If you’re still reading this, it’s probably safe to cut to the chase. Both are detector finds; the first one is French, c. mid-13th century, posted here a while ago. The second is English, c. mid-13th -early 14th c. I’d been watching the first one, on French ebay (which closed vaguely in the stratosphere), having recently fallen into the other one, thanks to lack of attribution, on UK ebay. Alphonse de Poitiers, d. 1271), Count of Poitou from 1225, Count of Toulouse and Marquis of Provence from 1249. Obv. Alphonse riding left. His horse’s livery displays the arms of his royal parents: the fleur-de-lis of Louis VIII to the left, the castles of Blanche de Castile to the right. *ALFONSVS.COMES PICTAVIE[ENSIS: ET ThOL:[OSENSIS] (Alphonse, Count of Poitou and Toulouse.) Rev. Toulouse coat of arms (the ‘Cross of Toulouse’). +MARCHIO: PROVINCIE: (Marquis of Provence.) Obv. Shield with three fleurs-de-lis. +WILLE[MO]. BEI[...]D (William [de Bereford?]). Rev. Another shield (?), with one apparent crosslet visible; partial legend, so far eluding decipherment. (mmMaybe [...]PA[?]IMVS???) People here who collect Byzantine will be familiar with lead seals within chronological shouting distance of this stuff, dating from (for yours truly) the dim mists of pre-Comnenan history into at least the 12th century. @Quant.Geek’s recent posts providing resonant recent precedent. But in Western Europe, extant examples are remarkably thin on (or, apparently, in) the ground. Papal ones (c. 12th -13th c.) being, in effect, the sole collective exception. Which is what made the one of Alphonse de Poitiers compelling enough to save .jpgs of it. ...So here I have this lead seal, conspicuously secular, c. 1300, and I’m trawling for anything about this combination of genre and medium. Starting online, from the UKDFD and the Portable Antiquities Scheme, I was able to find very little, either by way of examples (most being ‘post-medieval’ /Tudor and later), or documentation (one fleeting mention of English examples from the 13th century, in an article on the UKDFD website). The near total absence of available information on these was what made the no less distinctly secular French example of Alphonse de Poitiers so compelling in the first place. Back to the English one, from this point, I had a couple of good and bad days. In the interests of full disclosure, I was unabashedly banking on it being of a William de Canteloupe (--there are only more variations of the surname than there are mutually eponymous Williams), and was all settled on which ensuing, mid-13th century William it was. ...All predicated solely on the principal device, or ‘charge,’ three fleurs-de-lis. Thank you, in the inexorable absence of heraldic tinctures (/colors), given the medium. (Cf. the exponentially more numerous examples in wax, from western and central Europe. Of which an improbable number are extant, back to Carolingian ones.) But, the fleur-de-lis being the royal emblem of the Capetian kings of France, this was a correspondingly uncommon device in England, as late as the Parliamentary Roll of c. 1312. Meanwhile, the lettering on this example consists of what, for England, are pretty emphatically middle-period Gothic capitals, c. later 13th -earlier 14th centuries. --Especially in this sort of medium; evoking the lettering in the New Coinage /long cross issues of Edward I (from 1272), as well as the wax seals on the Barons’ Letter of 1301 (from, in one conspicuous instance, c. 1250). (Scott-Ellis passim.; cf. Harvey, esp. pp. 51-3, esp. Fig. 49.) Conspicuously, there’s none of the ligature that you see in the voided long cross pennies of Henry III (c. 1247-72), which so funly evokes contemporary manuscripts. Humpherey-Smith lists the three fleurs-de-lis, with every combination of tinctures, as of extant English rolls of arms from c. 1275 -1312. With the names of everyone of record having borne them. (Cf. pp. 5-8 for the nature and chronological range of the sources; pp. 436-7 for the blazons (descriptions of the coats of arms) in question, with the ‘charge’ (central device) ‘3 fleurs-de-lis.’) Except, he’s necessarily limited to the surviving rolls of the period. Not least in terms of any relatives who may have borne the same coats of arms at the same time as any of them. The rolls typically were drawn up (sometimes with fun, if somewhat doggerel verse in Old French --nothing near the level of troubadour lyrics, even in translation) to commemorate a specific event; for instance, a tournament, or a siege. Right, and they only record the participants. This is a small lens. Triangulating from these coordinates, such as they are, Humphrey-Smith has no candidates named ‘William’ who aren’t either Cantilupes (his preferred spelling; Cawley’s, following primary sources in medieval Latin, is ‘Cantelo’), or from one anomolously late roll, dating to c. 1530. ...Right, methodologically, I was kind of looking at Occam’s Razor, just --given the paucity of available references-- with a duller implement. Someone else with the same heraldic motif, with the blason ‘Argent, three fleurs-de-lis sable,’ was one Simon Bereford, of record as of the Parliamentary Roll, 1312. Back to this example, this is when the second part of the extant obverse legend, after ‘WILLE .’, suddenly began to read: “BE [...indistinct, or frankly missing letters, ending with] D.’ Here’s one rendering of the blazon of Simon de Bereford, as of the Parliamentary Roll of 1312. (Argent, three fleurs-de-lis sable; from the Aspilogia website: http://aspilogia.com/N-Parliamentary_Roll/N-0833-0959.html ) At this point, what I could squint out of the obverse legend, such as it was, scored an English football point against the more insistently visual --thank you, heraldic-- data. I had to find out who else in the Bereford family could possibly have been of coat armor as of circa temp. Edward I. (Again with resort to the lettering style for chronology.) The similarity of the arms to the Canteloupes was easily explainable on on a more geographic basis. As of the mid-13th century, the Cantiloupes were neighbors of Simon de Montfort in Warwickshire, as well as friends and eventual adherents. (Cf. Maddicott, esp. pp. 66.) The Berefords, originally based in Warwickshire, could easily have begun their heraldic life, as a family, as subtenants of the Canteloupes. And, yes, there was a William de Bereford (d. 1326), a chief justice of Edward I. Given extensive mention, in that capacity, in Prestwich’s biography of Edward I. While Prestwich didn’t go into such detail, the Wiki entry --a stub, only citing two versions of the DNB-- notes him having gotten his surname from Bereford, Warks. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bereford) His post continued into the reign of Edward II. One son is named, Edmund, a clerk; no Simon (...who easily could have been a grandson as of 1312). This was followed by some trawling of operant primary sources online. --In which I’m far less fluent than I could wish. The main prey being independent confirmation that this William --not a Canteloupe namesake-- was likely to issue a seal of coat armor. ...As of the later reign of Edward I, there was already some fluidity in the status of knighthood; people who held as much as a full ‘knight’s fee’ of land might find it far more economical to avoid the expense and potential risk of the formal status. (Cf. this record of a William Bereford holding a knight’s fee in the neighboring county of Staffordshire, c. 1323: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/inquis-post-mortem/vol6/pp252-263#highlight-first .) Conversely, people in high civil office --notably mayors-- were already adopting arms. But I didn’t want to presume on that, any more than on the preceding; since Berefords had held land as of the 13th century, I wanted to see this William explicitly described as a knight. Here I struck gold. For the purposes at hand, it doesn’t need to get any more explicit than this. ...Thank you, never once having seen a copy in print, Dugdale Just Gets to be Good Enough. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A36791.0001.001/1:11.91?rgn=div2;view=fulltext ...This left the persistently enigmatic reverse of the seal. What I can see of the presumed shield suggests nothing of the arms of William de Bereford’s wife, Margaret de Plessy. Likewise with what’s left of the legend. ...Is it not a shield at all, and/or does it refer to something else, in a judicial, other feudal, or (Even, Gasp) a commercial capacity? In the absence of known precedent, I’m clueless. But even so far, it's been a good romp. References (Thank you, print only). Harvey, P. D.A. and McGuinness, Andrew. A Guide to British Medieval Seals. (1996: British Library, republished by the Uni of Toronto in the same year.) [A seamless combination of lucid history and illustrative detail.] Humphrey-Smith, Cecil R. Anglo-Norman Armory Two: An Ordinary of Thirteenth-Century Armorials. Canterbury, 1984. [Only recommended to people who are already in too deep. As such, frankly indispensable.] Maddicott, J. R. Simon de Montfort. Cambridge, 1994. Prestwich, Michael. Edward I. 1988. New Haven: 1997. [Scott-Ellis, Thomas, 8th] Lord Howard de Walden, ed. /trans. Some Feudal Lords and their Seals. 1903. Bristol: Cathedral Publishing /Crecy, 1984. [A remarkably thorough treatment of each of the heraldic seals on the Barons’ Letter of 1301, sent by Edward I to Pope Boniface VIII, defending his ostensible right to the Scottish throne. ...Only an Edwardian with Lots of time on his hands could have done this.]
After carefully reading this article , it is a really helpful for the deeper research for medieval seals. Great work and great seal pieces . many thanks for sharing and the article @ VGO.DUCKS .
Many thanks, @Henry112345. ...And Please, always remember, you know neatly twice as many languages as I do!!!
Ah, sphragistics - a wonderfully painful way to conduct time-consuming scavenger hunts of research! I‘m typing from my phone and am unfortunately in a bit of a hurry, therefore just a very quick remark: For several reasons (material, shape, size, technique of manufacture), I strongly suspect that your second item is an alnage seal, not a personal seal formerly attached to a document. This might help you with your search.
...Ah, going full-on Greek on me, vs. sigillography (a tad less anachronistic in the immediate context, maybe?)! :<} Yes, the cloth seals are the overwhelming majority of what's extant in England, but they're no less overwhelmingly Tudor and later. The mention in the UKDFD article about ones as early as the 13th or 14th century was fleeting. Don't remember off the top of my head whether that was in reference to unusually early alnage seals, or ones that may have been used in any different capacity. The research for English examples as early as this is conspicuous by its extreme paucity. Theoretically, research on contemporaneous ones in France, as the one of Alphonse de Poitiers, would be a big help.
