Dean, which is also a pointed ellipse, is a bird resembling a crow, and round it S' DЄCĀNI BRISTOLLI[1]; and on the seal of the Vicar, which is round, is a human head, and about it S' DNI STЄPHI DЄ NOVSHĀL'. Noushall was probably Gnoushall, now Gnosall, in Staffordshire. The spelling of this name in the document as compared with the seal is a curious instance of unsettled orthography[2]. All the seals are of green wax, and those of the Dean and Vicar perfect.
The excommunication, to which Hawisia agreed to submit, was of the more formidable kind; for there were two kinds, the greater and the less. The latter merely excluded from the rites and sacraments of the Church; but the former had not only that effect, but was pronounced with more affecting solemnities, and prohibited all dealings and intercourse with the excommunicated person; which was no light matter in an age when such sentences were carried into execution with considerable rigour.
The peculiarity in the form of the instrument may, I think, be to some extent accounted for. In the twelfth century a great contest commenced between the secular courts and the ecclesiastical authorities. Among other things in dispute was a practice, which had sprung up, of the ecclesiastical courts assuming to take cognizance of contracts, and to enforce the performance of them by excommunication, where the contracting parties had sworn to observe them, whatever may have been the case where there was not an oath. This the
- ↑ The present deanery of Bristol was created by Henry the Eighth. The Dean above mentioned was in all probability the Dean of the Christianity (court Christian) of Bristol. Barrett in his History of Bristol, p. 451, gives a document partly in the original Latin and partly translated, relating to the Kalendaries in All Saints parish and dated about 1318, wherein "Robertus Hazell rector ecclesiæ de Derham et decanus Christianitatis Bristolliæ," is mentioned; and in the translated part he is called Dean of Bristol.
- ↑ According to Barrett, p. 458, Stephen Gnowshale gave to the parish of All Saints a tenement in All Saints-lane about 1350. Query, should it not have been 1250?
royal badge, which appears on the great seals of Richard the First and Henry the Third, and is said to have been borne by the servants of King John, and though not on his seal, is found on his Irish coins. It is not however an uncommon device. Many have supposed it to be referrible to the crusades: but this is very questionable. Probably it had some symbolic or emblematic meaning as it occurs so often, and it may on that account have been assumed by this lady. From the Rot. Hundred. I learn there was a Henry de Wygornia in Wilts, temp. Hen. III., and a Rich. de Wygornia was sheriff for that county temp. Edw. I. A John de Wygornia was rector of St. Michael's Bristol, in 1313. It is possible further research might identify Phillip, William, Peter, Henry, Richard, and John as members of the same family; but if William of Worcester, surnamed Botoner, a scholar and antiquary of the fifteenth century born at Bristol, was of the family of Peter, they were of humbler grade probably than the others; for according to Tanner, Botoner's ancestors were engaged in trade. Richard de Calna may not have been of higher rank, for a Richard de Calne was one of the bailiffs of Bristol in 1335.
