question about medieval seal matrix history

As apt as Dave Evans' and @dltsrq's observations are, I think your reply on the other forum, @Henry112345, is no less so. The fact that Robert de Besing /Basing's caput didn't have a castle puts him securely in the lower echelons of the aristocracy. In England, the larger, heraldic and equestrian seals are much more typical of earls and other members of the upper aristocracy. Even the seals on The Barons' Letter of 1301 cover a wide spectrum of size and elaborateness. --And these aren't 'privy seals,' which were less formal and commensurately less impressive.


Also, the lettering style really does look pretty distinctly on the earlier-13th-c. side. Not the fully realized 'Lombardic' Gothic you get from the second half of the century. That would make it early enough for seals not to have been in common use among the middle class or lower clergy.

 

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To further complicate matters, here is a 3rd Robert of Basing, Vicar of Wooton in Hampshire c. 1297 (search "Robert of Basing" at the following link).
https://books.google.com/books/about/Publications.html?id=akxBAQAAMAAJ

 

Here, a "Robert of Basing" is mentioned as a land holder in The London Eyre of 1244 (289):

"Item the lands which belonged to William Thurstan which the king gave to Henry de Burgh and after to Thomas de Blunville and afterwards to Ralph the Parmenter; the same Ralph endowed his wife with them, and on his death, his wife held them until the war, and afterwards Isabel countess of Gloucester took into her hand and held part of those lands which were of her fee, and afterwards Gilbert de Clare earl of Gloucester enfeoffed therewith Robert of Basing, who held them at the last eyre of the justices. Now however Reginald of Bungay and Ralph of Ely hold them but other lands of the same William which are not of the fee of the earl of Gloucester are now held by the canons of St. Paul's and Walter Buk' who holds in right of his wife who was the daughter of Andrew Nevelun and Robert Auguillun holds a shop in right of his wife, which shop is in Westcheap, and the daughter of Ralph Steperang comes and proffers a charter of King John."

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol6/pp113-128

 

@dlsrq, many thanks for both of your last posts, and the demonstrably intelligent squinting-at-the-screen that you had to resort to in the process. If any of what follows smells like condescension, please receive my cordial apologies. At certain points, I was making a token effort to play catch-up with the level of acquaintance with any of this that other people than you, me or @Henry112345 might have.

Regarding your first post, Yes, where genealogy is concerned, I often swear by this same kind of local history, c. late Victorian -early Edwardian (that's in reference to Edward VIII --we're talking about historiography, not history), and have to just sit back and admire the sources' fluency in the Latin primary sources. (Even if the sources' own Latin was less than stellar, by the standards of a typical British 'Classical Education.' For which I might kill ...well, maybe something discetely bigger than a fly.)

But I still have to read your first entry, from 1297, as being too late to be about this Robert of Basing. ...Still predicated on the seal matrix itself, which, on stylistic grounds (especially the lettering), is still looking pretty emphatically earlier 13th century. In light of your triangulation of the chronology with the geography (Hampshire), I'm having to guess that this was likely a generationally recent descendant who entered the clergy. This was routine in aristocratic families; younger sons --even namesakes-- were farmed out to the clergy, to keep the aggregate inheritance as intact as possible. Happened all the time, in medieval France no less than in what was still, for the operant demographic, Anglo-Norman England.
Your citation of the Rolls of the eyre as of 1246 seriously calls for quotation.
289. Item terre que fuerunt Willelmi Thurstan quas dominus rex dedit Henrico de Burgo et postea Thome de Blunville et postea Radulfo Parmentario. Idem vero Radulfus uxorem suam de terris illis dotavit et mortuo illo Radulfo, uxor eius illas tenuit usque ad gwerram. Et postea Isabella comitissa Glovernie quandam partem terrarum illarum que fuerunt de feodo suo in manum suam cepit et tenuit. Postea vero Gilbertus de Clara comes Glovernie de illa feoffavit Robertum de Basinge, qui illam tenuit usque ad ultimum iter justiciariorum. Modo autem Reginaldus de Bungeye et Radulfus de Ely illam tenent. Aliquas vero terras dicti Willelmi, que non sunt de feodo comitis Glovernie, tenent modo canonici Sancti Pauli et Walterus Buk, per uxorem suam que fuit filia Andree Nevelun et quandam sopam tenet Robertus Auguillun per uxorem suam que scopa est in Westchepe, et venit filia Radulfi Steperang et profert cartam domini regis Johannis.

Item the lands which belonged to William Thurstan which the king gave to Henry de Burgh and after to Thomas de Blunville and afterwards to Ralph the Parmenter; the same Ralph endowed his wife with them, and on his death, his wife held them until the war, and afterwards Isabel countess of Gloucester took into her hand and held part of those lands which were of her fee, and afterwards Gilbert de Clare earl of Gloucester enfeoffed therewith Robert of Basing, who held them at the last eyre of the justices. Now however Reginald of Bungay and Ralph of Ely hold them but other lands of the same William which are not of the fee of the earl of Gloucester are now held by the canons of St. Paul's and Walter Buk' who holds in right of his wife who was the daughter of Andrew Nevelun and Robert Auguillun holds a shop in right of his wife, which shop is in Westcheap, and the daughter of Ralph Steperang comes and proffers a charter of King John.

This is sounding a lot like the Robert of Basing who @Henry112345 and I think (...still) is the likeliest candidate for the seal.
Right, at one point earlier in this thread, I was going on about how, among the English aristocracy, individual manors were scattered all over the country, among the upper as well as the lower aristocracy. ...Right, very intentionally, from the time that William I started allotting them, effectively from the ground up. --In this capacity, he had a clean slate to start from (conspicuously unlike the Capetians ever had in France), and he Ran with it! The sheer geographic diversity of the titles /surnames, from Ely (in Cambridgeshire) to Bungay (in Norfolk) to Gloucestershire (or Clare, in Suffolk), serves to underscore this. If you go by the counties (/shires --yeah, they're effectively interchangable) themselves, none of them was within easy earshot of Hampshire. ...If I had one favorite example of the phenomenon, it would have to be the Warrenne earls of Surrey (deep in the south of the country), who also held substantial property in Yorkshire (including Conisbrough, a favorite castle, going back to the late 12th century), not far from the Scottish border.

 

I agree. I think this last Robert, the land holder cited in the Eyre, may be the same as Robert St. John de Basing, the "baron" mentioned in the genealogy pages. One problem I have run up against is that the genealogy entries (and seemingly only the genealogy entries) call him the "2nd Baron of Basing" while other sources have the Barony of Basing created in 1299 with John St. John. The St. John family, though, had ties back to the Conqueror who apparently gave them 53 manors in Hampshire. Might Robert be better described as a lord and not a baron?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_St_John_of_Basing

I am also inclined to think that the "Robert Besing" cited on the other forum may actually be this same individual. Both he and Robert St. John de Basing had sons named William (coincidence?). The Eyre has "Robert de Basing" active just before 1244 and the other source has "William, son of Robert Besing" active c. 1267, about a generation apart as one would expect for father and son. If this is indeed the same Robert, we then have a connection to Durham where the seal matrix was reportedly found.

 

Very cool, @dltsrq! Yes, you nailed it about lords and barons --as you tellingly imply, in England, it's a valid distinction. You could be a lord but not a baron, the latter title effectively defined by whether you were actually summoned to Parliament --in, irony alert, what's now called the House of Lords.
I wish I could get my hands on the local public library's copy of The Complete Peerage. --Pretty sure, for that matter, that an older edition is on Google Books. Entries in that routinely begin this or that many generations before the first formal summons to Parliament.
Massive thanks (...I'm kind of invested in this, at this point) for finding the Wiki article. Your interpretation of the available info is effortlessly incisive. ...Sorry, I don't run into your kind of people very often!
...Just more broadly, this might be worth saying. With genealogy, in the initial stages, like we are here, you often effectively have to proceed from informed speculation. It's almost the amateur equivalent of a scientific hypothesis; then you go about trying to disprove it. (....)