This incident was dramatised by Shake speare in Act II., Scene i., of the third part of Henry VI. : — A PLAIN NKAR MORTIMER'S CROSS.
Edward. Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns? Riehard. Three glorious suns, each one a per fect sun; etc., etc. Edward. 'Tis wondrous strange, the like yet never heard of.
delivered it unto me, so here I deliver it unto you to the use and behoofe of your sonne,' and therewith hee betooke her the Great Seale, and departed home againe, even in the dawning of the day."
Richard III. used one Great Seal; Henry VII. had one, and another for special use in French affairs. Now we reach Henry VIII., who had three Great Seals : sec No. 8, and the Golden Bulla shown in No. 9. Whate'er it bodes, henceforward will I bear Although the original of No. 8 is some Upon ray target three fair-shining suns. what worn and its points of high-relief flat And so this Great Seal of Edward IV. tened — see the King's knees and nose — we at once notice the has the intermediate distant advance in spaces in its back realistic portraiture ground or field filled shown by this Great with suns in splen Seal of Henry VIII., dour. as compared with It is doubtful earlier seals: this w h e t h e r the illfeature exists in all starred Edward V., the Great Seals from who reigned for only Henry's time to the two or three months, present, and the sim ever had a Great Seal. plicity of the Gothic Both Birch and Wyon design of our early doubt the existence of seals is strongly con one, but the latter trasted by the elabor authority states that ation of this seal of Speed the historian Henry VIII. and of its engraves the Great successors. Henry's Seal of Edward IV. No. 9 as that of Edward V., legend, engraved here, King Henry the Eighth's Golden Bulla, with which he sealed the Treaty of the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1527. and there is a pas is a proud one, and Diameter 3.5 inches. Legend : ordine . ivngvntvr . et . the title " et in terra sage in Speed's " His PERSTANT . FEDERE . CVNCTA. Kntrsc. tory" which shows ccelesia Anglicana that the seal was so regarded : The Queen- et Hibernica supremum caput" around Mother was in sore distress to hear of the which storms of controversy raged, and on Duke of Gloucester's summary and violent account of which Sir Thomas More and action with regard to the aunt of her friends, others died, here takes its cut-in place on Wyon suggests Lord Rivers and others, and she lamented the King's Great Seal. to the Archbishop of York, who replied : — that this new seal was made because of the adoption of this title by the King. "' Madam, bee of good cheare; for I assure Henry's Golden Bulla, shown in No. 9, you, if they crowne any other King then your was expressly made and chased for the con sonne, whom they have now with them, we shal firmation of the Treaty of 1527 — the Treaty on the morrow crown his brother, whom you have here with you; and here is the great Seale, which of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, to use the in like sort as that noble Prince your husband title which charmed our childhood. This
