ed.), Die Bildlichkeit korporativer Siegel im Mittelalter. Kunstgeschichte und Geschichte im Gespräch (Sensus. Studien zur mittelalterlichen Kunst 1) (Cologne, 2009).
5 T. E. Scott-Ellis (Baron Howard de Walden), Some Feudal Lords and their Seals MCCCI, n. pl. 1904, pp. 43–6, 52–3.
6 C. H. Hunter Blair, ‘Armorials upon English Seals from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Centuries’, Archeaologia 89 (1943), 1–26, pls ii and iii.
7 S. Hofmann, Urkundenwesen, Kanzlei und Regierungssystem der Herzöge von Bayern und Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein von 1180 bzw. 1214 bis 1255 bzw. 1294 (Münchner Historische Studien. Abteilung Geschichtliche Hilfswissenschaften 3) (Kallmünz, 1967), pp. 50–2 (Ludwig I), 78–9 (Otto II), 137–8 (Ludwig II); L. Schnurrer, Urkundenwesen, Kanzlei und Regierungssystem der Herzöge von Niederbayern 1255–1340 (Münchener Historische Studien Abteilung Geschichtliche Hilfswissenschaften 8) (Kallmünz, 1972), pp. 35–6 (Heinrich XIII); A. Sprinkart, Kanzlei, Rat und Urkundenwesen der Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein und Herzöge von Bayern 1294 bis 1314 (1317). Forschungen zum Regierungssystem Rudolfs I. und Ludwigs IV. (Forschungen zur Kaiser und Papstgeschichte des Mittelalters. Beihefte zu J. F. Böhmer, Regesta Imperii, 4) (Cologne, 1986), pp. 292–6 (Rudolf II, Ludwig IV); J. Spiegel, Urkundenwesen, Kanzlei, Rat und Regierungssystem des Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein und Herzogs von Bayern Ruprecht I. (1309–1390) (Stiftung zur Förderung der pfälzischen Geschichtsforschung Reihe B: Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Pfalz 1), 2 vols, (Neustadt/Weinstraße, 1996), i, pp. 26, 29, 32, 37 (Adolf, Rudolf II, Ruprecht I, Ruprecht II); J. Peltzer, Der Rang der Pfalzgrafen bei Rhein. Die Gestaltung der politisch-sozialen Ordnung des Reichs im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (RANK. Politisch-soziale Ordnungen im mittelalterlichen Europa 2) (Ostfildern, 2013), pp. 260–1 (Ruprecht II’s second equestrian seal).
8 The development of the rank of the margraves of Baden in the late middle ages is analysed by H. Krieg, ‘Die Markgrafen von Baden: Eine Familie am unteren Rand des Fürstenstandes’, in Princely Rank in Late Medieval Europe. Trodden Paths and Promising Avenues (RANK. Politischsoziale Ordnungen im mittelalterlichen Europa 1) (Ostfildern, 2011), eds T. Huthwelker, J. Peltzer and M. Wemhöner, pp. 309–32.
9 F. von Weech (ed.), Siegel von Urkunden aus dem grossherzoglich badischen General-Landesarchiv zu Karlsruhe (Frankfurt/Main, 1883), pls 3–5. The exception is a seal of Rudolf III (d. 1332) measuring c. 77 mm, ibid., pl. 5 no. 1. The counts of Montfort, whose lands were situated mainly at the eastern border of the Lake Constance, provide another example. In the thirteenth century, their seals measured between 60 mm and 65 mm, W. P. Liesching, ‘Die Siegel der Grafen von Montfort’, Adler 13 (xxxvii) (1983–1985), pp. 209–35, at p. 220.
10 Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins oder des Erzstifts Cöln, der Fürstenthümer Jülich und Berg, Geldern, Meurs Cleve und Mark, und der Reichsstifte Elten, Essen und Werden, ed. T. J. Lacomblet, 4 vols, (Düsseldorf, 1840–1858, repr. Aalen 1960), iii, no. 307.
11 W. A. van Spaen, Oordeelkundige inleiding tot de historie van Gelderland (4 vols., Utrecht, 1801−1805), ii, Codex diplomaticus, no. 42.
12 W. Ewald, Rheinische Siegel VI. Siegel der Grafen und Herzöge von Jülich, Berg, Cleve, Herrn von Heinsberg (Publikationen der Gesellschaft für rheinische Geschichtskunde 27) (Bonn, 1941), pl. 3 no. 9, pl. 4 nos 2, 6 (Juliers); A. P. van Schilfgaarde, Zegels en genealogische gegevens van de graven en hertogen van Gelre, graven van Zutphen (Gelre 33) (Arnhem, 1967), p. 35 no. 58, p. 39 no. 65 (Guelders); Diederich, Siegelkunde, pp. 105−06.
13 Urkundenbuch für die Geschichte des Niederrheins, ed. Lacomblet, iii, no. 848.
14 Ewald, Rheinische Siegel VI, pl. 11 nos 5, 6.
15 On the sumptuary law see C. Given-Wilson, ‘Rank and Status among the English Nobility, c. 1300–1500’, in Princely Rank, eds Huthwelker et al., pp. 97–117, at pp. 113−14.
16 Diplomatic Documents preserved in the Public Record Office. Volume I 1101–1272, ed. P. Chaplais (London, 1964), no. 367; H. Jenkinson, A Guide to Seals in the Public Record Office (Public Record Office Handbooks 1) (London, 1968), p. 11, note 5.
17 C. H. Hunter Blair, ‘A note upon mediaeval seals with special reference to those in Durham Treasury’, Archaeologia Aeliana 3rd ser. 17 (1920), 244–313, at p. 260, reports this story without, however, revealing its source. Harvey, British Seals, p. 51. For Edward II’s royal and Thomas’ equestrian seal, see W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols, London 1887−1900, i, p. 21 no. 47 (Edward II); ii, p. 339 no. 6331 (Thomas). T. A. Heslop has pointed to a case from the ecclesiastical sphere where the destruction of a newly made monastic seal was probably due to its disproportionately large size, Heslop, ‘English seals in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, p. 116.
18 On Thomas’ claims to high office, notably the Stewardship of England, that cannot but have helped to fuel his sense of importance, see J. R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 1307–1322 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 76–7, 233, 241–3, 289–91, 321–2; J. Peltzer, ‘La dignité de l’office de cour au bas Moyen Âge’, in Hiérarchie des pouvoirs, delegation de pouvoir et responsabilité des administrateurs dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge. Actes du colloque de Metz, 16–18 juin 2011 (Centre de Recherche Universitaire Lorrain d’Histoire. Université de Lorraine – Site Metz 46), Metz 2012, eds A. Bérenger and F. Lachaud, pp. 271–89, at pp. 287–8
19 For the context and the measures taken by Rudolf, see A. Sauter, Fürstliche Herrschaftsrepräsentation. Die Habsburger im 14. Jahrhundert (Mittelalter-Forschungen 12) (Ostfildern, 2003), pp. 157– 186; E. Schlotheuber, ‘Das Privilegium maius – eine habsburgische Fälschung im Ringen um Rang und Einfluss, in P. Schmid and H. Wanderwitz (eds), Die Geburt Österreichs. 850 Jahre Privilegium minus (Regensburger Kulturleben 4) (Regensburg, 2007), pp. 143– 165; Peltzer, Rang, pp. 399–419.
20 K. von Sava, ‘Die Siegel der österreichischen Regenten, 7. Abt.’, Mitteilungen der K.K. Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale 9 (1864), 147–218 [pt 1], 242–68 [pt 2]; 11 (1866), 137–52 [pt 3a]; 12 (1867), 171–88 [pt 3b]; 13 (1868), 184–92 [pt 4]; 14 (1869), 193–200 [pt 5]; 15 (1870), 35–8 [pt 6]; 16 (1871), 17–32 [pt 7]; here 12 [3b], 171–4 and pl. vii. O. Posse, Die Siegel der deutschen Kaiser und Könige von 715–1913, 5 vols, (Dresden, 1909–1913), ii, pl. 3 no. 4 (Imperial seal of Charles IV); Spiegel, Urkundenwesen, i, p. 32; O. Posse, Die Siegel der Wettiner und der Landgrafen von Thüringen, der Herzöge von Sachsen-Wittenberg und Kurfürsten von Sachsen aus askanischem Geschlecht, 2 vols, (Leipzig, 1888–1893), ii, pl. xxix nos 1 (Rudolf I, d. 1356), 7 (Rudolf II, d. 1370).
21 Sauter, Fürstliche Herrschaftsrepräsentation, pp. 200–06.
22 Sava, ‘Siegel’, 12 [3b], p. 174 and pl. viii.
23 R. Götz, Die Herzöge von Teck. Herzöge ohne Herzogtum (Schriftenreihe Stadtarchiv Kirchheim unter Teck 33) (Kirchheim unter Teck, 2009).
24 Peltzer, Rang, p. 249; Posse, Die Siegel der Wettiner, ii, pl. xxix sq.
25 Hofmann, Urkundenwesen, p. 138 (Ludwig II).
26 Schöntag, ‘Amts-, Standesbezeichnungen’, pp. 146–55, 160–4.
27 R. Laurent, Les sceaux des princes territoriaux belges du Xe siècle à 1482, 2 vols, (Brussels, 1993), i, pp. 256–72.
28 Schöntag, ‘Amts-, Standesbezeichnungen’, pp. 151/2.
29 H. Bier, ‘Die Entwicklung der Siegeltypen der Markgrafen und Kurfürsten von Brandenburg’, in Brandenburgische Siegel und Wappen. Festschrift des Vereins für Geschichte der Mark Brandenburg zur Feier des hundertjährigen Bestehens 1837–1937 (Berlin, 1937), ed. E. Kittel pp. 14–33.
30 Schöntag, ‘Reitersiegel’, passim.
31 The flag could also be used by the king to invest non-princely lords with their fiefs, K.-F. Krieger, Die Lehnshoheit der deutschen Könige im Spätmittelalter (c. 1200–1437) (Untersuchungen zur deutschen Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte NF 23) (Aalen, 1979), pp. 36–42. But the investiture by flag was by and large associated with the Imperial princes.
32 J. Ehlers, Heinrich der Löwe (Munich, 2008), pp. 265–8.
33 S. Schlinker, Fürstenamt und Rezeption. Reichsfürstenstand und gelehrte Literatur im späten Mittelalter (Forschungen zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte 18) (Cologne, 1999), pp. 53–70.
34 Laurent, Les sceaux, i/2, p. 359
35 Laurent, Les sceaux, i/2, pp. 359−61.
36 La chronique de Gislebert de Mons, ed. L. Vanderkindere (Recueil de textes pour servir à l’étude de l’histoire de Belgique) (Brussels, 1904), pp. 255, 262/3, 299.
37 V. Rödel, ‘6. Oktober 1214. Die Belehnung Herzog Ludwigs I. mit der Pfalzgrafschaft bei Rhein’, in Bayern nach Jahr und Tag. 24 Tage aus der bayerischen Geschichte (Munich, 2007), eds A. Schmid and K. Weigand, pp. 122–40.
38 Hofmann, Urkundenwesen, pp. 49–52.
39 Sachsenspiegel. Landrecht, ed. K.A. Eckardt (MGH Fontes iuris Germanici antiqui, NS 1/1) (Göttingen, 31973), III 52 § 3.
40 The arenga (introduction) of a charter Ludwig issued in 1214 in favour of the monastery of Schönau near Heidelberg shows that he was acutely aware of the sword as symbol of the judge and his own position as judge: Cum non sine causa iudex gladium portet scire nos convenit qui gladio cingimur…, Monumenta Wittelsbacensia. Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des Hauses Wittelsbach, ed. F. M. Wittmann, (2 vols, Munich, 1857/1861, repr. Aalen, 1969), i, no. 6 (= Regesten der Pfalzgrafen am Rhein 1214–1400, ed. A. Koch and J. Wille [Regesten der Pfalzgrafen am Rhein 1214–1508 1], (Innsbruck, 1894), no. 3). However, it would be too far-fetched to consider this an explicit reference to a particular palatine judicial authority.
41 Hofmann, Urkundenwesen, p. 78.
42 Ibidem, p. 79.
43 Laurent, Les sceaux, i/1, pp. 273/4; i/2, p. 491.
44 See above, n. 13.
45 Bier, ‘Die Entwicklung der Siegeltypen der Markgrafen und Kurfürsten von Brandenburg’, pp. 23–4 and pl. iv no. 1 (1385) (Sigismund); H. Drös, ‘Löwe, Rauten, roter Schild. Zum Wappen der pfälzischen Wittelsbacher im Spätmittelalter’, in Der Griff nach der Krone. Die Pfalzgrafschaft bei Rhein im Mittelalter. Eine Begleitpublikation zur Ausstellung der Staatlichen Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württemberg und des Generallandesarchivs Karlsruhe (Schätze aus unseren Schlössern. Eine Reihe der Staatlichen Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württemberg 4) (Regensburg, 2000), ed. V. Rödel, pp. 105–16, at pp. 110–12.
46 The different authority attributed to the large and small seals can be seen, for example, in Wittelsbachische Hausverträge des späten Mittelalters. Die Haus- und staatsrechtlichen Urkunden der Wittelsbacher von 1310, 1329, 1392/93, 1410 und 1472, ed. H. Rall, (Schriftenreihe zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte 71) (Munich, 1987), pp. 169– 70, no. 7.
47 See above, n. 24.
48 Harvey and McGuinesss, A Guide, p. 43.
49 A short up-to-date biography of Hugh de Neville is provided by D. Crook, ‘Neville, Hugh de (d. 1234)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, 2004); online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ubproxy.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/view/article/19942, accessed 23 Oct 2013]; a slightly fuller discussion of his seal can be found in A. F. Pollard, ‘Neville, Hugh de’, in Dictionary of National Biography, (63 vols, London, 1885−1900), xl, pp. 260−2.
50 For the various ways in which noblemen used their coats of arms to express their ambitions, affiliations and associations, see Ailes, ‘Heraldic Marshalling’, passim.
51 Heslop, ‘The seals of the twelfth-century Earls of Chester’.
52 ibid.; Ailes, ‘Knight’s Alter Ego’.
53 The use of a double-sided seal to communicate two different dignities was, of course, no invention of the thirteenth century, but stretches back to William the Conqueror, who used one side of his great seal to portray him as king of England, the other as duke of Normandy. The double-sided seal of Robert of Meulan is an early example from among the magnates. The obverse showed him as count of Meulan, the reverse as earl of Leicester, D. Crouch, The English Aristocracy 1070–1272. A Social Transformation (Yale, 2011), fig. 7.
54 I am grateful to David Crouch for directing me to Roger’s seal, Durham Cathedral Muniments, Medieval Seal G&B, no. 2045 (http://reed.dur.ac.uk/xtf/view?docId=ead/dcd/dcdmseal.xml;query=durham%20school#PRSQ, last visit 19/02/2013).
55 W. H. St John Hope, ‘A Palatinate Seal of John, Earl of Warenne, Surrey and Stratherne, 1305–1347,’ Surrey Archaeological Collections 27 (1914), 123–7; M. Nishimura and D. Nishimura, ‘Rabbits, Warrens, and Warenne: the Patronage of the Gorleston Psalter’, in Tributes to Lucy Freeman Sandler. Studies in Illuminated Manuscripts (London, 2007), eds K. Smith and C. Krinsky, pp. 205–18, at pp. 206–7, 213–4.
56 Dafydd ap Llywelyn, prince of Gwynedd, used a double-sided seal in 1241 that showed a ruler enthroned with upright sword in his right hand on the obverse and on the reverse a mounted knight. In this case the enthroned ruler probably served to emphasise Dafydd’s claim to superiority over the other Welsh lords. It has also been suggested that Dafydd’s uncle King Henry III tolerated and possibly even facilitated the usage of this design to accord Dafydd a rank superior to the English earls, The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120–1283, ed. H. Pryce, (Cardiff, 2005), pp. 88–9; Crouch, Aristocracy, pp. 93–4, 246. In the Empire, Konrad, landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1240), who entered the Teutonic Order in 1234 and became his grandmaster in 1239, used the image of a man sitting on a throne on his large seals 1233–34. This is a unique case among the Imperial princes, M. Werner, ‘Ludowinger’, in Höfe und Residenzen im spätmittelalterlichen Reich. Ein dynastisch-topographisches Handbuch (Residenzenforschung 15.I), (Ostfildern, 2003), eds W. Paravicini, J. Hirschbiegel and J. Wettlaufer, pp. 149–54, at pp. 151/2. This seal came to my attention too late to be fully analysed here.
57 C. Neville, Native Lordships in Medieval Scotland: the earldoms of Strathearn and Lennox, c. 1140–1365 (Dublin, 2005), p. 35.
58 ibid., pp. 2, 17–35.
59 On these seals, see A. Ailes, ‘Powerful impressions: Symbols of office and authority on secular Seals’, in Cherry and Payne (eds), Signs and Symbols, pp. 18–28; J. Cherry, ‘Heads, Arms and Badges: Royal Representation on Seals’, in Good Impressions, eds Adams et al. (2008), pp. 12–16.
60 When taking up his office as bishop of Durham in 1345, John Hatfield introduced a great seal to be used in his capacity as lord palatine. This double-sided seal showed on the obverse the bishop seated on a throne in majesty and on the reverse the bishop as mounted knight. In this case the seated bishop probably takes up the motif of the seal used by Hatfield’s predecessor Richard de Bury in palatine affairs. Richard’s small single-faced seal shows St Cuthbert as bishop on a throne. Hatfield, as a successor to Cuthbert, seems to place himself in this tradition by the design of the obverse of his great seal. It thus refers primarily to his dignity as bishop of Durham. The palatine dignity, by contrast, is referred to by reverse: the bishop as mounted knight. On the seals of the bishops of Durham, see C. H. Hunter Blair, ‘Medieval seals of the bishops of Durham’, Archaeologia 72 (1922), 1–24, at pp. 16/7.
61 TNA, DL 27/324; Ellis, Personal Seals, ii, p. 54, P 1535.
62 Hunter Blair, ‘Armorials’, pl. 11; Ailes, ‘The Knight’s Alter Ego’, p. 11.
63 W. H. St John Hope, ‘The Cap of Maintenance’, in L.G. Wickham Legg, English Coronation Records (Westminster, 1901), pp. lxxxii–lxxxviii, at p. lxxxii.
64 Birch, Catalogue, i, pp. 22/3 no. 161 (second seal), pp. 24–8 nos 183, 186, 210, 224.
65 Ibid. ii, p. 221 no. 5551 (great seal as prince of Aquitaine and of Wales), p. 221/2 no. 5552, p. 222 no. 5554, p. 223 no. 5557; M. Sharp, ‘A Jodrell Deed and the seals of the Black Prince, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 7 (1922), 106−117.
66 TNA, DL 27/159 (1356); Birch, Catalogue, iii, p. 383, no. 12676.
67 Birch, Catalogue, iii, p. 386, no. 12691 (John); p. 388, no. 12700 (Lionel).
68 Ibid., iii, p. 381, no. 12671 (Edmund) [= Ellis, Personal Seals, ii, P 1328]; p. 393, no. 12723 (Thomas).
69 The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England 1275−1504. V. Edward III, 1351−1377, ed. M. Ormrod, (London, 2005), p. 152, nos 36−37; St John Hope, ‘Cap’, pp. lxxxii–lxxxiii.
70 Ellis, Personal Seals, ii, P 2106, pl. 30.
71 Adrian Ailes makes this point in relation to the marshalling of aristocratic coats of arms, ‘Heraldic Marshalling in Medieval England’, in Les combinaisons d’armoiries par les personnes privées. Les brisures de bâtardise, (Canterbury, 1995), pp. 15–29.
72 J. C. Holt, ‘Feudal society and the family in early medieval England. I. The Revolution of 1066’, TRHS 5 ser. 32 (1982), 193–212, at p. 199; S. Waugh, The Lordship of England. Royal wardships and marriages in English society and politics, 1217−1327, (Princeton, 1988), pp. 16–17.
73 It is in this context rather than in the alleged need to distinguish father and sons on a battlefield that the origins of the principle of cadency should be sought. For a different view, see P. A. Fox, ‘The medieval origins of the British system of cadency, The Coat of Arms, 3 ser. 4 (2008), 21–8, at p. 21.
74 C. R. Humphrey Smith, ‘The origins of the English system of cadency’, in Brisures, augmentations et changement d’armoiries (Brussels, 1988), pp. 97–124.
75 Ellis, Personal Seals, ii, P 1530 (Earl Henry), P 1531 (Henry, his son).
76 The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant, ed. G. E. Cokayne et al. (13 vols, London, 1910−1959), vi, p. 469 note i. W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel, (6 vols, London, 1817–1830), vi, p. 135.
77 Birch, Catalogue, ii, p. 520 no. 7547.
78 Ellis, Personal Seals, ii, P 1058.
79 Ibid., ii, P 1066. This remained the design of his seal after he was created earl of Northampton in 1337, ibid. P 1067 (where the three stars are described as three mullets of six points); Birch, Catalogue, ii, p. 522 no. 7557 (three stars). No seal of Humphrey de Bohun, the second eldest surviving son of Humphrey VII de Bohun, exists for the period of his father’s or his brother’s rule in the collections of the British Library or TNA. When he became earl of Hereford and Essex in 1336 he used the traditional Bohun coat of arms, Ellis, Personal Seals, ii, P 1064; Birch, Catalogue, ii, p. 519 nos 7534–7.
80 Birch, Catalogue, ii, p. 380 no. 12665.
81 According to a well-informed chronicle it was Duke Henry who had ordered his two younger sons Ludwig and Stephan to accept Otto’s government, ‘Continuatio Altahensis a. 1273–1290’, ed. P. Jaffé, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores (so far 39 vols., Hanover, 1826−[2009]), xvii, pp. 408–416, at p. 415.
82 Monumenta Wittelsbacensia. Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des Hauses Wittelsbach, ed. Wittmann, , ii, no.. 198, cf. also the household ordinance of 1293, ibid., no. 190.
83 Munich, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Hochstift Regensburg, Urkunden, no. 163 = edited without description of the seals in Monumenta Wittelsbacensia. Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des Hauses Wittelsbach, ed. Wittmann, ii, no. 204.
84 Schnurrer, Urkundenwesen, pp. 36–43.
85 ‘Die Goldene Bulle’, ed. W. D. Fritz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum, (so far 12 vols., Hanover/Weimar 1893–[2013]), xi, pp. 535–633, c. 7.
Notes
1 The seals are mentioned in the midst of a series of entries concerning purchases in London: A. J. Taylor, ‘Count Amadeus of Savoy’s visit to England in 1292’, Archaeologia 106 (1979), 125–6.
2 This paper is based on an ongoing prospographical research project focussed on medieval London. For overview of some of the key sources, see: J. A. McEwan, ‘The aldermen of London, c. 1200–80: Alfred Beaven revisited’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society (2012), 178–81, and below, fn. 6.
3 Sigillographers writing in English have traditionally used the term ‘seal’ to refer to both the matrix (or die) and the impressions of it left in wax: P. D. A. Harvey and A. McGuinness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London, 1996), p. 1. However, the term ‘seal’ is also commonly used to refer the graphic elements manifested in the impression, and for some scholars this facet of the concept is central to their definition: B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Seals and sigillography, Western European’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. J. R. Strayer (New York, 1988), p. 123. To avoid confusion, these three distinct senses of the term have been made clear in this essay. The term ‘seal’ has been reserved for the graphic elements, and the terms ‘seal matrix’ and ‘seal impression’ have been used for those objects; cf. Vocabulaire International de la Sigillographie, ed. R. H. Bautier (Rome, 1990), s.v. ‘sceau’, ‘matrice de sceau’ and ‘empreinte’, pp. 44, 46–7. See also: B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘In search of a semiotic paradigm: the matter of sealing in medieval thought and praxis (1050–1400)’, in Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, eds N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2008), pp. 3–4.
4 T. A. Heslop, ‘Seals as evidence for metalworking in England in the later tweflth century’, in Art and Patronage in the English Romanesque, eds F. H. Thompson and S. Macready (London, 1986), pp. 50–1.
5 M. Pastoureau, Les Sceaux (Turnhout, 1981), p. 34.
6 For a brief introduction to the evidence from London, see: J. A. McEwan, ‘The seals of London’s governing elite in the thirteenth century’, in Thirteenth Century England XIV, eds J. E. Burton et al. (Aberystwyth, 2013), pp. 44–5. At the time of writing, the sigillographic dataset from which the evidence for this paper is drawn contains information regarding more than 2000 seal impressions. They are largely attached to documents relating to landholding in London: D. Keene and V. Harding, A Survey of Documentary Sources for Property Holding in London before the Great Fire (London, 1985). The National Archives is an important source of material. For an introduction to their seal collection, see: C. H. Jenkinson, A Guide to Seals in the Public Record Office (London, 1968); R. H. Ellis, Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office: Personal Seals (London, 1978–81); R. H. Ellis, Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office: Monastic Seals (London, 1986). St Paul’s Cathedral also has an important collection, which is currently available at the London Metropolitan Archives: Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts: Ninth Report (London, 1883–84), pt 1, pp. 1–59. Previously the collection was held at the Guildhall Library, where it had the reference MS 25121. The deeds are now known as LMA CLC/313/L/H/001/MS25121. For the purposes of this article, this will be shorten to LMA MS 25121. The deeds of St Bartholomew’s Hospital are another valuable resource. Many of the deeds were copied into the hospital’s cartulary: Cartulary of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Founded 1123: A Calendar, ed. N .J. M. Kerling (London, 1973). The remainder are accessible through a card index in the search room. When deeds from this repository are cited, the number from Kerling’s calendar of the cartulary will be listed in brackets after the deed number, for example: SBH deed 1(25). Significant numbers of deeds also survive in a number of other repositories, including the British Library, the archives of Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral. There is also some archaeological evidence: B. Spence, ‘Medieval seal-dies recently found at London’, Antiquaries Journal 64 (1984), 376–82.
7 J. A. McEwan, ‘Occupation and identity in Medieval London’, in The Medieval Merchant, eds C. M. Barron and A. Sutton (Donnington, forthcoming).
8 B. Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago: Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2011), pp. 28–9; McEwan, ‘Seals of London’s governing elite’, p. 54.
9 H. S. Kingsford, ‘Some English Medieval seal-engravers’, Archaeological Journal 97 (1940); J. A. Lutkin, ‘Goldsmiths and the English Royal Court, 1360–1413’ (University of London, Ph.D. Thesis, 2008), pp. 200–03; Jenkinson, Guide to Seals in the Public Record Office, p. 10; cf. E. A. New, ‘Representation and identity in medieval London: the evidence of seals’, in London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron, eds M. P. Davies and A. Prescott (Donington, 2008), p. 248.
10 Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani, a Thoma Walsingham, Regnante Ricardo Secundo, Ejusdem Ecclesiæ Præcentore, Compilata, ed. H. T. Riley, 3 vols (London, 1867), vol. 1, p. 83.
11 Heslop, Seals as Evidence for Metalworking, pp. 51–2. He may also have been involved in manuscript illumination: O. Pacht, ‘The full page miniatures’, The St. Albans Psalter (Albani Psalter) (London, 1960), p. 177.
12 C. C. Oman, ‘The goldsmiths at St Albans Abbey during the 12th and 13th centuries’, St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society Transactions (1932), p. 219.
13 F. Stenton, ‘Norman London’, in Social Life in Early England; Historical Association Essays, ed. G. Barraclough (London, 1960), pp. 201–2; P. Nightingale, ‘Some London moneyers and reflections on the organisation of English mints in the 11th and 12th Centuries’, Numismatic Chronicle 142 (1982), pp. 34–50.
14 On the seals in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century London, see: J. A. McEwan, ‘Formation of a Sealing Society: London in the Twelfth Century’, in Medieval Coins and Seals: Constructing Identity, Signifying Power, ed. S. Solway, (Turnhout, forthcoming 2014).
15 T. D. Hardy, Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati, 2 vols (London, 1833–44), vol. 1, pp. 381, 383.
16 In 1206, a Walter de Ripa was contesting William son of Reiner’s claim to some land in Essex. The dispute originated in a family quarrel. William son of Reiner’s father, Reiner son of Berenger, had acquired the land from Roger de Fraxineto, who married Walter de Ripa’s grandmother Ada; Walter claimed the land as heir of Beatrice, the daughter of Ada: Pleas before the King or His Justices, 1198–1202, ed. D. M. Stenton, 4 vols (London, 1952–67), vols 3–4, nos 2469, 3277, 3287; Curia Regis Rolls of the Reigns of Richard I And John, ed. C. T. Flower, 7 vols (London, 1931), vol. 5, pp. 142–3. William was a member of a family that was prominent in civic politics during this period. His father, Reiner, was a sheriff of London in the mid-twelfth century. Two of William’s brothers also held civic offices: Henry was an alderman while Richard was a sheriff: Susan Reynolds, ‘The rulers of London in the 12th Century’, History 57 (1972), p. 355. For an impression of William’s seal, see TNA E42/312. His dispute with Walter was resolved in 1210, when William paid Walter 50 marks. Doris Stenton argues that the way the case progressed indicates that Walter was able to apply to the king himself: Stenton, Pleas before the King or His Justices, 1198–1202, vol. 3, pp. xxv–xxvi. This is significant because the man commissioned to make Henry III’s seal was probably an established and prosperous craftsman who was known in royal circles. By 1218, the Walter de Ripa who claimed land in Essex would have been active for over a decade and had access to the Crown. Moreover, he had the financial means to pursue his case against a member of one of London’s most important and influential families. Thus this Walter de Ripa may also have been the seal-maker.
17 T. A. Heslop, ‘Seals of the City of London’, in Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400, eds J. Alexander and P. Binski (London, 1987), p. 273, cf. p. 115. For the dating of the seal, see: E. A. New, ‘The Common Seal and communal identity in Medieval London’, in Medieval Coins and Seals: Constructing Identity, Signifying Power, ed. S. Solway (Turnhout, forthcoming 2014); D. Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics: London, 1150–1250’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (2008), p. 77.
18 R. K. Lancaster, ‘Artists, suppliers and clerks: the human factors in the art patronage of King Henry III’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972), p. 99.
19 Calendar of the Liberate Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols (London, 1916–64), vol. 4, p. 472.
20 His position in civic society is difficult to establish precisely; nonetheless Lancaster’s contention that William was not a ‘leading citizen’ is difficult to accept: Lancaster, ‘Artists, suppliers and clerks’, p. 93. For civic social structure in this period, see: S. Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), pp.74–80, 137–3; D. Keene, ‘London from the Post-Roman Period to 1300’, in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 1: 600–1540, ed. D. M. Palliser (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 205–07.
21 LMA CLA/023/DW/02, no. 8; McEwan, ‘The Aldermen of London, c. 1200–80’, p. 189; G. A. Williams, Medieval London, from Commune to Capital (London, 1963), p. 67.
22 William died in 1269: Lancaster, ‘Artists, suppliers and clerks’, p. 93; R. Cassidy, ‘The Exchanges, Silver Purchases and Trade in the Reign of Henry III’, British Numismatic Journal 81 (2011), p.108.
23 Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London, ed. H. T. Riley (London, 1863), p. 84.
24 These parishes were north of the cathedral precinct and at the western end of Cheapside, London’s main market street: M. D. Lobel, ‘The City of London, from Prehistoric Times to c. 1520’, The British Atlas of Historic Towns v.3 (Oxford, 1989).
25 LMA MS 25121/207, 292–295. For the property in the parish of St Nicholas Shambles, see: BL Add Ms 10661.
26 Kerling, Cartulary of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, nos 759, 866; W. O. Hassall, Cartulary of St Mary Clerkenwell (London, 1949), no. 350.
27 Oman, ‘The goldsmiths at St Albans Abbey’, p. 231.
28 Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls : Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall: A.D. 1323–1364, ed. A. H. Thomas (Cambridge, 1926), pp. 242–3. He was convicted of the offence and forbidden from practising his trade for six months.
29 Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmith’s Mistery of London, 1334–1446, ed. L. Jefferson (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2003), p. 135.
30 Goldsmiths did make seal matrices from other metals on occasion: Issues of the Exchequer: Being Payments Made out of His Majesty’s Revenue During the Reign of King James I : Extracted from the Original Records Belonging to the Ancient Pell Office, ed. F. Devon (London, 1836), 1836pp. 242 and 246.
31 Spence, ‘Medieval Seal-Dies Recently Found at London’, p. 377. Based on the archaeological record, it is difficult to determine how common were seals of precious metal, partly because they were more likely to be recycled. In 1321–22, for example, among the silver items delivered by the keeper of the exchange of London for melting and minting into coins was a broken seal: Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, p. 135. Thus seals of precious metal are probably under-represented among the finds. On the purchase of silver by the Crown for minting, see Cassidy, ‘The Exchanges, Silver Purchases and Trade in the Reign of Henry III’.
32 Studies in London History E. M. Veale, ‘Craftsmen and the Economy of London in the Fourteenth Century’, in eds A. E. J. Hollaender and W. Kellaway (London, 1969), p. 147.
33 For a fifteenth-century case of a coppersmith making a seal: C. Blair, ‘An early fifteenth-century London latoner’, Monumental Brass Society Bulletin 38 (1985), p. 129.
34 For the purposes of this essay, men who specialised in seal-making will be called ‘sealers’.
35 The London Eyre of 1276, ed. M. Weinbaum (London, 1976), no. 33. A terminological ambiguity makes it difficult to establish precisely when sealers first appear in London. The byname ‘seller’ or ‘sellarius’ commonly meant saddler, but ‘seller’ was also occasionally used to identify sealers. For example, Adam le Seller was also called selgraver and R. Newcomen, is alternatively called seler and sigillarius: Two Early London Subsidy Rolls, ed. E. Ekwall (Lund, 1951), p. 357. Thus, when a person is described as a ‘seller’ in the records, the assumption must be that he was a saddle-maker, but it is possible that in some cases it may mean seal-maker.
36 SBH deed 756 (173).
37 LMA MS 25121/4.
38 The assessments were conducted by wards, and the 1319 assessment is complete, whereas a few wards are missing for 1292: Ekwall, Two Early London Subsidy Rolls, pp. 3, 6.
39 D. Keene, ‘Metalworking in Medieval London: an historical survey’, Historical Metallurgy 30 (1996), p. 96.
40 See below, p. 81.
41 Henry de Keles [A] needs to be distinguished from Henry de Keles [B]: see below. Sharp suggests that the name ‘Keles’ may mean ‘Calais’: Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, A.D. 1258–A.D. 1688, ed. R. R. Sharpe, 2 vols (London, 1889), vol. 1, p. 275; cf. A. C. H. Menche de Loisne, Dictionnaire Topographique Du Département Du Pas-De-Calais Comprenant Les Noms De Lieu Anciens Et Modernes (Paris, 1907), p. 79.
42 LMA MS 25121/4; R. Macleod, ‘The topography of St Paul’s precint, 1200–1500’, London Topographical Record, 26 (1990), pp. 11–12.
43 LMA MS 25121/1495. For two additional references to Henry de Keles, see: Calendar of Letter-Books Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London and the Guildhall, ed. Reginald R. Sharpe, 11 vols. (London, 1899– 1912): LBA, pp. 15–16; LMA MS 25121/1500.
44 Indeed, one of Henry’s neighbours was William of Gloucester, who also held land in the same parish, as already mentioned.
45 In the mid-fourteenth century a parchment maker occupied a room in the bell-tower itself: Macleod, ‘The topography of St Paul’s precint, 1200–1500’, p. 12.
46 LMA MS 25121/1496.
47 See below, fn. 80.
48 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: LBB, p. 33.
49 LMA MS 25121/1013; Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: LBB, p. 93.
50 T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England; the Wardrobe, the Chamber, and the Small Seals, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1920–33), vol. 5, p. 132, fn. 3.
51 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: LBB, p. 200
52 Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England, vol.5, p. 132, fn. 4–5.
53 Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, vol. 1, p. 275.
54 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: LBA: pp. 15–16.
55 TNA E 101/13/39, m.7.
56 TNA E326/2008; Kerling, Cartulary of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, nos 409-11; M. T. Martin, The Percy Chartulary (Durham, 1911), nos 1341, 1345; see also LMA MS 25121/1426.
57 Another indication of his social standing is that he acted as an executor for Gregory le Bokeler, a fellow Londoner: Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: CLB, p. 161.
58 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: CLB, p. 237.
59 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: CLB, p. 246.
60 John then fled outside the city with two companions who also practised his craft. They spent the night outdoors, but John was killed by watchmen who mistook them for robbers: Calendar of Coroners Rolls of the City of London, A.D. 1300–1378, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1913), pp. 27–8.
61 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: LBC, p. 10.
62 Ekwall, Two Early London Subsidy Rolls, p. 305.
63 ibid., p. 316.
64 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: LBD, 248. For a history of the property, see: ‘St Mary Colechurch 105/9’, Historical gazetteer of London before the Great Fire: Cheapside; parishes of All Hallows Honey Lane, St Martin Pomary, St Mary le Bow, St Mary Colechurch and St Pancras Soper Lane (1987), pp. 444–7.
65 The will is dated April 1330 and was proved in the Husting in May 1330: British Library, Harley Charter, 54 A 46; Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, vol.1, p. 358. Note that the content of the will is not fully reported in the copy enrolled in the Husting.
66 Ekwall, Two Early London Subsidy Rolls, p. 316. He was assessed at ½ mark in tax, which places him in the top quartile of the city’s taxpayers.
67 This is the same parish where William de Gloucester and Henry de Keles [A] had earlier been active.
68 Sharpe, Calendar of Letter-Books: LBE, p. 166.
69 BL, Harley Ch. 54 A 46.
70 Kerling, Cartulary of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, nos 233, 446, 447; Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward II, 5 vols (1894–1904), vol. 5, pp. 117, 153.
71 Kerling, Cartulary of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, no. 446; Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Edward II: vol. 4, p. 396.
72 LMA MS 25121/42; British Library, Harley Charter, 54 A 46. Both Thomas Rys and Thomas Warener were resident of Farringdon Within ward: Ekwall, Two Early London Subsidy Rolls, p. 315.
73 Robert provided 20 shillings for both Johanna and Isolde, and forgave Eleanor a debt of two marks: BL, Harley Charter, 54 A 46.
74 Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, vol. 1, p. 358.
75 Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Edward II: vol. 4, p. 396.
76 Kerling, Cartulary of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, nos 233, 446, 447; Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Edward II, vol. 5, pp. 117, 153; BL, Harley Charter, 54 A 46.
77 BL, Harley Charter, 54 A 46.
78 Margaret Curtis, ‘The London lay subsidy of 1332’, in Finance and Trade under Edward III, ed. G. Unwin (London, 1918), p. 86.
79 LMA MS 25121/4, 1495.
80 LMA MS 25121/4. By contrast, the seal Alice used after Henry’s death, which has already been mentioned, is a pointed oval 36 × 21 mm: LMA MS 25121/1496 (Fig. 5.1). The seal is slightly larger than her first seal and presents a radial pattern, but the execution of the design is less sophisticated: the thick strokes fill the available space and there is little embellishment. The shift in the character of the engraving suggests that it is not Henry’s work.
81 LMA MS 25121/42. For a discussion of radial motifs in this period, see E. New, ‘(Un) conventional Images. A case-study of radial motifs on personal seals’ in this volume pp. 151–60.
82 T. A. Heslop, ‘Peasant seals’, in Medieval England 1000–1485, ed. E. King (Oxford, 1998), 214–15; Harvey and McGuinness, Guide to British Medieval Seals, pp. 88–93.
83 Kerling, Cartulary of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, no. 734.
84 LMA MS 25121/1561–1563; Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, vol. 1, pp. 29–30. These parishes were south-east of the Cathedral.
85 LMA MS 25121/1561, 1563.
86 LMA MS 25121/1562.
87 LMA MS 25121/404, 1561; McEwan, ‘The Aldermen of London, c. 1200–80’.
88 LMA MS 25121/140, 205, 404.
89 McEwan, ‘Occupation and identity in Medieval London’ (forthcoming). It has been suggested that by the mid-fourteenth century some goldsmiths may have been using a related but simpler motif to identify their occupation: New, ‘Representation and Identity’, p. 255.
90 Veale, Craftsmen and the economy of London, p. 141.
91 M. Campbell, ‘Gold, silver and precious stones’, in, English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products, eds J. Blair and N. Ramsay (London, 1991), pp. 119–20; R. A. Linenthal and W.Noel, Medieval Seal Matrices in the Schøyen Collection (Oslo, 2004), nos 402–03, pl. 24.
92 Pastoureau, Les Sceaux, p. 34.
Notes
* This essay has benefitted from Professor Schofield’s thorough and insightful editorial work, which it gives me pleasure to acknowledge with gratitude.
1 Cancelleria e cultura nel medio evo, ed. G. Gualdo (Rome 1990); Landesherrliche Kanzleien im Spätmittelalter. Referate zum VI. Internationalen Kongreß für Diplomatik, ed. G. Silagi (Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissanceforschung 35, Munich, 1983); Ecrit et pouvoir dans les chancelleries médiévales: espace français, espace anglais, ed. K. Fianu and G. DeLloyd (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997); R. H. Bautier, ‘Chancellerie et culture au Moyen Age,’ in Cancelleria e cultura, pp. 1–76, reprinted in his Chartes, sceaux, et chancelleries, 2 vols (Paris, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 47–121; R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, 2 vols (Oxford, 1995–2001); E. Marmursztejn, L’autorité des maîtres. Scolastique, normes, et société au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 2007); Suppliques et requêtes. Le gouvernement par la grâce de Dieu en Occident, XIIe –XVe siècle, ed. H. Millet (Rome, 2003); B. Guenée, ‘Chancelleries et monastères,’ in Les lieux de la mémoire, Vol. 2: La nation, ed. P. Nora (Paris, 1986), pp. 5–30. E. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957), pp. 87–97; M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1993); E. E. Kittell, From ad Hoc to Routine. A Case study in Medieval Bureaucracy (Philadelphia, 1991); B. Grévin, Rhétorique du pouvoir médiéval. Les lettres de Pierre La Vigne et la formation du langage politique européen (Rome, 2008).
2 This paper is part of a work in progress in which I propose to analyse the changing perceptions and operations of seals in the central Middle Ages by considering their materiality, technicity, and discursive treatments.
3 Analyses of the treatment of seals in legal texts can be found in M. Welber, I sigilli nella storia del diritto medievale italiano (Milan, 1984: Sigillograhia. Il sigillo nella diplomatica, nel diritto, nella storia, nell’arte 3), and B. M. Bedos-Rezak, ‘The Efficacy of Signs and the Matter of Authenticity in Canon Law,’ Zwischen Pragmatik und Performanz. Dimensionen mittelalter Shcrifkultur, ed. C. Dartmann, T. Scharff, and C. Weber (Turnhout, 2011: Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 18), pp. 199–236.
4 M. Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe 1000–1800 (Washington D.C., 1995: Studies in Medieval And Early Modern Canon Law 4), p. 48.
5 On Gratian’s Decretum, see most recently A. Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge, 2000). The most extensive discussion of the treatment of documents, and of documentary credibility in the Decretum, is by Welber, I sigilli, pp. 97–107, 165–7. The term annulus appears in the Decretum’s passage devoted to matrimonial issues (see C. XXX, q. 5, c.3). This only mention of a seal (annulus) in connection with writing is found in the transcription of a littera formata sent in 1012 by Bishop Burchard of Worms to Walter, bishop of Spire (D.LXXII, c.1), whereby Burchard requests that Herman, who had been consecrated a priest by Burchard, be received by Walter in that quality. In the body of the letter, Burchard explains the purpose of the letter: statutum est a sanctis Patribus, neminem clericum alienum et ignotum recipi ab aliquo episcopo, et inthronizari in sua ecclesia, nisi habeat a proprio episcopo epistolam, que in canonibus nominatur Formata. Ideo notum facimus fraternitati uestrae, quod presens frater noster, harum litterarum portitor, nomine Hermannus … Hanc ergo epistolam grecis litteris hinc inde munire decreuimus, et annulo nostrae ecclesiae firmare censuimus. Fraternitatem uestram Christus nobis incolumem conseruet. PI. GAMMA. ALPHA. PI. BETA. ETA. ZETA. AMEN. Data Vormaciae Idibus Marcii, anno Dominicae incarnationis MXII. Indictione X. Despite the impression of a seal on Bouchard’s letter, Gratian made no comment on the role of the seal and invests only the Greek letters with the ability to secure the genuineness and credibility of a littera formata. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Efficacy of Signs,’ pp. 204–05.
6 C.XXV, Q.II, c.16: Rescriptum meretur effectum, quod cum iuris et legum ratione concordat. Item Pelagius Papa Iohanni Comiti. Dicenti, sacras iussiones se habere pre manibus, respondimus scire illum oportere, quod ipse clementissimus princeps generalibus legibus constituerit, illa sacra uniuscuiusque supplicantis desiderio concessa preualere et effectui mancipari, que cum iuris et legum ratione concordant; ea uero, que subreptione uel falsis precibus forsitan inpetrantur, nullum remedium supplicantibus ferre. Gratianus: Rescripta, siue sint adnotationes siue pragmaticae sanctiones, expressam debent habere in se condicionem: Si preces ueritate nituntur. Mendax enim precator debet carere inpetratis, et quibus scripta diriguntur sunt puniendi, si precum mendacia uetuerint argui. … Welber, I sigillo, pp. 98–9; Bedos-Rezak, ‘Efficacy of Signs,’ pp. 206–07 and passim for an interpretative survey of the historiography and of Gratian’s texts.
7 Codicis titulo de diuersis rescriptis Inpp. Diocletianus et Maximianus: §. 6. Sanccimus, ut autentica ipsa atque originalia rescripta, etiam ex nostra manu subscripta, non exempla eorum insinuentur. Such is the context in which the distinction between authentic and original, and copy was introduced in canon law. For a broader review of the question, see J. De Ghellinck, ‘”Originale” et “Originalia”’, Bulletin Du Cange 14 (1939), 95–105. F Millar, ‘Emperors at Work,’ Journal of Roman Studies 57 (1967), 9–19, at p. 13 discusses the passage of the Codex (sanccimus) cited by Gratian; Bedos-Rezak, ‘Efficacy of Signs,’ 209.
8 Dubitavimus hic sigillum plumbeum ponere, ne, si illud inimici caperent, de eo falsitatem aliquam facerent (letter of 1082 to Robert Guiscard), Monumenta Gregoriana, ed. Jaffé (Berlin, 1865: Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum 2), p. 492; or: Plumbeo sigillo idcirco signari litteras istas noluimus, ne, si forte caperentur ab impiis, eodem sigillo possit falsitatis quippiam fieri (letter to Robert le Frison, count of Flanders, c. 1082), Monumenta Gregoriana, p. 568 and Epistolae vagantes, ed. and transl. H. E. J. Cowdrey (Oxford 1972), no. 45. The chronicler Hugh of Flavigny related an actual episode during which a papal bull was stolen by King Henry: Rex vero hoste adventante, fugae praesidium requirens, sigillum domini papae, quem furto subripuerat, secum tulit; et Portuensem, quia olim familiaris papae fuerat, sibi conciliatum secum duxit. … Quamobrem veritas Mathildis, ne simplices quique astutia regis specie sigilli deciperentur, praevenit malitiam illius, mittens litteras fidelibus in hec verba: Mathildis Dei gratia si quid est, omnibus in Theuthonicorum regno commorantibus, salutem.
Notum vobis facimus, quod Heinricus falsus rex furto subripuit sygillum domni papae Gregorii. Unde si quid audieritis quod discordet a nostra legatione, falsum arbitramini, neque mendaciis eius adquiescatis. Preterea episcopum Portuensem secum ducit; quoniam olim fuit familiaris domini papae. Si igitur aliquid vobiscum vel contra vos per eum vult operari, eum falsum testem nolite dubitare. Nulli umquam credatis, qui aliter quam nos dicere audebit. Sciatis domnum papam iam recuperasse Sutrium atque Nepe. Barrabas latro, id est Heinrici papa, ipse quoque aufugit. Valete, et de insidiis Heinrici cauti estote. Hugo abbas Flaviniacensis, Chronicon, ed. G. H. Pertz (Hanover, 1848: Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores 8), p. 463.
9 In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the preferred term to designate the operation of sealing in the final clauses of charters was impressio, or imago impressa. During the entire initial century of their diffusion, seals were announced in the textual clauses of validation as impressions: illi presenti privilegio firmari precepimus, quod subscriptione ac sigilli nostri impressione roboravi curavimus, charter of Barthélémy de Joux, bishop of Laon, 1121, A. Dufour-Malbezin, Actes des évêques de Laon des origines à 1151 (Paris, 2001), no. 92, p. 170. By the thirteenth century the diplomatic discourse of validation tended to include a generic formula which asserted that the seal was appended as an attestation. Compare this formula from the second half of the twelfth century: Ut autem libertas eorum et consuetudines firmiter teneantur, ego Simon comes Ebroicensis, presentibus filiis meis Amaurico et Simone et concedentibus, cartam meam eis [burgensibus Montecalvulo] dedi et sigilli mei impressione confirmavi (A. Rhein, La seigneurie de Monfort en Yveline [Versailles, 1910: Mémoires de la société archéologique de Rambouillet XXI], no. v, p. 302), to the expression found almost systematically in charters from the mid-thirteenth century onward: In cujus rei testimonium litteras sigilli nostri munimine fecimus roboravi (charter of John, count of Montfort, for the nunnery of Saint-Antoine of Paris, 1248, Rhein, La seigneurie de Monfort en Yveline, no. liv, p. 336). Validating formulae in charters and their implications for the perception of seal agency are analysed in Bedos-Rezak, ‘Replica: Images of Identity and the Identity of Images,’ in The Mind’s Eye. Art and Theological Argument in the Medieval West, eds J. Hamburger and A.-M. Bouché (Princeton, 2006), pp. 46–64, at pp. 51–4, and Bedos-Rezak, ‘In search of a semiotic paradigm. The matter of sealing in medieval thought and praxis (1050–1400), in Good Impressions. Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, eds N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2008; British Museum, Occasional Paper series), pp. 1–7.
10 Bedos-Rezak, ‘Efficacy of signs,’ pp. 211–12, with specific examples and relevant bibliography. The role of kisses in medieval contracts is analysed by Y. Carré, Le baiser sur la bouche au Moyen Age: rites, symboles, mentalités, à travers les textes et les images, XIe–XVe siècles (Paris, 1992), pp. 157–60. On the inscription of crosses on documents, see the survey by M. Parisse, ‘Croix autographes de souscription dans l’Ouest de la France au XIe siècle,’ in Graphische Symbole in mittelalterliche Urkunden, pp. 143–54; B. Fraenkel, La signature. Genèse d’un signe (Paris, 1992), pp. 63–5, 176–7 (Fr. signer and se signer, a parallelism not rendered in English: ‘to sign’ and ‘to cross oneself’); B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Cutting Edge. The economy of mediality in twelfth-century chirographic writing,’ in Modelle des Medialen im Mittelalter, ed. C. Kiening and M. Stercken, special issue of Das Mittelalter 15 (2010), pp. 134–61.
11 The most recent discussion of bodily marks on seals is Bedos-Rezak, ‘In search of a semiotic paradigm,’ with bibliography of earlier studies and excerpts from Thomas of Elmham’s (d. 1420) chronicle of the monastery of St Augustine of Canterbury and from the 1444 cartulary of the Cluniac Priory of St Pancras of Lewes, which both contain descriptions of post-conquest charters sealed with wax imprinted with signs of the cross, bits of hair, or teeth-bites.
12 B. Bedos-Rezak, When Ego was Imago. Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2010), analyses a substantial corpus of seal metaphors, of which one is given here (discussed in When Ego at pp. 149, 189): Gerhoh of Reichersberg (d. 1169), Commentarius aureus in Psalmos, xxx, commenting on the verse ‘illustra faciem tuam super servum tuum’: Hanc faciem tuam illustra super me servum tuum, et super alium quemlibet servum tuum. Tu es quasi aurea substantia, et filius tuus cum sit splendor gloriae et figura substantiae tuae, tanquam regalis aut pontificalis imago in auro purissimo exhibet se ipsum pro incorruptibili sigillo cuilibet servo suo sibi conformando se imprimens. Tuque, Pater, hoc ipsum sigillationis opus per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso perficis in servis tuis eidem filio configurandis, Patrologia Latina, 193, col.1306D–1307A.
13 My translation. Peter the Chanter, Verbum, Ms Sainte-Geneviève, fol. 58v, cited in J. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants. The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, 2 vols (Princeton, 1970), vol. 1, p. 183. Item episcopus justiciam suam venditare videtur vendendo imaginem suam per notarios qui vendunt scripturam calami et ganipulli, sigillum, pergamentum, ceram et huiusmodi. Hanc autem exactionem concedit eis episcopus nomine laboris et stipendii. Que omnia videntur facere simoniam vel notam symonie. Quid enim refert an vivam vocem, an scriptum quo loqui dicitur vendat episcopus?
14 D. Pingree, ‘The diffusion of Arabic magical texts in Western Europe,’ in La diffusione delle scienze islamiche nel Medio Evo europeo, ed. B. Scarcia Amoretti. Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Roma, 2–4 October 1984; Rome 1987), pp. 57–102; N. Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’ au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance (Paris, 2002), pp. 93–5.
15 The fundamental study of astral seals to date is by Weill-Parot, Les ‘images astrologiques’, which he complemented with several articles: ‘Causalité astrale et “science des images” au Moyen Age: Éléments de réflexion /Astral causality and the “science of images” during the Middle Ages: some lines of thought,’ Revue d’histoire des sciences, 52/2(1999), pp. 207–40; ‘Astral magic and intellectual changes (twelfth– fifteenth centuries): “Astrological Images” and the concept of “Addressative” magic,’ in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, eds J. N. Bremmer and J. R. Veenstra (eds), (Louvain, 2002), pp. 167–87; ‘Astrology, astral influences, and occult properties in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, Traditio 65 (2010), pp. 201–30.
16 Monographs devoted to William of Auvergne do not abound, while most of his opus is available in seventeenth-century editions: N. Valois, Guillaume d’Auvergne, évêque de Paris (1228–1249 (Paris, 1880); Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne (†1249), ed. F. Morenzoni and J.-Y. Tilliette (Turnhout, 2005, Bibliothèque d’histoire culturelle du moyen âge, 2); R. J. Teske, Studies in the Philosophy of William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris (1228–1249) (Milwaukee, WI, 2006); a short but up-to-date survey of William’s life and works is by R. J. Teske, Universe of Creatures (Milwaukee, WI, 1998), pp. 13–17. The seal of Bishop William is still extant, bearing the traditional effigy of a bishop in vestments, L. Douët d’Arcq, Collections de sceaux, 3 vols (Paris, 1863–1868), vol. 2, no. 6788, p. 534.
17 William knew the Liber Almandal, the De Quatuor Annulis (which William cited as the Idea Salomonis), the Liber sacratus, and the Opus novem candariarum, L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, v.2 (New York, 1923), pp. 280–3; B. Grévin and J. Véronèse, ‘Les “caractères” magiques au Moyen Âge (XIIe–XIVe siècle)’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 162 (2004), 305–79, at pp. 323, 326–7, 334.
18 B. Delaurenti, La puissance des mots. “Virtus Verborum.” Débats doctrinaux sur le pouvoir des incantations au Moyen Age (Paris, 2008), p. 108: the notion of a nigromancia secundum physicam had been introduced c. 1160 by Dominic Gundissalinus.
19 Both De Legibus and De Universo have been consulted in Guilielmi Alverni Opera Omnia Tomis Duobus Contenta, Tomus Primus (Paris-Orléans, 1674).
20 William of Auvergne’s attitudes toward natural magic have recently received a fair amount of attention: N. Weill-Parot, Images astrologiques, pp. 176–7; Delaurenti, La puissance des mots, p. 108–11, 202–30; J.-P. Boudet, Entre science et nigromance. Astrologie, divination et magie dans l’Occident médiéval, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris, 2006), pp. 128, 216–17.
21 See, for instance, De Legibus, chap. 27, p. 87, where William describes the various virtues attributed to sapphire as being natural and celestial, and decribes those who believe that, through consecrations, statues could like stones, acquire divine power, and become operative.
22 De Legibus, chapter 20, p. 55: Jam alibi didicisti, quia corporales virtutes non agunt, nisi per contactum agentis et patientis, aut medii, quod necesse est, ut si contingens ad utrumque, et deferens passionem ab latero in alterum; De Universo, I, 1, 46 : …imagines magicae non operantur per intelligentiam aut voluntatem cum neutrum habeant; sed neque per virtutem corporalem ad modum naturae; operationes enim corporales per modum naturae per contactum sunt aut mediatum, aut immediatum, quod est dicere, quia corpus virtute sua corporali non agit, nisi vel in corpus, quod contingit, vel in aliud contingens illud. S. P. Marrone, ‘Magic and the physical world in thirteenth-century scholasticism’, Early Science and Medicine 14/1–3 (2009), pp. 158–85. One other context in which William discussed natural operations involved the relationship of the soul to the body, De Laurenti, Puissance des mots, pp. 126–9; Teske, ‘William of Auvergne’s spiritualist concept of the human being,’ in Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne, pp. 35–53.
23 De Universo, I, 1, 21, p. 616; trans. Teske, Universe of Creatures, p. 77. This passage deserves additional analysis and will be further addressed in my larger study of thirteenth-century perceptions of seals; see above at n. 2.
24 William’s dependency upon similes and metaphors derived from his daily life and environment has been noted, Valois, Guillaume d’Auvergne, p. 216; J. Le Goff, ‘An urban metaphor of William of Auvergne’, in The Medieval Imagination (Chicago, 1992), pp. 177–80, 267–8.
25 De Legibus, cap. 27, p. 87; see above at note 21.
26 My translation. De Legibus, cap. 27, p. 87: Si enim formae cerae, quae utique similitudinem habent agnorum, hanc virtutem accipiunt per benedictionem Romani Pontificis, ut fulgura arceant. … Sicut ergo regale sigillum, seu aliud quodcunque signum ducatus tuetur deferentes, et securos efficit, ne eis noceatur ab his qui regi subsunt, et hoc non sua virtute, sed potestate regia et voluntate; similiter hujusmodi res vel signa non ex virtute aliqua, quae ex eis sit, sed omnipotentis virtute et beneplacito creatoris … Weill-Parot, Images astrologiques, pp. 201–04, where the author gives an analysis of William’s use of the royal seal image throughout his writings.
27 P. D. A. Harvey and A. McGuiness mention the case of a seal placed upon the tower of an abbey to ward off lightning, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London, 1996), p. 2.
28 Augustine himself had, in De Doctrina Christiana, II, 20 (30) implied that his concept of signa naturalia would legitimate the efficacy of amulets; text cited in French translation in Delaurenti, La puissance des mots, p. 214.
29 The will and intention of illegitimate individuals result only in execrable incantations, which fail to endow images with any efficacy. William’s argument is weak, resting upon an arbitrary definition of authorised and non-authorised powers.
30 De Legibus, cap. 27, p. 87: operatio intellectivae virtutis nec in corpora est, nec per corpus, sicut alibi didicisti … manifestum est tibi, quia nec metallum, nec aes, nec lignum, nec lutum receptibile est intellectus, aut scientiae ullo modorum…. Although these considerations immediately follow William’s discussion of the royal seal, they concern sculpted statues and do not include wax among the materials incapable of animation. However, later in the same chapter, William includes wax and imprints to denounce the stupidity of those who think that such images could have the divine capacity of working wonders, either because of their iconography or by means of their material, ibid., p. 88.
31 De Legibus, cap. 27, p. 88.
32 De Doctrina Christiana, Book II, chaps 1–3; later in Book II, at chap. 24, Augustine condemns astrologers and the arts of divination, using the theory of signs he had elaborated in chapters 1–3. He insists that astrology and divination are the work of the Devil, with whom human beings communicate by language. However, Augustine states, Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL), http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/doctrine.xxv_1.html: ‘the same figure of the letter X, which is made in the shape of a cross, means one thing among the Greeks and another among the Latins, not by nature, but by agreement and prearrangement as to its signification; … men did not agree upon them as signs because they were already significant, but on the contrary they are now significant because men have agreed upon them; in the same way also, those signs by which the ruinous intercourse with devils is maintained have meaning just in proportion to each man’s observations’. According to Augustine, signs have no intrinsic significance; interactions with demons result only from an agreement with them, which could be avoided by avoiding communicating with them. Robert A. Markus, ‘Augustine on Magic: A neglected semiotic theory,’ Revue des Études Augustiniennes, 40 (1994), 375–88, reprinted in Markus, Signs and Meaning. World and Text in Ancient Christianity (1996), c. 5; F. Graf, ‘Augustine and Magic,’ in The Metamorphosis of Magic, pp. 87–103.
33 My translation. William of Auvergne, De legibus, cap. 27, p. 89: Exempla operationum, que per signa videntur fieri, manifesta sunt in regibus, et subditis eorum, inter quos discurrunt litere regie cum impressione anuli, vel imaginis sue, quibus credunt et obediunt subditi, velut ex pacto obedientie, qua regibus suis tenentur, et ipsi reges, velut ex pacto quo tenentur veritati, et justitie debent absque falsitate per hujusmodi signa suam exprimere voluntatem … Similia signa currunt inter amicos, similiter inter personas publicas, et universas, et hujusmodi signis se consueverunt obligare homines invicem : … Fiunt signa pactorum, et quorumlibet contractuum, que vulgariter dicitur chirographia…; Grévin et Véronèse, ‘Les “caractères magiques” au Moyen Age’, pp. 305–79, at p. 359.
34 William’s discussion of sacraments and magical signs is magisterially analysed by Irene Rosier-Catach, ‘Signes sacramentels et signes magiques: Guillaume d’Auvergne et la théorie du pacte’, in Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne, pp. 93–116.
35 William of Auvergne, De Universo, I, i, cap. 46; Weill-Parot, Image astrologiques, p. 203. Siquidem quia tam virtuosarum imaginum imagines sunt, tunc imago regis alicujus ex necessitate posset in toto regno ipsius et obedient ei in regno illo quicquid obedit regi, et ad hunc modum de unoquoque principe et duce contra quod non oportet aliquem disputare
36 My translation, William of Auvergne, De Universo, I, i, cap. 46, p. 662: Sub quantacunque enim veneratione regis fiat ejus imago, non propter hoc obedient ei totum regnum illius. … Similiter quantuncumque bene, prospere et foeliciter se habente rege facta fuerit imago ejus, non propter hoc aliquid potentiae vel virtutis acquiretur imagini illi.
37 In his condemnation of imprinted images, William went so far as to reject bodily stigmata, at a time when Francis was experiencing this form of encounter with the supernatural, De Legibus, cap. 27, p. 89–90.
38 Bedos-Rezak, ‘Efficacy of signs,’ pp. 216–33
39 Tota credulitas litere [dimissorie] dependet in sigillo authentico, bene cognito et famoso … Et ecce persone sunt, ut episcopi et eorum pares vel superiores, quorum sigilla in foro contentioso autentica reputantur. Que autem sigilla –episcopis et eorum paribus et superioribus exceptis– in foro contentioso secundum jus scriptum seu consuetudinem terre approbatam autentica reputantur vel debeant reputari, non expedit explicare in presentis operis parvitate, qui glossatores juris canonici et civilis in hoc casu dissimilia dicere videntur et diversa, K. von Mure, Summa de arte prosandi, ed. L. Rockinger, Briefsteller und Formelbücher des eilften bis vierzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols (New York, 1961: Burt Franklin research and source works 10), vol. 1, pp. 459, 475.
40 In a section labeled quod litera et sigillum debent se conformare.
41 Horace, Ars Poetica: velut aegri somnia, vanae fingentur species, ut nec pes nec caput uni reddatur formae, ‘like the dreams of a sick person, senseless images are fashioned in such a way that neither head nor foot can be formed into a single shape’.
42 My translation. K. von Mure, Summa de arte prosandi, ed. L. Rockinger, vol. 1, p. 474. Quomodo requiretur de perfectione seu de modo perfectionis literarum. Sicut enim hominem duo perficiunt : corpus et anima, sic et literarum duo perficiunt : virtus verborum que se habet ad modum anime, et sigillum quod se habet ad modum corporis. Unde expedit, ut verba salutationis et epistole sigillo se conforment. … Unde caveri debet, ne in salutatione titulus mittentis discrepet a sigillo, id est ab ymagine et a literis quas habet circumferentia sigilli. Si enim aliquis in salutatione se ipsum appellaret episcopum vel abbatem, et sigillum sub imagine militis armati vel sub ymagine leonis eundem appellared comitem, or e contrario, hoc esset absonum penitus et absurdum. Unde philosophus : ‘sic nec pes nec caput uni reddantur forme’ … [Famosi principes] semper enim sua sigilla propter ardua negocia expedienda a latere suo sub magna custodia et fidei debent habere. Et nulle litere nisi valde simplices debent domini sigillo communiri nisi de scitu principis speciali, et post legittimam literarum examinationem factam a prothonotario seu cancellario vel aliis qui ad hujusmodi officium sunt per principem deputati.
43 My translation. ibid., p. 476. Item sicut tignum dimittentem format tigillum, sic signum format sigillum. Et signum est quod se offert sensui et aliud reliquit intellectui, sicut circulus dependens ante tabernam signat vinum esse venalem in taberna.
44 I. Rosier-Catache, La parole efficace (Paris, 2004), pp. 28, 43, 57, 64, 65, 72–3, 81; ed. J. Hackett, Roger Bacon and the Sciences. Commemorative Essays (Chicago, 1997).
45 P. D. A. Harvey, ‘Personal Seals in Thirteenth-Century England’, in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to John Taylor, eds I. Wood and G. A. Loud (London, 1991), pp. 117– 27; A. F. McGuinness, ‘Non-Armigerous Seals and Seal-Usage in Thirteenth-Century England’, Thirteenth Century England, vol. 5 (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 165–77; Harvey and McGuinness, Guide to British Medieval Seals, pp. 79–93.
46 R.-H. Bautier, ‘L’authentification des actes privés dans la France médiévale: notariat public et juridiction gracieuse,’ Notariado púpblico y documento privado, de los origines al siglo XIV (Valencia, 1989), t. II, pp. 701–72; Bautier, ‘Origine et diffusion du sceau de juridiction’, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Comptesrendus des séances, 1971, pp. 304–21; both essays have been reprinted in Bautier, Chartes, sceaux, et chancelleries, vol. 1, pp. 269–340 and 341–58.
47 S. Perkinson, The Likeness of the King. A Prehistory of Portraiture in late Medieval France (Chicago, 2009); G. Brunel, Images du pouvoir royal. Les chartes décorées des Archives nationales, XIIIe–XVe siècles (Paris, 2005). Bedos-Rezak, ‘Image as Patron. Convention and Invention in Fourteenth-century France’, in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages, eds P. Binski and E. A. New), Harlaxton Medieval Studies, XXII (Donington, 2012.), pp. 216–36.
Notes
1 I am most grateful to Professor Brian Kemp and Dr Nicholas Karn for reading a draft of this paper and making many useful suggestions, and to Dr Richard Mortimer and Matthew Payne, Keepers of the Muniments at Westminster Abbey, for their kind assistance with regard to Richard’s Exchequer seal.
2 History of William Marshal, ed. A. J. Holden, trans. S. Gregory, notes by D. Crouch, 3 vols (London, 2002), ll. 8247–49; seal in use since at least c. 1174: F. Eygun, Sigillographie du Poitou (Poitiers, 1938), p. 54 and no. 6; R. J. Smith, ‘Henry II’s Heir: the Acta and Seal of Henry the Young King, 1170–83’, English Historical Review 116 (2001), 297–326 at p. 307.
3 For John’s privy seal: The National Archives [hereafter TNA] C 109/86/4, DL 10/33; W. de G. Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London, 1887–1900), no. 6323; A. Ailes, ‘The Seal of John, Lord of Ireland and Count of Mortain’, Coat of Arms, new series 4 (1981), 341–50; and T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber and the Small Seals, vol. 1 (Manchester, 1920), pp. 153–7. For the signet of Henry the Young King see ‘The Metrical Chronicle of Jordan Fantosme’ in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols (Rolls Series, 1884–89), vol. 3, pp. 202–377, at 224, line 246). For Henry II’s signet see ‘De Vita Galfridi Archiepiscopi Ebor’ in Gerald of Wales, Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. F. Dimock, and G. F. Warner, 8 vols (Rolls Series, 1861–91), vol. 4, p. 371; passage quoted in full and discussed in H. Stanford London, Royal Beasts (East Knoyle, 1956), p. 9 n. 3. For the panther see J.-M. Pastre, ‘Histoire, Héraldique et Litterature: Le Léopard au Cimier dans le Reinhart Fuchs’ in Actes du Colloque du Centre d’Études Mèdièvales de l’Université de Picardie (Amiens 20–24 mars 1985), ed. D. Buschinger (Göppingen, 1991), pp. 367–79 at p. 370; and R. Barber, Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford MS Bodley 764 with all the Original Miniatures Reproduced in Facsimile (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 30–3.
4 Good Impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, eds N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2008), p. 116; P. Lasko, ‘The Signet Ring of King Richard I of England’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 2 (1960–64), 333–5; J. Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven and London, 1999), pl. 3.
5 Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, nos 80, 87. See also English Romanesque Art: 1066–1200, ed. G. Zarnecki (London, 1984), p. 304 for Richard’s first great seal.
6 ‘Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi’ [hereafter ‘Itinerary of King Richard’], in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1864–65), vol. 1, p. 197; A Translation of the ‘Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi’, ed. H. J. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1997), p. 190. Comparison with other decorated saddles of the time, and the fact that the lions are very probably passant and not rampant, means we should not place too much significance on the evidence of Richard’s saddle (A. Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England: Their Development to 1199 (Reading, 1982), pp. 69–71).
7 G. Demay, Inventaire des sceaux de la Flandre, 2 vols (Paris, 1873), no. 138; The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s ‘Estoire de la Guerre Sainte’, ed. M. Ailes and M. Barber (Woodbridge, 2003), l. 11496; ‘Itinerary of King Richard’, ed. Stubbs, vol. 1, p. 418; Translation of the ‘Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi’, ed. Nicholson, p. 364; Ailes, Origins of the Royal Arms of England, pp. 64–74. The second seal of William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, c. 1180, and that of Conan de Nesle, count of Soissons, 1178, were based on that of the count of Flanders (English Romanesque Art: 1066–1200, ed. Zarnecki, p. 319, and P. Bony, Un Siècle de Sceaux Figurés (1135–1235): Le Sceau image de la personne en France d’Oïl, Angleterre, Ecosse et pays de Lorraine (Paris, 2002), pp. 48, 119, fig. 199.
8 T. A. Heslop in English Romanesque Art: 1066–1200, ed. Zarnecki, p. 304; R. Johnes, ‘The Seal Matrix of Queen Isabel of Hainault and Some Contemporary Seals’ in Antiquaries Journal 40 (1960), pp. 73–6 at p. 76. The second seal of Richard’s late brother, Henry the Young King, had also been made in France (Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols (Rolls Series, 1868–71), vol. 2, p. 47; Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi Benedicti Abbatis: the Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and Richard I AD 1169–1192 known commonly under the name of Benedict of Peterborough, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1867), vol. 1, p. 43; Smith, ‘Henry II’s Heir: the Acta and Seal of Henry the Young King, 1170–83’, 299, 304. For the chancellor as ex officio keeper of the great seal see Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, vol. 1, pp. 127–29, 145. For the chancellor possibly using only one side of the great seal when issuing mandates in his own name during the reign of Henry II see N. Vincent, ‘The Court of Henry II’ in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. C. Harper-Bill and N.Vincent (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 278–334 at p. 283.
9 TNA C 146/9520; Acta of Henry II and Richard I: Hand-list of documents surviving in the original in repositories in the United Kingdom, ed. J. C. Holt and R. Mortimer (List and Index Society special series 21, 1986), no. 316, dated 6 September 1189 per manum Willelmi de Longo Campo cancellarii nostri. An earlier confirmation (TNA DL 10/40) undated but given by the editors of the Acta (no. 315) as August 1189 and data per manum Willelmi Cancellarii [mei] has slits for a seal tag but no seal survives – could Richard have used his new seal or perhaps that of his chancellor or late father?
10 Lionel Landon, The Itinerary of Richard I (Pipe Roll Society, new series 13, 1935), appendix A, p. 174; Acta of Henry II and Richard I, ed. Holt and Mortimer, nos 354, 355; Acta of Henry II and Richard I: A supplementary hand-list of documents surviving in the original in repositories in the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Belgium and the USA, Part 2, ed. N. Vincent (List and Index Society special series 27, 1996), nos 195–198, 200. For the vice-chancellor holding the seal see Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, vol. 1, pp. 134–35.
11 Gillingham, Richard I, p. 144; Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 175. Malcael was in charge of Henry II’s great seal at the old king’s death (History of William Marshal, ed. Holden, ll. 9051–52). For the keeper of the seal see N. Karn, ‘Roberto de Sigillo: An Unruly Head of the Royal Scriptorium in the 1120s and 1130s’, English Historical Review 123 (2008), 539–53 at p. 541, n. 17.
12 Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 176. Landon believed it just possible that John now possessed the great seal itself.
13 Acta of Henry II and Richard I, ed. Holt and Mortimer, nos 363–65; Acta of Henry II and Richard I, Pt 2, ed. Vincent, no. 223.
14 It appears to have been last used in England (Portsmouth) on 6 May 1194 (Acta of Henry II and Richard I, ed. Holt and Mortimer, nos 372, 373), and on the continent on 7 January 1198 (Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 178). The first known use of Richard’s second great seal is 16 May though it was very probably used on 14 May (Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 178).
15 Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, vol. 3, p. 267; Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 177; J. H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1895), pp. 542; K. Norgate, Richard the Lion Heart (London, 1924), pp. 338–9; Pipe Roll 7 Richard I, ed. D. M. Stenton (Pipe Roll Society, new series 6, 1929) p. xxix.
16 Is erat tenor carte nostre in primo sigillo nostro. Quod quia aliquando perditum fuit, et, dum capti essemus in alem[annia], in aliena potestate constitutum, mutatum est. Huius autem innovationis testes sunt Hii …… (quoted in Round, Feudal England, p. 542).
17 Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 179, where he quotes the contemporary chronicler, Ralph de Coggeshall describing the renewing charge as ‘the climax of misfortune’; see also Gillingham, Richard I, p. 332.
18 Et Willelmo aurifabro qui fecit sigillum R[egis] ii m. ad unam robam emendam et pro solutione sue mercedis (Pipe Roll 7 Richard I, pp. xxix and 113).
19 Et ad sigillum R[egis] novum faciendum platam de pondere v m. per breve eiusdem [H. Cant’ archiepiscopi] (Chancellor’s Roll 8 Richard I :1196 (Pipe Roll Society, new series 7, 1930), p. 19). The chancellor’s rolls are counter-rolls or duplicates of the pipe rolls; it is quoted here because the pipe roll for 8 Richard I is missing. The years quoted in the two rolls are regnal and not Exchequer years.
20 Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, vol. 4, p. 66; Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 179; Round, Feudal England, p. 547.
21 Round, Feudal England, pp. 547–8. Norgate too believed the change was made in 1198 (Richard the Lion Heart, pp. 338–9).
22 R. fitz Nigel, Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, ed. E. Amt, and The Constitutio Domus Regis, ed. S. Church (Oxford, 2007), pp. 29, 33, 95; Dialogus de Scaccario: The Course of the Exchequer and The Constitutio Domus Regis, ed. C. Johnson, F. E. L. Carter and D. E. Greenway (Oxford, 1983), pp. 19, 21, 61, 62.
23 Eustace, vice-chancellor under Longchamp, dean of Salisbury, elected bishop of Ely 10 August 1197, keeper of the great seal probably in September 1197, and created chancellor in May 1198. Memoranda Roll 1 John, ed. H. G. Richardson (Pipe Roll Society, 21, 1943), p. xxxvi. Alternatively, such an unprecedented mercenary action may have been the brain child of the new chief justiciar since Christmas 1193, Hubert Walter archbishop of Canterbury, a man keen to explore every possible source of revenue for his royal master (R. V. Turner and R. H. Heiser, The Reign of Richard the Lionheart: Ruler of the Angevin Empire, 1189–1199 (Harlow, 2000), p. 157; see also Gillingham, Richard I, pp. 274–5).
24 John: D. Wilmer Dykes, ‘The Anglo-Irish Coinage and the Ancient Arms of Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 96 (1966), 111–20 at pp. 119–20; Henry III: Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, no. 100; and Andrew II: Sigilla Regum – Reges Sigillorum, ed. E. Géza, S. Miklós, and S. Károly (Budapest, 2001), pp. 44–9. The star and crescent were often used on the seals of ecclesiastics, for example, Roger Longespee, on his seal (1285) as bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (TNA E 329/375; Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, no. 1633). For the religious significance of the star and crescent see N. Rogers, ‘Texts and Images of Marian Devotion’, in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1989 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Stamford, 1991), pp. 69–103 at pp. 88–9; and of the sun and moon see M. Schapiro, ‘An Illuminated English Psalter of the Early Thirteenth Century’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1960), 179–89 at p. 184.
25 Longchamp’s personal (pointed oval) seal used as a counterseal bore round the border the legend DOMINI REGIS ANGLIE CANCELL’ and in the field a wavy star (estoile) and crescent with W. DE LONGO CAMPO subscribing the crescent; TNA DL 27/3; Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, no. 1493; English Episcopal Acta 31: Ely 1109–1197, ed. N. Karn (Oxford, 2005), p. cxlviii, pl. iv. For Longchamp using this seal instead of the Exchequer seal (sigillum parvum) while he was justiciar see Gervase of Canterbury, The Historical Works, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1879–80), vol. 1, p. 509; English Episcopal Acta 31: Ely 1109–1197, ed. Karn, p. cxlviii; Pleas before the King or his Justices, 1198–1202, ed. D. M. Stenton, 2 vols (Selden Society, 67, for 1948/49, 1952/53), vol. 1, p. 350. I am grateful to Professor T. A. Heslop for first bringing Longchamp’s seal to my attention.
26 ‘Itinerary of King Richard’, ed. Stubbs, vol. 1, p. 197; Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, no. 21146. Edmund, son of Henry III, bore a star and crescents on one of his seals (TNA E 101/153/7).
27 The arguments are discussed by Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England, pp. 72–5.
28 Dialogus de Scaccario, ed. E. Amt, pp. 21, 29, 95, 97; ed. Johnson, pp. 14, 19, 61, 62; Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, vol. 1, pp. 143–5.
29 Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, ed. Stubbs, vol. 1, p. 509.
30 Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 173, quoting The Coucher Book of Selby, ed. J. T. Fowler, (Yorkshire Archaeological Association, Record Series, 10, 1891), vol. 1, p. 26.
31 J. Ayloffe, Calendars of the Ancient Charters etc and of the Welch and Scotish Rolls now remaining in the Tower of London (1774), pp. lxviii–ix, 348. Charter listed in Acta of Henry II and Richard I, ed. Holt and Mortimer, no. 367. For an example of the first great seal in red wax: Canterbury Cathedral Archives CCA-DCc-ChAnt/C28. For Richard’s so-called second coronation see J. T. Appleby, England without Richard 1189–99 (London, 1965), pp. 137–9.
32 The spray may have been planta genista in allusion to Richard’s grandfather, Geoffrey Plantagenet, though such floral decoration was not uncommon on princely and noble seals – a very similar example can be seen on a finely engraved seal now in Hereford Cathedral possibly dating to Richard’s reign, and on the seal of Alexander II who succeeded to the Scottish throne in 1214 (Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, no. 14777); I am grateful to Dr Elizabeth New for bringing the Hereford seal to my attention. For the planta genista as the badge of the Plantagenets see Complete Peerage, ed. G. E. C[ockayne], 14 vols (London, 1910–98), vol. 11, appendix G, p. 140 note e, and M. Aurell, ‘Henry II and Arthurian Legend’ in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. Harper-Bill and Vincent, pp. 362–94 (363). Floral accompaniments also occur on the seals of William FitzRobert second earl of Gloucester, 1147–83 (Earldom of Gloucester Charters: The Charters and Scribes of the of the Earls and Countesses of Gloucester, ed. R. B. Patterson (Oxford, 1973), p. 24), and Philip d’Alsace count of Flanders (G. Demay, Inventaire des sceaux de la Flandre, 2 vols (Paris, 1873), no. 138 where dated 1170). The Exchequer seal may have been used on this occasion since parts of the treasury (where the Exchequer seal was normally kept) might still have resided at Winchester (Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, vol. 1, pp. 97, 144, n. 2; R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century (London, 1912), pp. 70–2; H. Roseveare, The Treasury: The Evolution of a British Institution (London, 1969), p. 21; and H. Hall, Antiquities and Curiosities of the Exchequer (London, 1891), pp. 15–18).
33 I am grateful to Dr Christopher Whittick and Professor Paul Brand for this observation.
34 Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 173; H. Jenkinson, ‘The Great Seal of England: Deputed or Departmental Seals, Archaeologia 85 (1935), pp. 293–338 at p. 297 and pl. 84 (1 and 2); J. Cherry, ‘Heads, Arms and Badges: Royal Representation on Seals’, in Good Impressions, ed. Adams, Cherry and Robinson, pp. 12–16 at p. 12 and fig. 1; A. Ailes, ‘Powerful Impressions: Symbols of Office and Authority on Secular Seals’ in Signs and Symbols: Proceedings of the 2006 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. J. Cherry and A. Payne (Donnington, 2009), pp. 18–28 at p. 21; P. Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II’s Adoptive Brother (Oxford, 1994), p. 37 and n. 77.
35 Calendar of Royal Documents: Richard I (nos 140–6), Westminster Abbey Charters, 1066–c. 1214: London Record Society 25, ed. E. Mason and J. Bray (1988), p. 77, no. 146; Westminster Abbey Muniments XLVII; Acta of Henry II and Richard I, ed. Holt and Mortimer, no. 398 (where it is given no year date).
36 For the Exchequer seal and seal of absence under Henry III see F. West, The Justiciarship in England 1066–1232 (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 239–40, 269–70; Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, pp. 36–7; and H. Jenkinson, ‘The Great Seal of England’, Antiquaries Journal 16 (1936), 8–28 at p. 23.
37 Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, vol. 3, p. 28.
38 Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, ed. Stubbs, vol. 1, p. 509; Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 174.
39 Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, p. 183.
40 Landon, Itinerary of Richard I, pp. 173–4.
41 Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Ricardi, ed. Stubbs, vol. 2, p. 224; Howden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, vol. 3, p. 154; Memoranda Roll 1 John, ed. Richardson, pp. lxxiii–iv.
42 Gervase of Canterbury, Historical Works, ed. Stubbs, vol. 1, p. 509; Gerald of Wales, Opera, ed. Brewer, Dimock and Warner, vol. 4, p. 408, where he confirms that the seal in question is that residing at the Exchequer; Turner and Heiser, The Reign of Richard the Lionheart, p. 131.
Notes
1 There were doubts about the binding nature of the latter as late as 1299: see John le Lou v. the executors of Roger of Holbrook: CP 40/126, m. 172d, but these had been resolved by 1304 (see Robert of Migham v. John of Thuddne: CP 40/151, m. 56d and reported in YB 32 & 33 Edward I, p. 185 and BL MS. Additional 31826, f. 360v). See also Ralph of Fuldon merchant v. Richard of Shirford merchant: CP 40/156, m. 51, reported in BL MS. Hargrave 375, f. 118r and LI MS. Misc. 738, f. 37r.
2 For an interesting case involving two rival testaments appointing different executors see the 1292 case of master Anthony of Bradney executor of master John de la Wade clerk v. master Peter de Lisel and master Robert de Veteri Terra executors of Peter late bishop of Exeter: CP 40/96, m. 103, reported in BL MS. Additional 31826, f. 55v.
3 CP 40/113, m. 33.
4 Adam of Osgoodby clerk v. Ralph of Shirley: CP 40/145, m. 74d.
5 CP 40/122, m. 80d.
6 KB 27/174, m. 16.
7 Stubbs Select Charters, p. 256.
8 JUST 1/1098, m. 3.
9 CP 40/101, m. 159.
10 See GO Sayles in the introduction to Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench, II (Selden Society 57, 1938), pp. lxxxix–xci and see also JUST 1/370, m. 11.
11 Statutes of the Realm, I, 86–7. For the invocation of this legislation during the so-called ‘State Trials’ which led to the digrace of most of the justices in 1289–93 see P. Brand, ‘Ethical Standards for Royal Justices in England, c.1175–1307’ in The University of Chicago Law School Round Table 8, 2 (2001), pp. 239–79 at p. 259.
12 Statutes of the Realm, I, 81.
13 CP 40/153, m. 238d.
14 CP 40/90, m. 155: Margery widow of Geoffrey fitzAdam v. Richard son of Simon Clerk and his wife Alice and her sister Beatrix.
15 CP 40/95, m. 169d.
16 CP 40/100, m. 56d: Laurence de Talmarnaccos v. Osmund de Talmarnaccos.
17 CP 40/164, m. 32d: Meliora Sherard v. Henry Sherard of Wormwell.
18 86 Bucks 1 in Earliest English Law Reports, IV, ed. P. Brand (Selden Society 123, 2007) at pp. 329–32.
19 CP 40/103, m. 127d.
20 JUST 1/1189, m. 1d: Alice daughter of Simon Burre v. Agnes of Northfleet.
21 JUST 1/1298, mm. 119–119d.
22 JUST 1/614B, m. 10d.
23 JUST 1/913, m. 14d.
24 CP 40/32, m. 62.
25 JUST 1/202, m. 14.
26 Curia Regis Rolls, I, 45, 66–7.
27 CP 40/87, m. 133.
28 CP 40/110, m. 49.
29 CP 40/92, m. 95. The case is reported in CUL MS. Dd.7.14, f. 273r and (a later stage) in BL MS. Additional 35116, ff. 267r–v.
30 CP 40/138, m. 111d. The reports of the case are in BL MSS. Harley 493B, ff. 24r–25r, Harley 572, ff. 182r–v and (but only a fragment) Additional 37657, f. 120r.
31 JUST 1/409, m. 15.
Notes
1 My thanks to Professor Phillipp Schofield and Dr Elizabeth New for the invitation to attend the conference at Aberystwyth in April 2013, where this paper was delivered, to Professor Julian Gardner for reading a draft and for help with the seal of Giovanni, to Adrian Ailes for advice on notaries, and Professor Caroline Barron for drawing my attention to the similarity in design between the seal of Giovanni de Vico and the reverse of the City of London seal.
2 The text of Otto’s statement at the Council of London is printed in Councils and Synods with other Documents relating to the English Church, II AD. 1205–1313, Part I, 1205–1265, eds F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney (Oxford, 1964) pp. 245–59: no. 28, Council of Legate at St Paul’s in London 18–20 or 19–21 November 1237 III Canons of the Council, at pp. 257–58, Quoniam tabellonium usus in regno Anglie non habetur, propter quod magis ad sigilla recurri auctentica est necesse, ut eorum copia facilius habeatur, statuimus ut sigillum habeant non solum archiepiscopi et episcopi, set (*) etiam eorum officiales, item abbates, priores, decani, archidiaconi et eorum officiales, decani rurales, necnon ecclesiarum cathedralium capitula et cetera queque collegia et conventus simul cum suis rectoribus aut divisim iuxta eorum consuetudinem vel statutum.
3 C. R. Cheney, Notaries Public in England in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries (Oxford, 1972), p. 135.
4 A good introduction to the work of notaries is the section ‘Notaries’ (pp. 394–406) in J. A. Brundage, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession (Chicago, 2008). An account of notaries is given by T. F. Tout in Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England: the Wardrobe, the Chamber and the Small Seals (Manchester, 1920), pp. 121–3. I am grateful to Adrian Ailes for this reference. A succinct account of the introduction of notaries into England is given by J. A. Sayers, ‘The influence of Papal documents on English documents before 1305’, in Papsturkunde und europäisches Urkundenwesen, eds P. Herde und H. Jacobs (Cologne, 1999), pp. 161–99, esp. pp. 169–70. The best guide to Italian notaries is A. Petrucci, Notarii: Documenti per la storia del notariato italiano (Milano, 1958), particularly the introduction ‘Il notoriato italiano dalle origine al seculo 14’, pp. 1–44.
5 M. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 241–6.
6 A. Lermer, ‘Besiegelung des Rathauses. Der Veneçia –Tondo am Dogenpalast in Venedig’ in Die Bildlichkeit Korporativer Siegel im Mittelalter, ed. M. Spaeth (Cologne 2009) p. 140, n. 34, who quotes Bascapè, vol. 1, S 186 ff. and 245 and 253; also S 248 abb. 6–14 and S 256f. See also M. Rosada, ‘Sigillum Sancti Marci’ Bolle e sigilli di Venezia’ in Il sigillo nella storia e nella cultura, ed. S. Ricci (1985), pp. 109–48.
7 A catalogue (printed and online) of the Rawlinson collection is in preparation and is hoped to be published in 2015. For a detailed description of the seal matrix and a draft catalogue entry see Appendix 9.1 below.
8 The early history of the Prefects up to 1252 is considered in L. Halphen, Études sur l’administration de Rome au Moyen Age (Paris, 1907). Also, R. Brentano, Rome before Avignon, (California, 1990), p. 117.
9 The type of loop handle on R105 is more appropriate to a thirteenth-century matrix than to a mid-fourteenth-century example, suggesting that the cast now in the Rawlinson collection was copied from a seal impression rather than the actual matrix.
10 O. Posse, Die Siegel der deutschen Kaiser und Könige von 751 bis 1806, 5 Bd (Dresden, 1909–13), Bd. 1 taf. 47–1, 47–3, taf. 50–7.
11 The London seal is illustrated in G. Pedrick, Borough Seals of the Gothic Period (London, 1904), pl. xi. For a discussion of this seal see T. A. Heslop in Age of Chivalry (London, 1987), no. 193, p. 273, and also E. New, ‘Seals and Status in Medieval English Towns: A case study of London, Newcastle and Durham’ in Good Impressions: Image and Authority, eds N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson, (London, 2008), pp. 35–41. I am most grateful to Professor Caroline Barron for drawing my attention to this similarity, and to Professor Julian Gardner for suggesting the source of the design in the iconography of the Last Judgement. This idea needs further work in terms of Last Judgement paintings and sculpture in Rome.
12 For the paintings in the Siena Palazzo Communale see N. Rubinstein, ‘Political ideas in Sienese art: the frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico’ Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes 21 (1958), 179–207. Q. Skinner,”Ambrogio Lorenzetti: the artist as political philosopher,” Proceedings of the British Academy 72 (1986), 1–56. Q. Skinner, ‘Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “Buon Governo” Frescoes: Two Old Questions, Two New Answers’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 62 (1999), 1–28.
13 A. Lermer, ‘Besiegelung des Rathauses: Der Veneçia – Tondo am Dogenpalast in Venedig’ in M. Spaeth (ed.), Die Bildlichkeit Korporativer Siegel im Mittelalter (Cologne, 2009), pp. 131–48.
14 J. Gardner, ‘Likeness and/or Representation in English and French Royal Portraits c. 1250–c.1300’ in M. Büchsel and P. Schmidt (eds), Das Porträt vor der Erfindung der Portraits (Mainz, 2003), pp. 141–51, esp. pp. 146–7 and Abb. 7.
15 Cheney Notaries Public, pp. 84–5.
16 G. C. Bascapé, Sigillografia – Il sigillo nella diplomatica, nel diritto, nella storia, nell’arte Vol 1 (Milan, 1969), pp. 359–77. G. Cencetti, Sigilli Medievali Italiani del museo civico di Bologna, (Bologna, 1953), no. 2, p. 12.
17 Bascapé, Sigillografia, vol. 1, pp 372–5.
18 Bascapé, Sigillografia pp. 359–60.
19 R. Brentano, Two churches: England and Italy in the thirteenth century (London, 1988), pp. 251–324 (chap. v), especially p. 302.
20 R. Brentano, Rome before Avignon, p. 50. The four in the BM are Nicolai Panfilus (P and E 1880, 0501.22 with a monogram), Simon di Castello (P and E 1876, 1017.65), Guido Benvenuto (P and E 1923, 1207.7) and Albert Milani (P and E 1876, 1017.64).
21 Bascapé, Sigillografia, vol. 1, p. 375.
22 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 5.555. See also A. Luchs, The Mermaids of Venice: fantastic sea creatures in Venetian Renaissance art (London, 2010).
23 Bascapé Sigillographia,, vol 1, pp. 375–6. His source is C. Paoli, Diplomatica (Florence, 1942) p. 251, fn. 4.
24 Bascapé, Sigillografia, p. 377.
25 Brentano, Two churches, p. 16.
26 Brentano, Two churches, p. 311; Cencetti, Sigilli Medievali Italiani, p. 5.
27 C. C. Oman, Catalogue of Rings (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1930), no. 580: silver, set with a classical intaglio, and dated to the fourteenth century. The ring of Peter of Canius, notary, also Italian, fourteenth century, is in a private collection.
28 R. Härtel, ‘Il notariato fra Alpi e Adriatico’, Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato 60 (2000), 9–26.
29 H. Toniatti, ‘Con Signum e Sigillo: L’instrumentum notarile sigillato quale forma documentaria mista nell’ambito del vescovado di Bressanone’ in exhibition catalogue Sigilli e Potere, ed. A. Zaccaria (2002), at the Archivio di Stato di Bolzano.
30 Gemäldegalerie Berlin no. 586. This picture and other portraits of merchants, sometimes with seals, are discussed by B. S. Yamey, Art and Accounting (Yale, 1989). Gisze is discussed on p. 24.
Notes
1 The arms by this time may have become those of the hereditary perfect of Rome rather than the family. The tomb of an ancestor of the Prefect – Pietro di Vico – is (now) in San Francesco Viterbo – originally in S. Maria in Gradi. Jörg Garms et al., Die mittelalterlichen Grabmäler in Rom und Latium von 13. bis 15.Jahrhundert,(Publikationen de Österreichischen Kulturinstituts in Rom, II,Abteilung, Quellen 5.Reihe I, 2. Die Monumentalgräber (Rome/Vienna 1994), No. 82 pp. 217–21 & Abb. 269–72. The Prefects had their own Roman church S. Niccolò dei Prefetti. I owe this reference to Professor Julian Gardner. For the Golden Rose see Elisabeth Cornides, Rose und Schwert im päpstlichen Zeremoniell. Von den Anfängen bis zum Pontifikat Gregors XIII. Phil. Diss. Vienna 1967 (Copy in Warburg Institute).
2 For the prefects of Rome see C. Calisse, ‘I Prefetti di Vico’ Archivio Storico della Societa Romana di Storia Patria, 10 (1887), 80.
3 Calisse, ‘I Prefetti’ p. 117.
4 Silvester Pietra Sancta, Tesserae Gentilitiae, Rome (1638) p. 656, and Francesco Vettori, Il fiorino d’oro illustrato, Firenze (1738) p. 129.
5 Feliciano Bussi, Istoria della citta di Viterbo (Rome, 1742) p. opposite 201.
6 Enea Gualandi ‘Il sigillo di Giovanni da Vico’, Rivista del Collegio Araldico, 2, (1904) pp. 356–68, esp. p. 358.
7 Faculty Office records at Lambeth Palace Library see Hough correspondence (letter dated 10 July 1991).
8 This is from Horace Ode, I, xxiv, 7. The whole passage of the Ode to Quintillius is Cui Pudor et Iustitiae soror, incorrupta Fides, nudaque Veritas quando ullum inueniet parem?
When will Honour, and unswerving Loyalty, that is sister to Justice, and our naked Truth, ever discover his equal?
Notes
1 I am very grateful to Dr Adrian Ailes and Professor Nicholas Vincent for advice at certain points in the preparation of this paper, and to Dr Ailes for reading and commenting so helpfully on the draft text. I remain solely responsible for any remaining errors and infelicities. I am also very grateful to Mr Simon Eager for his invaluable photographic assistance. Photographs are reproduced by kind permission of the owners of seals, as follows: The British Library Board, Figs 10.3 and 10.4 (left); The National Archives, Kew, Figs 10.8, 10.14, 10.18 (left), 10.19, 10.20 (left); the President and Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, Figs 10.6, 10.13, 10.17; the Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford, Figs 10.7, 10.10; the Berkshire County Archivist, Reading, Figs 10.5 and 10.12; the Northamptonshir County Archivist, Northampton, Fig. 10.11. Photographs in 10.5–8, 10.10–14, 10.17–19, 10.20 (left) are by Simon Eager.
2 S. Lloyd, ‘William II: the Making of an English Crusading Hero’, parts I and II, Nottingham Medieval Studies, xxxv–xxxvi (1991–2), part II, 90.
3 For the earl and his countess, see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter ODNB], sub nominibus; G. E. C(ockayne), The Complete Peerage, rev. edn, 14 vols in 15 (London, 1910–98) [hereafter Complete Peerage], xi, pp. 379–82.
4 Canterbury, Dean and Chapter Archives, Register A, fos. 66v–67r.
5 Lloyd, ‘William II’, esp. 42–4.
6 See A New History of Ireland, ed. T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne, vol. IX (Oxford, 1984), p. 471; Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn., ed. E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter and I. Roy (London, 1986), p. 161.
7 On Nicholas Longespée, see English Episcopal Acta, 36, Salisbury 1229–1262, ed. B. R. Kemp (British Academy, 2010), pp. lx–lxii.
8 Complete Peerage, xii (2), p. 365; on Philip Basset, a supporter of Henry III during the baronial troubles, see also ODNB, sub nomine.
9 Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols (London, Rolls Series, 1864–9), ii,, pp. 164–5 (Waverley); iii, p. 10 (Dunstable); iv, p. 369 (Worcester).
10 For Matilda’s marriage to Geoffrey, count of Anjou, see M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (Oxford, Blackwell, 1991), pp. 54–6.
11 See Facsimiles of Early Charters from Northamptonshire Collections, ed. F. M. Stenton, Northamptonshire Record Society, iv (1930), pp. 24–5, no. vi; Sir Christopher Hatton’s Book of Seals, ed. L. C. Lloyd and D. M. Stenton (Oxford, 1950), no. 429. The Young King’s charter, which confirms his uncle William’s gift, is Facsimiles…, no. vii, in which William is called patruus meus Willelmus long espee.
12 Annales Monastici iv, p. 33.
13 See above, n. 10.
14 Chroniques des Comtes d’Anjou et des Seigneurs d’Amboise, ed. L. Halphen and R. Poupardin (Paris, 1913), p. 179.
15 A. Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England, their development to 1199, Reading Medieval Studies, Monographs 2 (Reading, 1982), pp. 47, 99 n. 25.
16 For an account of the plaque and its probable date, see the pamphlet by S. and M. Nikitine, L’Émail Plantagenêt (Nancy 1981). See also Complete Peerage, xi, appendix G, pp. 133–42.
17 For Earl William’s monument and effigy in Salisbury Cathedral, see S. Brown, Sumptuous and Richly Adorn’d: the Decoration of Salisbury Cathedral, Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, 1999, pp. 9–10, 116, 151, and figures 6 and 91. Note, however, that the earl’s mother was almost certainly not Rosamund Clifford, and that his effigy is of stone, not Tournai marble.
18 See n. 11.
19 In this paper I propose to retain the term ‘lioncels’ for the Longespée beasts, as a translation of John of Marmoutier’s Latin (leunculi), but many heralds, historians and commentators render them as ‘lions’, and certainly on some later versions of the same arms borne by other people the animals depicted may not look very different from lions. On some Longespée seals, however, there may also be depictions of lions which are apparently distinct from the Longespée animals and most probably represent the lions of the royal arms of England.
20 W. L. Bowles and J. G. Nichols, Annals and Antiquities of Lacock Abbey in the County of Wilts (London, 1835) [hereafter Bowles and Nichols], pls 1–4. I have failed to locate originals for at least some of these.
21 Northamptonshire Record Office [hereafter NRO], ms F. H. 170; for an edition, omitting most of the drawings, see n. 11. For Ela’s seal, see below.
22 Winchester College Archives, no. 9022; calendared, Winchester College Muniments: A Descriptive List, compiled by S. Himsworth with P. Gwyn, W. Graham and J. Harvey, 3 vols (Chichester, 1976–84), ii, p. 338, no. 9022.
23 Bowles and Nichols, pl. 1, no. 1 (obverse); no. 4 (reverse), the latter incorrectly captioned; W. de G. Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London 1887–1900) [hereafter Birch], no. 6191. The seal cast, British library, lxxx. 92, which is assigned to the earl in Birch, no. 11375, is in fact of his son, William Longespée II, and is evidently taken from the original seal on The National Archives [hereafter TNA], DL 25/114 (see below).
24 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms Latin 5425, p. 78. I am indebted to Professor Nicholas Vincent for sending me a photograph of this drawing. The deed in question is a gift to Bradenstoke priory in Wiltshire: Calendar of Documents preserved in France, illustrative of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, I, A.D. 918–1206, ed. J. H. Round, HMSO (1899), no. 179; The Cartulary of Bradenstoke Priory, ed. V. C. M. London, Wiltshire Record Society 35 (1979), no. 643.
25 BL, Harley Charter 53 B. 12; Northamptonshire Record Office, ms. F. H. 170, fo. 18r; Bowles and Nichols, pl. 4.
26 BL, Additional Charter 19622; Reading, Berkshire Record Office, D/Q1 T13/11; TNA, DL 25/114. The first of these is calendared in Reading Abbey Cartularies, ed. B. R. Kemp, 2 vols, Camden 4th Series, 31, 33 (London 1986–7), ii, no. 810.
27 For a very good example of Stephen’s seal, see Oxford, Magdalen College, Archives, Wanborough 34a; note also ibid., Wanborough 19a and 42a, both with much damaged seals. Other examples (obverse only) include BL. Harley Charters 53 B. 14 and 15. For his widow’s seal, see below. Regarding the number of lioncel masks on Stephen’s counterseal – five arranged cross-wise – it was suggested to me in private discussion after my paper that the five could be read as two rows of three, one vertical, the other horizontal, to give a total of six masks.
28 Salisbury, Dean and Chapter Muniments, Press IV, Box ‘W’: 1297; Oxford, Merton College, MCR 1303.
29 TNA, E42/241; E42/267; E42/376 (the last as treasurer of Salisbury).
30 TNA, E42/345; E42/346.
31 John le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300: IV, Salisbury, compiled by D. E. Greenway (British Academy, 1991), p. 130.
32 Idem, XI, Coventry and Lichfield, compiled by C. Brooke, J. Denton and D. E. Greenway (British Academy, 2011), p. 8. King Henry III called him his nephew in 1257 (Calendar of Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, 1247–58, pp. 540, 542).
33 The finest surviving examples of his seal are TNA, E329/375, on a deed of 1259, and E329/394, on a deed of 1285.
34 Complete Peerage, xii (2), p. 365. For Philip Basset, see above, n. 8.
35 See Bowles and Nichols, pp. 160–2; BL, Harley Charter 54 D. 15; BL, Additional Charter 19633; Oxford, Merton College, MCR 641–642.
36 Complete Peerage, xii (2), p. 365; Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, City of Oxford (1939), p. 42a.
37 A. Ailes, ‘Armorial Portrait Seals of Medieval Women in the PRO’, in Tribute to an Armorist, ed. J. Campbell-Kease (London, 2000), pp. 225–6.
38 F. Sandford, A Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England and Monarchs of Great Britain, &c., 1066–1707, revised S. Stebbing (London, 1707), p. 57; Bowles and Nichols, pl. III.
39 Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 57, showing the two-sided seals of Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile, each of which has on its obverse a single lion beneath the queen’s standing figure.
40 Oxford, Merton College, MCR 646.
41 NRO, ms F. H. 70, fo. 76r.
42 Berkshire Record Office [hereafter BRO], D/Q1 T13; Victoria History of the County of Berkshire [VCH] iv, pp. 252, 265.
43 BRO, D/Q1 T13/4.
44 BRO, D/Q1 T13/6.
45 BRO, D/Q1 T13/5 (widow); T13/6; T13/24.
46 Complete Peerage, xi, p. 383.
47 Complete Peerage, xii (2), p. 171.
48 Oxford, Magdalen College Archives [hereafter MCA], Wanborough 31a. The same seal was presumably affixed to the formal foundation deed of the chantry, but unfortunately this survives only as a fourteenth-century copy (ibid., Wanborough 66a).
49 MCA, Wanborough 20a; 22; 23; 24; 33; 36a; 48a; 59a, the probable exception being 33.
50 TNA, C148/109, William’s seal being affixed to one part of a chirograph agreement, dated December 1256, between William and Edmund de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, by which William’s only daughter and heir, Margaret, married the earl’s son and heir, Henry de Lacy, later earl of Lincoln.
51 W. Kennett, Parochial Antiquities attempted in the history of Ambrosden, Burcester, and other adjacent parts in the counties of Oxford and Bucks., new edition, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1818), i, p. 351.
52 The two drawings are: Cumbria (formerly Westmorland) Record Office, ms WD/Hoth Ace 988 no. 10, vol. 1, p. 169; Bowles and Nichols, pl. II, nos 3–4. (I owe the former reference to the kindness of Professor Nicholas Vincent). For the circumstances of Matilda’s marriage to Sir John Giffard, see Complete Peerage, v, p. 642 and note (c); xi, p. 384; English Episcopal Acta, 37, Salisbury 1263–97, ed. B. R. Kemp (British Academy, 2010), no. 403.
53 Documents of the Baronial Movement of Reform and Rebellion 1258–67, selected by R. F. Treharne, edited by I. J. Sanders (Oxford, 1973), p. 104, clause 9; A New History of Ireland (see n. 6), p. 471; Handbook of British Chronology (see note 6), p. 161.
54 BL, Additional Charter 10, 619; Bowles and Nichols, pl. II, no. 5.
55 Ailes, ‘Armorial Portrait Seals’, p. 229.
56 MCA, Wanborough 22a, 30, 30a, 34, 46a, For Emeline’s death, see Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem …. in the Public Record Office, vii, p. 312.
57 See, respectively, figs. 15, 16, 10, 17.
58 TNA, E26/2/31A.
59 A very fine example, in green wax, is TNA, C 13/G 17. For the earl’s changing of his arms, see Rolls of Arms, Edward I (1272–1307), ed. G. J. Brault, 2 vols (Woodbridge, 1997), ii, p. 247. I owe the latter reference to the kindness of Adrian Ailes.
60 For three examples, in different coloured wax, see TNA, DL 25/2133; DL 25/2337; E326/10862.
61 Complete Peerage, vii, pp. 387–96; J. R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307–1322 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 9, 311–12.
62 TNA, E40/198; Bowles and Nichols, pl. II, no. 6.
63 Complete Peerage, xi, p. 385.
64 Complete Peerage, xi, p. 385.
Notes
1 For discussion of ‘personal seals’ and their definition, see for example E. A. New, Seals and Sealing Practices. British Records Association Archives & the User 11 (London, 2010), p. 87. Such a definition is however somewhat problematic. The sigillum secretum of twelfth and early thirteenth-century bishops often were highly personalised but were used for official business, a good example being that of Nigel, bishop of Ely (d. 1169), English Episcopal Acta 31: Ely 1109–1197, ed. N. Karn (Oxford, 2005), pp. cxlvi–cxlvii. Commenting on how to define a person seal, Roger Ellis wrote that to ‘aim for absolute consistency could delay indefinitely the publication’ of his catalogue, R. Ellis, Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office. Personal Seals, Vol. I (London, 1978), p. vii n. 1. For the purposes of this paper ‘personal seals’ are defined as those not identified as governmental, official, pertaining to an office or corporate.
P. D. A. Harvey and A. McGuinness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (London, 1996), p. 78, estimated that non-heraldic personal seals constitute approximately four-fifths of surviving impressions and matrices from medieval Britain. Of the 3327 medieval seal matrices currently recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, only 16 are tagged as ‘official’. http://finds.org.uk/database/search/results/q/seal+matrix accessed 21/06/2013.
2 This point has been made by a number of scholars. See for example J. H. Bloom, English Seals (London, 1906), p. 185; A. F. McGuinness, ‘Non-Armigerous seals and seal-usage in thirteenth-century England’ in Thirteenth Century England vol 5: Proceedings of the Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Conference, 1985, eds P. R. Cross and S. D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 165–77 at p. 165; Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, p. 78; R. A. Linenthal, ‘Medieval personal seal matrices’, Recording Medieval Lives, eds J. Boffey and V. Davis, Harlaxton Medieval Studies XVII (Donnington, 2009), pp. 223–32 at p. 227; New, Seals and Sealing Practices, esp. pp. 28–9; J. McEwan, ‘The seals of London’s governing elite in the thirteenth century’, in Thirteenth Century England XIV, eds J. Burton, P. R. Schofield and B. Weiler (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 43–59 at p. 43.
3 For studies of lower-status seal-owners see for example McGuinness, ‘Non-armigerous seals’; T. A. Heslop, ‘Peasant seals’ in Medieval England 1066–1485, ed. E. King (Oxford, 1988), pp. 214–5; P. D. A. Harvey, ‘Personal seals in thirteenth-century England’ in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages. Essays presented to John Taylor, eds I. Wood and G. A. Loud (London & Rio Grande, 1991), pp. 117–27. Scholars who have written about the seals used by those from below the very highest levels of society generally preface their work by suggesting that the scale of the surviving material is an obstacle to research. See for example Harvey, ‘Personal Seals’, esp. pp. 117–9; Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, p. 78.
4 For example P. D. A. Harvey’s catalogue of seal impressions from the Duchy of Lancaster collections held by The National Archives.
5 See for example M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1993), pp. 44–74; D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London and New York, 1992), esp. pp. 242–3; B. M. Bedos-Rezak, ‘In search of a semiotic paradigm: the matter of sealing in medieval thought’, in Good impressions: Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, eds N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2008), pp. 1–7; B. M. Bedos-Rezak, When Ego was Imago: Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2011); McEwan, ‘Seals of London’s governing elite’; E. A. New, ‘Lleision ap Morgan makes an impression: seals and the study of medieval Wales’, Welsh History Review 27:1 (2013), 327–50; P. R. Schofield, ‘Seals and the peasant economy in England and Marcher Wales, ca. 1300’, in Medieval Coins and Seals: Constructing Identity, Signifying Power, ed. S. Solway (Turnhout, forthcoming).
6 For example D. Crouch, The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London & New York, 1992), esp. pp. 242–6; E. Danbury, ‘Queens and powerful women: image and authority’, in Good Impressions. Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, eds N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2008), pp. 17–24.
7 See for example C. H. Hunter Blair, ‘Armorials upon English Seals from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries’, Archaeologia 89 (1943), 1–26; M. P. Siddons, ‘Welsh Equestrian Seals’, National Library of Wales Journal 23 (1983–84), 292–318; A. Ailes, ‘The knights’ alter ego: from equestrian to armorial seal’ in Good Impressions. Image and Authority in Medieval Seals, eds N. Adams, J. Cherry and J. Robinson (London, 2008) pp. 8–11.
8 For example McGuinness, ‘Non-armigerous’, pp. 172, 174–5; E. New, ‘Representation and identity in medieval London: the evidence of seals’, in London and the Kingdom, eds M. Davies and A. Prescott, Harlaxton Medieval Studies XVI (Stamford, 2008), pp. 246–58, esp. pp. 255–6; J. Cherry, ‘‘Ie sus el nul tel’: no seal like it?’, in Pourquoi les sceaux? La sigillographie nouvel enjeu de l’histoire de l’art, eds M. Gill and J-L. Chassel (Lille, 2011), pp.195–206.
9 Animals and birds that serve a canting or allusive purpose are an exception, and frequently have been noted in discussions. See for example Heslop, ‘Peasant seals’, pp. 214–15 (seal of Ralph Hairun); Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, p. 90 (in relation to vernacular legends); New, Seals and Sealing Practices, pp. 108–9.
10 McGuinness notes that ‘employing such terms as ‘conventional’’ is problematic because of the considerable variation within categories such as stylised flowers, and although he uses the term conventional it is always (as here) in inverted commas, McGuinness, ‘Non-armigerous’, p. 170 and passim. ‘Miscellaneous Designs and Devices’ is the title of the short chapter on non-armorial personal seals in W. de G. Birch, Seals (London, 1907). The social classification of these sorts of seal motif is found in for example Heslop, ‘Peasant Seals’, p. 214; McGuinness, ‘Nonarmigerous’, p. 170.
11 ‘Diverging from a central point or region like rays’, “radial, adj. and n.”. OED Online. June 2013. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/157224?redirectedFrom=radial (accessed July 03, 2013).
12 Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, p. 80. The Vocabulaire International de la Sigillographie dismisses large numbers of seals with very different motifs as simply being ‘with a device’, as for example, no. 232.
13 Paul Harvey has advocated such research on a number of occasions, and has made some extremely important observations about how this material could be used. For example, Professor Harvey speculated that a motif repeated across different seals through personal choice may well have also been used for marking property or livestock, Harvey, ‘Personal seals’, p. 127. See also McGuinness, ‘Non-armigerous’.
14 This analysis, originally conducted by Dr John McEwan, draws upon the Arts & Humanities Research Council funded Seals in Medieval Wales project [project number AH/G010994/1]. The project data-set of seal impressions is recorded from collections of material relating to Wales and the Welsh Marches c. 1150–1550 in the National Library of Wales, the British Library, Bangor University Archives, Cheshire Archives and Local Studies, Gwent Archives, Gwynedd Archives, Hereford Cathedral Archives, Herefordshire Archives and Shropshire Archives, and from the catalogue of seals in the Duchy of Lancaster series compiled by Professor P. D. A. Harvey. The Seals in Medieval Wales project team are grateful to Professor Harvey for making his data available to them for a comparative analysis. Descriptions of the Duchy of Lancaster seals form part of the item-level catalogue available through The National Archives website www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
15 For relatively early, but brief, commentary on low-status seals with what are predominantly radial (here described as ‘floral’) motifs, see R. H. Hilton, ‘Gloucester Abbey Leases of the Late Thirteenth Century’, in The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. R. H. Hilton, (Oxford, 1975), pp. 154–5.
16 The social classification of seal-owners through the representation of a human has received especial attention in recent years from Brigitte Bedos-Rezak. See Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago, esp. pp. 59–71.
17 Seals have long been used for tracing the development of heraldry, with William Dugdale recording seals for this purpose in the seventeenth century, New, Seals and Sealing Practices, p. 29. The earliest heraldic seals in Britain are generally considered to date from the mid-twelfth century, A. Ailes, ‘Heraldry in twelfth-century England: the evidence’, in England in the Twelfth century. Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1990), pp. 1–16; Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, pp. 47–8. D. Crouch, ‘The historian, lineage and heraldry 1050–1250’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, eds P. Coss and M. Keen (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 17–38, esp. 28–36, makes some interesting points about the early use of individual and family devices, often using sigillographic evidence, but takes what may be described as a traditional view about the emergence of heraldry.
18 In recent years the complication of how to approach a semiotic system in its evolutionary phase has been noted by a number of scholars. See for example Harvey and McGuinness, Guide, pp. 47–8; M. P. Siddons, The Development of Welsh Heraldry, Vol. 1 (Aberystwyth, 1991), pp. 13–14.
19 McGuinness, ‘Non-armigerous’ p. 170
20 N[ational] L[ibrary of] W[ales], P[enrice &] M[argam Ch.] 75. The diameter of the whole seal is 20 mm.
21 D. H. Williams, Images of Welsh History (Aberystwyth, 2007), p. 20. The genus Potentilla (cinquefoils), characterised by five-lobed leaves and five-petalled flowers, was widely associated with the Five Wounds in medieval England, M. W. Tisdall, God’s Flowers. An Iconography for Foliage Decoration (Plymouth, 2012), p. 44; C. Fisher, The Medieval Flower Book (London, 2007), pp. 9, 38.
22 Williams, Images of Welsh History p. 20.
23 Mygnoth’s seal would appear to be a remarkably early example of sophisticated Christocentric devotion in a sigillographic context. See E. A. New, ‘Christological personal seals and Christocentric devotion in later medieval England and Wales’, Antiquaries Journal 82 (2002), 47–68.
24 NLW PM 176, 177 (1265)
25 Clive H. Knowles, ‘Clare, Gilbert de, seventh earl of Gloucester and sixth earl of Hertford (1243– 1295)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5438, accessed 6 May 2013]
26 A twelfth-century example of sigillographic imagery that deliberately subverts the expectations raised by a superficially standard image is the seal of Geoffrey, ‘the abbot’, seneschal and sheriff of Leicester. Here the equestrian figure on Geoffrey’s seal hold a crosier in reference to the owner’s nickname. D. Crouch, ‘Humour and identity in the twelfth century’, in Grant Risee?: The Medieval Comic Presence, eds A. P. Tudor and A. Hindley, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 11 (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 213–24.
27 NLW, PM 198 s.2, 199 s.2, 200 s.2, 2059 seal 2. The seal features without comment on the design in D. H. Williams, Welsh History through Seals (Cardiff, 1982), p. 25 and fig. 51 and Williams, Images of Welsh History, p. 26 fig. 77.
28 Harvey and McGuinness comment that the design was of a type ‘found on many contemporary personal seals’, Guide, p. 108.
29 R. A. Griffiths, ‘The Medieval Boroughs of Glamorgan and Medieval Swansea’, in Glamorgan County History, vol. III: The Middle Ages, ed. T. B. Pugh (Cardiff, 1971), pp. 333–77 at pp. 338, 350–1.
30 D. H. Williams, ‘Catalogue of Seals from the Penrice and Margam Charters’ (Unpublished, available in the National Library of Wales South Reading Room). By using a heraldic term, William inadvertently makes clear the problem that scholars face when attempting retrospectively to impose later taxonomies
31 NLW, PM 1998, 1959, 61.
32 NLW, PM 1965 (1175×1225); M. Griffiths, ‘Native society on the Anglo-Norman frontier: the evidence of the Margam Charters’, Welsh History Review 14:2 (1988), 179–216 at p. 194
33 Williams, Images of Welsh History fig. 41, NLW, Badminton Deeds, Group 1, 1356 (c. 1205); also on PM 57, PM 1953.
34 NLW, PM 92; Griffiths, ‘Native society’, p. 196
35 H. Pryce (ed.), The Acts of Welsh Rulers: 1120–1283 (Cardiff, 2005), p. 1, includes both major and minor dynasties and ‘individuals… who exercised some measure of authority’ in his definition of native rulers in pre-Conquest Wales.
36 Griffiths, ‘Native society’, p. 191; NLW, PM 1997
37 Griffiths, ‘Native society’, p. 187
38 NLW, PM 1954, 1959, Alaithur ab Idnert (Ythenard)); NLW, PM 1960 Iorwerth (Iorued) ab Idnert (Ythenard).
39 He sealed NLW, PM 61, 2016. L. D. Nicholl, The Normans in Glamorgan, Gower and Kidweli (Cardiff, 1936), p. 136; RCAHMW Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Glamorgan. Vol. III pt. 1a. Medieval Secular Monuments: the early castles from the Norman Conquest to 1217 (London, 1991), pp. 20a, 158b–9a.
40 RCAHMW Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Glamorgan, pp. 20a, 158b–9a. It has been suggested that David Scurlage was not entirely happy with having Morgan ap Caradog as overlord. Rhys Goch refers to Morgan ap Caradog as his overlord in NLW, PM Ch. 1997.
41 M. L. Ryder, ‘Fascinating Fullonum’, Circaea. The Journal of the Association for Environmental Archaeology 11:1 (1994 for 1993), 23–31, esp. 26–30; R. I. Jack, ‘The cloth industry in medieval Wales’, Welsh History Review 10 (1980–1), 447–50.
42 Griffiths, ‘Native society’, p. 188.
43 P. Coss, ‘Knights, esquires and the origins of social gradations in England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th Ser 5 (1995), 155–78, provides an interesting example of how the motif on one seal – in this case a bow and arrow – formed the genesis of an armorial bearing.
44 It is of course possible that he is described by a fraternal relationship rather than a patronymic because he was not the natural son of Rhys Goch the elder.
45 Griffiths, ‘Native society’, pp. 188, 194.
46 NLW, PM 2056 (Patterson dat. 1231 × 1250; Griffiths date ‘no later than 1231’
47 NLW, PM 145.
Notes
1 B. Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago. Signs of Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2010).
2 Bedos-Rezak, When Ego, pp. 186–93; from the art historical point of view: T. Dale, ‘The Individual, the Resurrected Body, and Romanesque Portraiture: The Tomb of Rudolf von Schwaben in Merseburg’, Speculum 77 (2002), 707–43 at 720–1.
3 B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Ego, Ordo, Communitas. Seals and the Medieval Semiotics of Personality (1200–1350)’, in M. Späth, Die Bildlichkeit korporativer Siegel im Mittelalter. Kunstgeschichte und Geschichte im Gespräch (Cologne, 2009), pp. 47–64, in particular at 54–64.
4 P. D. A. Harvey and M. McGuinness, A Guide to British Medieval Seals (Toronto, 1996), pp. 99–107; T. A. Heslop, ‘The Conventual Seals of Canterbury Cathedral’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Canterbury before 1220, eds N. Coldstream, P. Draper and R. Gem (Leeds, 1982), pp. 94–100 at p. 97; M. Späth, ‘Siegelbild und Kathedralgotik. Die Ästhetik der Siegel englischer Kathedralköster zwischen Architekturrezeption, Bilderzählung und Poesie’, Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 37 (2010), 47–71; idem, ‘Mikroarchitektur zwischen Repräsentation und Identitätsstiftung: Die Siegelbilder englischer Klöster und Kathedralkapitel im 13. Jahrhundert’, in Mikroarchitektur im Mittelalter. Ein gattungsübergreifendes Phänomen zwischen Realität und Imagination, eds U. Albrecht and C. Kratzke (Leipzig, 2008), pp. 253–77.
5 I thank Phillipp Schofield and his project team for the kind invitation to present and publish this paper as well as for the thoughtful editing of my paper. I am also indebted to Adrian Ailes and Matthew Sillence for reading of earlier versions and their comments. This paper is part of a larger research project on the imagery of late medieval common seals funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
6 J. Greatrex, ‘The English Monastic Cathedrals and the Rule of St Benedict’, Regula Benedicti Studia 3/4 (1975), 89–99.
7 P. Binski, Becket’s Crown. Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170–1300 (New Haven and London, 2004); see also B. Abou-el-Haj, ‘Artistic integration inside the cathedral precinct: social consensus outside?’ in Artistic integration in Gothic buildings, eds V. Chieffo Raguin, K. Brush and P. Draper (Toronto, 1995), pp. 214–35.
8 This seal is recorded in the two most important catalogues on British medieval monastic seals: W. de Gray Birch, Catalogue of seals in the department of manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London, 1887–1910), at vol. 1, no. 1373–8, and R. Ellis, Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office, vol. 1: Monastic Seals, (London, 1986), no. M 166. The first known impression dates of about 1232/33, see n. 23. There is a long-lasting tradition of its impressions until the sealing of the convent’s acknowledgement of Supremacy to King Henry VIII in 1534: Kew, The National Archives, E 25/25.
9 Essential on the tradition of the three medieval common seals from Christ Church: Heslop, ‘Conventual Seals’, and M. Späth, ‘Architectural Representation and Monastic Identity: The Medieval Seal Images of Christchurch, Canterbury’, in Image, Memory, Devotion. Liber Amicorum Paul Crossley, eds Z. Opačić and A. Timmermann (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 255–63, see there for reproductions of the first (fig 1) and second common seal (fig. 2).
10 The inscription reads: SIGILLVM:ECCLESIE:XPI [sti:can] TVARIE:PRIME:SEDIS:BRITANN[ie].
11 Among many publications on the rich iconographical tradition of Becket’s martyrdom see recently: R. Gameson, ‘The early imagery of Thomas Becket’, in Pilgrimage. The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, eds C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 46–89.
12 Gameson, ‘Early imagery’, pp. 53–4.
13 N. Brooks, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral Community, 597–1070’, A History of Canterbury Cathedral, eds P. Collinson, N. Ramsey and M. Sparks (Oxford, 1995), pp. 1–37 here at p. 3.
14 A. Gransden, Historical writing in England, 2 vols (Ithaca and London, 1983) at vol. 1, pp. 127–31, on the hagiographical as well as historiographical tradition in Canterbury.
15 On the liturgical setting see recently T. Tatton-Brown, ‘Canterbury and the architecture of pilgrimage shrines in England’, in Morris and Roberts (eds), Pilgrimage, pp. 90–107, at p. 91 and p. 105–6, and B. J. Nilson, Cathedral shrines of medieval England (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 67–8.
16 Binski, Becket’s Crown, p. 98.
17 The monastic constitutions of Lanfranc, ed. D. Knowles, rev. C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 2002), p. 202: In crastino igitur sancti Ieromini principium sumat temporis traditionis huius doctrina. In chorum ingressus, si solus fuerit ante gradus prostratus ante magnum altare ibi incururatur in curta uenia quamdiu primus sonitus pulsatur […]. Statim audito signo a priore erigat se et procedat modicum uersus sinistrum ante altare sancti Alphegi […], et signo iterum audito […], erigat se […] et procedat ad dextram […] ante altare sancti Dunstani ubi sicut prius incuratus […].
18 Among the numerous publications on this subject matter, I highlight C.R. Cheney, ‘Magna carta Beati Thome. another Canterbury forgery’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 36 (1963), 1–26.
19 Most recently among the vast amount of publications on this issue: Binski, Becket’s Crown, chap. 1, pp. 3–27; M. F. Hearn, ‘Canterbury Cathedral and the Cult of Thomas Becket’, Art Bulletin 26 (1994), 19–54; S. Blick, ‘Reconstructing the Shrine of saint Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral’, in Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles, eds S. Blick and R. Tekippe (Leiden, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 405–41.
20 Cheney, ‘Magna carta’, 8–9; Binski, Becket’s Crown, p. 36.
21 Binski, Becket’s Crown, pp. 16–27; P. Draper, ‘Interpretations of the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral, 1174–1186’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 56 (1997), 184–203; idem, The Formation of English Gothic. Architecture and Identity (New Haven and London, 2006), pp. 13–33. Frank Druffner’s thoughtful study of this building campaign, idem, Der Chor der Kathedrale von Canterbury. Architektur und Geschichte bis 1220 (Egelsbach, 1994), deserves much more attention that it has so far received from English-speaking scholarship.
22 Tatton-Brown, ‘Canterbury’, p. 95–6; B. Dobson, ‘The Monks of Canterbury in the Later Middle Ages, 1220–1540’, in Collinson, Ramsey and Sparks (eds), History, pp. 69–153 here at pp. 68–70.
23 Birch, Catalogue I, no. 1187. Under his tenure the conflict with the monks reached its climax, see Cheney, ‘Magna carta’, 6–8.
24 Späth, ‘Siegelbild’, 61–2.
25 Draper, Formation, pp. 46–7 and pp. 94–5; Späth, ‘Architectural representation’, S. 260–1, with further reading.
26 R. Krautheimer, ‘Introduction to an ‘Iconography of Architecture’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 1–33.
27 Binski, Becket’s Crown, p. 110; P. Williamson, Gothic Sculpture, 1140–1300 (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 107–11, calls these facades “image-screens”; Heslop, ‘Conventual seals’, p. 98.
28 Binski, Becket’s Crown, pp. 103–21, with a discussion of seals at pp. 109–11.
29 It is attached to the charter of Prior John of Sittingbourne and the chapter to Blanche of Castile, widow of King Louis VIII of France, granting officii to his memory; see Paris, Archives nationales: J 461 no 9 (fig. 4). I am very much indebted to Nicholas Vincent for drawing my attention to this impression and its diplomatic context.
30 Harvey and McGuinness, A Guide, pp. 11–13; Späth, ‘Mikroarchitektur‘, pp. 259–62, with references to further reading.
31 Winchester, Hampshire Record Office: 153M88/1; Heslop, ‘Conventual seals’, p. 96; Späth, ‘Siegelbilder’, 56 with fig. 12; idem, ‘Mikroarchitektur’, pp. 261–2.
32 Cheney, ‘Magna carta’, 11–6.
33 For instance the impression attached to WAM: 1642 of 1371 and London, BL: Cotton Ch. xxi.11 of 1418; on the placement of inscriptions on a seal’s rim see Späth, ‘Siegelbilder’, 57–8. I am very much indebted to Dennis Pausch for his thoughtful philological advice on this inscription.
34 + EST HVIC VITA [A]MORI PRO QVA DVM VIXIT // AMORI MORS ERAT ET MEMORIE PER MORTEM VIVIT; for an overall survey on metric seal legends in medieval Latin Europe see most recently T. Diederich, Siegelkunde. Beiträge zu ihrer Vertiefung und Weiterführung (Cologne, 2012), pp. 146–77 at pp. 167–70 for English seals.
35 Bedos-Rezak, When Ego, pp. 140–50.
36 London, BM, Seal-Die no. 831; cataloged by A. B. Tonnochy, Catalogue of Seal-Dies in the British Museum (London, 1952), no. 832; Birch, Catalogue I, no. 2688.
37 Birch, Catalogue I, no. 3109.
38 Birch, Catalogue I, no. 1523; Pedrick, Monastic seals, nos 5–6; the best preserved legend among the surviving impressions is to be found at Westminster Abbey, WAM 7933 (1410 August 13 here figs 6–8). I am very much indebted to Wytse Keulen for his thoughtful philological advice on this inscription.
39 M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (London, 1993), pp. 314–5, has already considered the function of seals as tools capable of bearing secrets; his discussion in this respect is however limited primarily to private seals, and in particular to those of women from the thirteenth century.
40 On the medieval history of Ely in general see the various essays in A History of Ely Cathedral, eds P. Meadows and N. Ramsay (Woodbridge, 2003).
41 For the extraordinarily rich documentary tradition regarding Ely’s pre-1109 history see S. Keynes, ‘Ely abbey 672–1109’ in History of Ely, eds Meadows and Ramsay, pp. 3–58 here at pp. 3–10; on the visual culture see Binski, Becket’s Crown, chap. 4 at pp. 81–101.
42 The surviving account rolls of Ely sacrist’s from the fourteenth century onwards regularly include expenses for a goldsmith, and one evidently working on the premises: Ralf of Walsham’s comptus (1302–3) includes an account of silver for the making of the new bishop’s seal matrix, see F. R. Chapman, Sacrist rolls of Ely, vol 2: Transcriptions (Cambridge, 1907), p. 18; in Alan de Walsingham’s account (1335–6) payments for the rebuilding of a goldsmith’s workshop are recorded, see, p. 57.
43 Binski, Becket’s Crown, pp. 84–7.
44 The work is thoughtfully edited by E. O. Blake, Liber Eliensis (London, 1962), and has recently been translated by J. Fairweather, Liber Eliensis. A history of the Isle of Ely from the seventh century to the twelfth. Compiled by a Monk of Ely in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2005). A good overview of the work’s background is provided by Keynes, ‘Ely Abbey’, pp. 8–9.
45 From the hagiographical perspective see Binski, Becket’s Crown, pp. 84–5, and Keynes, ‘Ely Abbey’, pp. 10–4.
46 On the historical context see Keynes, ‘Ely Abbey’, pp. 18–27. This dedication is recorded in a document inserted into to the chronicle, and purporting to be king Edgar’s foundation charter, see Blake (ed.), Liber Eliensis, II, 5, p. 77: monasterium, quod in regione Ely situm dinoscitur, antiquitus sancti Petri apostolorum principis honore dedicatum.
47 Past research has repeatedly identified the latter person as St Etheldreda, see Pedrick, Monastic seals, p. 70; also P. Date, ‘Houses of Benedictine monks: Abbey and cathedral priory of Ely‘, in P. Salzman (ed) VCH Cambridgeshire, vol. 2, p. 204. This identification is however incorrect as, according to thirteenth century iconographical conventions, the image clearly shows a male, royal figure.
48 Blake (ed.), Liber Eliensis, II, 53, p. 122: Ita per viginti miliaria terrestri via progressi, ad fluvium in Brandune devenere ingressique cum illo vitali ferculo.
49 It is suggested that the transformation of the abbey into a cathedral priory in 1109, however, did not become a subject of the monks’ seal imagery because, as they lost much of their former wealth in the process, it may have been viewed as an event unsuitable for commemoration in this way. See E. Miller, The abbey and bishopric of Ely. The social history of an ecclesiastical estate from the tenth century to the early fourteenth century (Cambridge, 1951).
50 N. Coldstream, The Decorated Style. Architecture and Ornament, 1240 – 1360 (London, 1994), pp. 35–9.
51 Späth, ‘Siegelbilder’, 66.
52 P. Draper, ‘Bishop Northwold and the Cult of Saint Etheldreda’, idem and N. Coldstream (eds), Medieval Art and Architecture at Ely Cathedral (London, 1979), pp. 8–27.
53 Coldstream, Decorated Style, p. 48.
54 This seal can be dated slightly later, to around 1300, see Birch, Catalogue I, no. 3109; Ellis, Catalogue, no. M 671; Pedrick, Monastic seals, no. 39.
Notes
1 The authors are grateful to Dr Fiona Sheales for drawing attention to the plan, Dr Tim Pestell, Steven Ashley, Dr Adrian Marsden, Dr Giorgia Bottinelli and Paris Agar of Norfolk Museums and Archaeology service for allowing access to the Blomefield plan and extensive cast collections in Norwich Castle Museum. We would like to thank Susan Maddock of Norfolk Record Office for her advice on the collections in Norwich and King’s Lynn, and Bridget Gillies of the University of East Anglia Special Collections for access to their copy of Blomefield’s text. Our thanks also go to Professor Paul Harvey for signalling previous work on cartographic history.
2 F. Blomefield and C. Parkin, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Containing a Description of the Towns, Villages, and Hamlets, 5 vols (Fersfield, 1739–1775).
3 Norwich’s earliest surviving printed map is dated to 1558, and it also happens to be the earliest surviving map of any English town, J. Elliot, The City in Maps: Urban Mapping to 1900 (London, 1987), p. 39 and R. Frostick, The Printed Plans of Norwich, 1558–1840: A Casto-Bibliography (Norwich, 2002, pp. 1–4. Engraved by John Bettes for William Cunningham, and published in the latter’s 1559 The Cosmographical Glasse, this woodcut features many of the key buildings in the city at the time. This can be consulted in Cambridge University Library Maps.bb.77.55.1. Further representations of the city were created by Georg Hoefnagle in 1577, who included a list of 21 places and buildings of note in the city. This time it was a view across the city from an imagined vantage point. At the top left are the royal arms, and at the top right the arms of the city of Norwich itself. Along the bottom border, in the centre is a man and a woman. Georg Hoefnagle was a Flemish painter and engraver who produced this view of Norwich for his Civitates orbis terrarum (1577). T. Chubb, A Descriptive List of the Printed Maps of Norfolk, 1574–1916, ed. G. A. Stephen (Norwich, 1928), pp. 195–6. See also L. Hendrix, ‘Hoefnagel, Joris’, Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T038428>, accessed 17 March 2012 2012.
4 Elliot, The City in Maps: Urban Mapping to 1900, pp. 47–9.
5 Chubb, A Descriptive List of the Printed Maps of Norfolk, 1574–1916, pp. 204–6 and Frostick, Printed Plans, pp. 29–33.
6 Ibid. pp. 37–8. Kirkpatrick’s inclusion of a series of coins from Norwich was clearly influential as the cartographer, Hermann Moll, produced a plan of the county of Norfolk for his book A New Description of England and Wales (1724). They are described here as ‘Saxon coins’. For further information on Moll’s coins, see P. D. A. Harvey and Y. Harvey, ‘The Coins on Hermann Moll’s Maps of the Counties of England and Wales’, in Accurata Descriptio: studier i kartografi, numismatik, orientalisk och biblioteksväsen tillägnade Ulla Ehrensvärd, eds G. Bäärnhielm and U. Ehrensvärd, Acta Bibliothecae Regiae Stockholmiensis (Stockhom, 2003), pp. 169– 200 at p. 169, who note that the depiction of coins on county maps was not common in the early eighteenth century.
7 J. A. Oddy, ‘Rastrick, William (bap. 1697, d. 1752)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23154>, accessed 8 February 2012 2012.
8 F. Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: containing a description of the towns, villages, and hamlets, with the foundations of monasteries, churches, chapels, chantries, and other religious buildings, ed. C. Parkin, 11 vols, 2nd edn (London, 1805–10), vol. II, p. 50.
9 This design has certain parallels with the two-sided matrix of Inchaffray Abbey from Perthshire, Scotland. See V. Glenn, ‘Thirteenth-century seals – Tayside, Fife and the wider world’, Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal 5 (1999), 146–62.
10 W. De Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London, 1887–1900) vol. II, cat. no. 5149, p. 127. Rastrick ‘modernises’ the legend as ‘sigillum communitatis lenne regis’ in reference to the new constitution of the borough, granted by Henry VIII and preserved in King’s Lynn Record Office (KL/C 2/46) of 27 June 1524. This is not justified by any change actually made to the matrix itself.
11 The authors are grateful to Michael Walker for information on the Corporation Hall Books and Committee Reports of Lynn Grammar School, Kings Lynn Borough Archives.
12 Still the most useful texts on such objects are L. F. W. Jewitt and W. H. St John Hope, The Corporation Plate and Insignia of Office of the Cities and Towns of England and Wales, 2 vols (London, 1895).
13 D. Stoker, ‘Blomefield, Francis (1705–1752)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2663>, accessed 17 March 2012 2012.
14 F. Blomefield, The Correspondence of the Reverend Francis Blomefield (1705–52), ed. D. Stoker (London, 1992), p. 39.
15 C. Haydon, ‘Gooch, Sir Thomas, second baronet (1675–1754)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10941>, accessed 18 March 2012 2012.
16 P. Browne, The History of Norwich: from the earliest records to the present time (Norwich, 1814), p. 279.
17 This is seal no. 140: ‘The Seal of the Corporation for the Norfolk Clergymen’s Widows and Orphans’. The legend reads: ‘* SIGILL.’ GUBERNATORVM : CHARITATIS : IN SUPPET : VIDUAR : & LIB : CLER : NORVIC & NORF :’.
18 This seal is in F. Blomefield and C. Parkin, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, vol. II, at p. 534, and is dedicated to Thomas Martin.
19 Chubb, A Descriptive List of the Printed Maps of Norfolk, 1574–1916, p. 211.
20 D. Stoker, ‘Martin, Thomas (1697–1771)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18212>, accessed 17 March 2012 2012, citing the preface to T. Martin and R. Gough, The History of the Town of Thetford (London, 1779), p. ix.
21 Stoker, ‘Blomefield, Francis (1705–1752)’.
22 Blomefield, The Correspondence of the Reverend Francis Blomefield (1705–52), pp. 41–2.
23 Ibid., p. 242 (letter no. 275) and Frostick, Printed Plans, pp. 44–7.
24 M. Myrone, ‘Vertue, George (1684–1756)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28252>, accessed 18 March 2012 2012. Vertue was evidently interested in seals in the last decade of his career, for in 1753 he published an entire volume on the medals, coins and great-seals that had been produced under the reign of Charles I and the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell: G. Vertue, Medals, coins, great-seals, impressions, from the elaborate works of Thomas Simon: chief Engraver of the Mint. to K. Charles the Ist to the Common Wealth, the Lord Protector Cromwell and in the Reign of K. Charles ye Ist to MDCLXV (London, 1753).
25 An impression in the British Library is said to have been cut from a charter of 1226. De Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum vol. II, cat. no. 5234, p. 143. For Walter’s oeuvre, J. Alexander and P. Binski (eds), The Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200–1400 (London, 1987), cat. no. 453, p. 397 and for the London seal cat. no. 193, p. 273.
26 For the design of Norwich keep, T. A. Heslop, Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context (Norwich, 1994).
27 Blomefield and Parkin, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Containing a Description of the Towns, Villages, and Hamlets vol. II, p. xx. The only known extant impression is on a loose seal in the British Library where it is on the reverse of the Bailiff’s seal.
28 C. Rawcliffe and R. G. Wilson (eds), Medieval Norwich (London, 2004), p. 34.
29 C. S. Perceval, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries IX (2nd Ser) (June 1883), pp. 253–61 at p. 261.
30 Ibid. and also C. S. Perceval, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, VII (2nd Ser) (December 1878), pp. 107–19.
31 T. A. Heslop, ‘The Medieval Conventual Seals’, in Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese 1096–1996, ed. I. Atherton (London, 1996), pp. 443–50.
32 The attribution of the writing to Le Neve is made in the Catalogue of Loose Seals, a handwritten volume on open shelf in the British Library manuscript room. The relevant section was compiled in the late 1830s.
33 Blomefield and Parkin, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Containing a Description of the Towns, Villages, and Hamlets, vol. III, p. 95.
34 Jewitt and Hope, The Corporation Plate and Insignia of Office of the Cities and Towns of England and Wales, vol. II, p. 186.
35 The city accounts for the years 1404 and 1405 are now missing so these details cannot be checked. Blomefield presumably had access to them or at least to extracts.
36 ‘This daye by the concente of this howse for diverse good causes yt is agreyd that the comon seale of the Cittye shalbe ateryd on that syd that the pycture of the Trinety ys graven.’ Norfolk Record Office NCR Case 16d/3, fol. 203. The document is dated 21 September 1572. This reference is mentioned in George A. Stephen’s notes for a text on Norwich civic regalia, Norfolk Record Office MS 11346.
37 Blomefield asserts that the mayor had two matrices made, but the one he describes as ‘in use to this day’ is a reworking of the 1404 matrix: it has the same legend identically disposed, and makes no reference to the ‘ad causas’ function he proposes. Blomefield and Parkin, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Containing a Description of the Towns, Villages, and Hamlets vol. III, p. 895. This seal is also mentioned in G. Pedrick, Borough Seals of the Gothic Period (London, 1904), pl. xxxvi, no. 72.
38 Norfolk Record Office NCR Case 16a/8, fol. 61. The document is dated 26 June 1568. This reference is also mentioned in Stephen’s notes, Norfolk Record Office MS 11346.
39 The architectural framework and arms are identical in both versions of the seal, although such is the damage to the legend on the cast that full comparison is impossible.
40 P. Cattermole, Wymondham Abbey: A History of the Monastery and Parish Church (Wymondham, 2007), pp. 98–9 and p. 258.
41 Two other friary seals appear: the Sack Friars (suppressed in 1307) and the Friars Minor (see below).
42 The date of the fire is recorded by Thomas Walsingham in his Chronica Maiora. T. Walsingham, The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, II, 1394–1422, eds J. Taylor, W. R. Childs, and L. Watkiss, Oxford Medival Texts, 2 (Oxford, 2011), pp. 620–21. Blomefield perhaps knew the miracle from its inclusion in The Golden Legend. See J. De Voragine and W. Granger Ryan, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, 2 vols (Princeton, 1995), vol. II, p. 45.
43 See C. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul: Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital, St Giles’s, Norwich, c. 1249–1550 (Stroud, 1999).
44 K. Slocum Brainerd, ‘Martir quod Stillat Primatis ab Ore Sigillat: Sealed with the Blood of Becket’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 165 (2012), 61–88 at pp. 81–4, fig. 29.
45 C. Rawcliffe and R. G. Wilson (eds), Norwich Since 1550 (London, 2004), p. 60 and R. Houlbrooke, ‘Refoundation and Reformation, 1538–1628’, in Norwich Cathedral: Church, City, and Diocese, 1096–1996, ed. I. Atherton (London, 1996), pp. 507–39.
46 Blomefield and Parkin, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Containing a Description of the Towns, Villages, and Hamlets vol. IV, p. 359.
47 C. N. L. Brooke, A History of Gonville and Caius College (Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 161–71. Bek’s seal was also the first episcopal seal at Norwich to feature the arms of the bishop, a point made by Blomefield in the key to the plan. For the seals of the Bishops of Norwich, see T. G. Bayfield, ‘A Descriptive Catalogue of the Seals of the Bishops of Norwich, from A.D. DCCCL to the Reformation’, Norfolk Archaeology I (1847), pp. 305–23.
Notes
1 I am grateful to Evan Chapman and Mark Lodwick of the National Museum of Wales for their co-operation in the preparation of this paper, especially where the images are concerned.
2 One of the earliest listing of seals in a Welsh museum was that by the modeller and sigillarist R. Ready (1811–1901), who published ‘A Catalogue of Seals connected with Wales in the Museums of Swansea, Caernarvon and Ludlow’: Archaeologia Cambrensis [hereafter: Arch. Camb.] 1860, pp. 281–4; another useful early listing was that by W. de Gray Birch, ‘On Some MSS and Seals relating to Wales in the British Museum’: Arch. Camb. 1889, pp. 273–92.
3 ‘Catalogue of the Contents of the Museum at the Monmouth Meeting, Arch. Camb. 1857, pp. 426. Journal of the British Archaeological Association XIV, pp. 56–8.
4 W. Bagnal-Oakeley, ‘Monmouth’, Arch. Camb. 1886, 26–7. The matrix is now National Museum of Wales [hereafter: NMW] Seal Die 27.
5 Letter of 23-07-1983. I am grateful also for correspondence regarding this seal from Mr A.L. Jones (6-03-1992) and Dr M. P. Siddons (13-03-1992).
6 National Library of Wales [hereafter: NLW] Badminton Deed [Group 1] 1565 (of 1452) and Milborne Deed 103 (fragment from 1447).
7 S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Wales (2nd edn., London, 1840) I, non-paginated. The National Museum holds a resin cast (59a), and several impressions (W245–8).
8 NMW, Accession File 38.422.
9 Calendar of Papal Registers (Letters) I, 43, 87, 109.
10 D. H. Williams, Catalogue of Seals in the National Museum of Wales I (Cardiff, 1993) 9, pp. 65–6, 102; II (1998) p. 54.
11 Two bullae of Honorius III (1216–27) and one of Alexander IV (1254–61). These form Seals B4, B5 and B9 in the National Museum.
12 National Museum Seal B11.
13 These bullae are now preserved in Newport Museum.
14 Alexander IV in 1261 issued a bull in favour of all the abbeys of the Order, exempting them from attendance at “synods and foreign assemblies” (NLW, References 173 and 179).
15 By Joanne Hall at National Grid Reference (hereafter: NGR) 3097 9275. NMW Portable Find 2010.94.1.
16 I am grateful to Mr David Harpin for giving me his thoughts on this matter, and communicating to me his collection of halves and quarters of papal bullae: e-mail message of 9 May 2012.
17 D. Knowles, Saints and Scholars (Cambridge, 1963), p. 187.
18 A comment made at the Seals Conference, Aberystwyth, April 2012. A signet ring bearing a merchant’s mark was found in a grave at Llantwit Major, Glamorgan, and presented to the British Museum in 1852 by the Revd. John M. Traherne: O. M. Dalton, Catalogue of Finger Rings in the British Museum (London, 1912), p. 86 No. 566; J. Cherry and M. Redknap, ‘Medieval and Tudor Finger Rings’, Arch. Camb. CXL (1991), p. 124; Williams (1993), p. 62 W. 447 illus.
19 G. C. Boon, ‘The Seal-matrix of Abergwili College, Carms.’, Antiquaries Journal XLVI (1966), pp. 104–07. The seal is now National Museum Die 1.
20 C. H. Talbot, Letters to Cîteaux (London, 1967), pp. 100–02, p. 176, p. 192, pp. 198–9: gatherings of Cistercian abbots regularly took place in London or Leicester in the 1480s and 1490s. In 1499 they were due to meet at Barnet, but because of plague in London removed to Leicester; E. K. Clark, ‘The Foundation of Kirkstall Abbey’, Publications of the Thoresby Society IV (Leeds, 1895), p. 207.
21 NMW Accession File 55.202. The silver matrix of this seal is known, and some have thought it to be a forgery. The Barry find is now NMW Seal F9.
22 They were the lead seal of William Malherbe (of c. 1270–1300) found in 1978, and a finger ring discovered in 1988 bearing perhaps the initials, I. R. These dies are now respectively NMW Seal Dies 34 and 33.
23 M. Redknap, and D. H. Williams, ‘A Seal Matrix from Aberavon Beach, Port Talbot’, Morgannwg XLIII (1999), p. 90. The find-spot was NGR: SS 738 897.
24 The matrix is now held in the Department of Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum; an impression in Cardiff is NMW C40.
25 The matrix is now NMW D.12.
26 M. Lodwick and D. H. Williams, ‘Gwent Seals XII’, Monmouthshire Antiquary XXVIII (2012), p. 118. The find spot was NGR: ST 367 952.
27 Robbers were a hazard of medieval travel. In 1304, the Cistercian abbot of Kirkstall by Leeds and his party set out to go to the General Chapter in France; he meant to stay en route first at Roche abbey in the south of Yorkshire, but writing home he said that “we were warned robbers were lying in wait in the woods near Roche, and so we evaded them.” Clark, ‘Foundation of Kirkstall Abbey’, p. 207.
28 The matrix is currently on loan from the British Museum (Dept of Medieval and Later Antiquities) to the National Museum of Wales where it is D.24. It is possible that this is not the original seal, but a silver electrotype made at the close of the nineteenth century from the original matrix: Williams (1993), p. 25 D.24.
29 The legend may end: ….nlleir. The seal is now in the ownership of Llanllŷr House.
30 The matrix is now preserved in the National Museum of Wales.
31 This seal also reposes in the National Museum.
32 Calendar of Patent Rolls 1283, 71. The matrix was brought in for identification to the Dyfed Archaeological Trust in 2003. At Cedweli Castle have been found a probable seal of Sir John Digby [NMW, Die 31] and a seal bearing the letters, b.o.f., surmounted by a crown [NMW, Die 44].
33 Arch. Camb. 1853, pp. 200–01; 1895, p. 11. This copy is now in the National Museum’s collections as D.32: Williams (2003), p. 26 D. 32
34 J. A. Bradney, Sir, A History of Monmouthshire, Vol. 3, Pt 2: The Hundred of Usk (London, 1923), reprinted by Merton Priory Press (1993), p. 218.
35 M. Lodwick and D. H. Williams, ‘Gwent Seals XII’, Monmouthshire Antiquary XXVIII (2012), p. 117. The find spot was NGR: ST 3498 0478.
36 NMW, D 28 and 29 respectively. Another seal found at Cardiff Castle bore the sacred initials: i h c [NMW, Die 26].
37 The find was made by the late Geoff Mein; the block is now in Newport Museum with a replica in the National Museum.