Medieval Armorial Seals in the National Archives (UK)

chapter 5 Medieval Armorial Seals in The National Archives (UK)

Adrian Ailes

The immense heraldic value of the vast collection of seals housed in The Na- tional Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter tna) has long been recog- nized.1 This outstanding assemblage of seals is one of the largest in the world, with over 100,000 impressions. They well reflect the unbroken nature of tna’s public records of central government and those of the common law and equity courts that once sat at Westminster. As such, they cover not only the rise of seals in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries but also the emergence of heraldry in the second quarter of the twelfth century right through its heyday and to the very end of the Middle Ages. Seals, along with developments in arms and armor and the rise of tourna- ments, were crucial to the introduction, growth and dissemination of early heraldry. Armorial bearings—hereditary shield devices used systematically— first appeared on “equestrian” seals in the 1130s. Here the seal owner was typically dressed as a mounted knight in full armour, his shield (and occasionally banner and horse caparison) displaying his personal device. By the end of the twelfth century a shield of arms alone was employed on small counterseals impressed into the back of equestrian seals, and, shortly after, larger single-sid- ed “armorial” seals displaying just the shield of arms were being used in their own right (see below). Seals may, in fact, have been directly responsible for the introduction of heraldic “supporters”—those figures human or otherwise that flank a shield of arms as if upholding or guarding it. Engravers may well have introduced them in order to fill the space between the shield and outer legend of the seal. Seals also helped ensure the widespread popularity of heraldry amongst non-combatants such as women, churchmen, and lawyers, and eventually with corporate bodies including guilds, colleges, and religious houses, and their officers. As those of lesser status—esquires from the early fourteenth

1 For the best overview of its medieval collections see Guide to the Contents of the Public Record Office, vol. 1 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1963), and for its seals, Hilary Jenkin- son, Guide to Seals in the Public Record Office (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1968).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/978900439144 4_007 156 Ailes century and, in the following century, gentlemen—required seals to authen- ticate transactions and personal correspondence, they too bore arms as a unique visual marker of identity and association, which, in turn, they passed down to their own children. Coats of arms (so called because they were placed on a knight’s surcoat) rapidly became an integral part of medieval noble, mil- itary and chivalric life—symbols of “family pride and social importance.”2 They could reflect lineage, patronage, family ties, and feudal allegiance. One of the main media for their display and communication was the seal. Seals provide important, strictly contemporary, often very personal, and detailed ev- idence for early heraldry.3 Even before the twelfth century and the appearance of heraldry, seals (and coins) had carried personal symbols, often a pun on the family name, and sometimes metamorphosing into hereditary arms when placed upon a shield and handed down through the generations.4 The present study considers the huge contribution armorial seals in tna have made to our knowledge of medieval heraldry (principally that of England) by examining the results of previous surveys and seeking to bring them up to date. It con- cludes with a summary of how best to find heraldry amongst the medieval seals in tna which hopefully will act as a springboard for future research. One of the first to examine the seals for their heraldic content in what was then the Public Record Office was the eminent Victorian genealogist and his- torian, J. H. Round. In a typically seminal article published in 1894 he demon- strated that armorial bearings were first introduced into England in the 1130s and 40s. He based his argument on the chevronny coat of the great medieval house of Clare, believing that “the key to the whole problem” lay “among the Duchy of Lancaster charters, preserved in the Public Record Office”; the “key” in this instance being the equestrian seal of Gilbert, earl of Hertford, dating to the 1140s (Figure 5.1).5 Round noticed faint chevrons on Gilbert’s shield. As three or more chevrons was the coat subsequently passed down through the

2 Anthony Wagner, Heraldry in England (London: King Penguin, 1946), 5. 3 For two specific studies see Adrian Ailes, “Heraldry in Twelfth-Century England: The Evi- dence,” in England in the Twelfth Century: Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1990), 3–10, and Brigitte Bedos Rezak, “L’apparition des armoiries sur les sceaux en Ile-de-France et en Picardie (v. 1130–1230),” in Les Origines des Armoiries, Actes du 2e Colloque de l’Académie internationale d’Héraldique: Bres- sanaone/Brixene, 1981, ed. H. Pinoteau, M. Pastoureau, and M. Popoff (Paris: Léopard d’or, 1982), 23–41. 4 See especially Michel Pastoureau, Traité d’héraldique, 2nd edition (Picard: Paris, 1993), 34, 307–8. 5 tna, DL 27/47 [all references are to tna, Kew, UK, unless stated otherwise]; J. H. Round, “The Introduction of Armorial Bearings into England,” Archaeological Journal 51 (1894): 43–48.