ON THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT SEALS OF ENGLAND, ESPECIALLY THOSE OF EDWARD III.
BY ROBERT WILLIS, JACKSONIAN PROFESSOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
In the elucidation of the history of architectural decoration, seals are particularly useful; more especially with respect to tabernacle-work, with which they are often most profusely decorated, and they exhibit the progress of this class of ornament through all its different stages. Of course this help to history can only be made available when the date of the seal is known: monastic and cathedral seals fail in this respect, they rarely correspond to the original foundation of the establishment to which they belong, and were evidently renewed from time to time, at unrecorded periods, as the art of seal-engraving advanced. Personal seals, such as the seals of kings and bishops, may generally be assigned to the time at which the office in question was undertaken by the individual, and thus their date is fixed, with some few exceptions where two or more were employed by the same person; still the date lies within the limits of the assumption of the office and the death of the official. My immediate object is with the great seals of England. Warton[1] shewed their use in elucidating the history of architecture, but without entering into any particulars, and he seems to have had no better authority than the rude woodcuts of Speed, who gives one seal to each monarch, with the exception of Edward III., and some others, to whom he assigns two. This is not the real state of the case, some of the kings adopted their predecessor's seal, either taking the identical matrix with some small alteration, or else copying it. Others had several seals, so that to use the Seals for our purpose it is necessary to investigate their history. A principal source of information respecting this is to be found in the dates of the documents to which these seals are appended, and from which the periods during which they were used, are directly ascertainable. Sandford[2] has engraved good representations of the seals, and generally gives the date of the documents from which he has taken them. Excellent engravings are also
