to the end of the fifteenth centnry. As land became more and more subinfeudated, and wealth generally, more distributed, the use of seals was diffused among all classes legally competent to acquire or aliene property.
On personal seals of this early date, that is of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which may be termed the first period, the devices are entirely arbitrary and literal in character. Thus barons and persons of knightly degree[1] used seals representing a horseman, armed at all points, spurring to the fight, or riding, falcon on wrist, to the chase. The seals of females, single or married, sometimes bore their effigies attired in a costume generally indicating that of their time: besides these rude attempts at the human figure, birds, as eagles or hawks, lions, dragon-like forms, crescents and stars in a variety of combinations, and fleurs-de-lis are the subjects which most commonly occur. No device adopted at this time was sufficiently distinctive in character to identify the ownership of the seal; that object was attained by the surrounding legend, containing the title or name of the person to whom it belonged.
The shape of seals used by secular persons during this period was generally circular; the seals of females, like those of ecclesiastics, were mostly of a pointed oval form; the circular model however appears to have been the most prevalent.
There are no reverses to baronial or knightly seals of this date, produced, as was the case at a later period, by impressing a smaller seal, termed a secretum or privy-seal, on the back of the wax after the application of the great seal. The earliest example of this fashion, with which I am acquainted, is the
- ↑ It appears that during the twelfth century, it was not customary for a person entitled by birth to the honour of knighthood, to use a seal until he had received that distinction. Thus Geoffrey de Mandeville, son and heir of Geoffrey earl of Essex, says, in a grant to the prior and convent of the Holy Trinity, London, "istam cartam feci signari sigillo dapiferi mei, Henrici filii Geroldi, donec sim miles et habeam sigillum, et tunc eam firmabo proprio sigillo." By some authors an expression of this kind, of which there are other examples, (Selden's Titles of Honour, vol. iii. col. 595, ed. Wilkins; Nicolson's Historical Libraries, p. 198, ed. 1776,) has been taken to mean that the person using it was under age and therefore not entitled to use a seal; but it is obvious that the same disability would have prevented him from alienating property; moreover it is well known that in early times, knighthood was often conferred on individuals before they had attained their legal majority. I would suggest therefore, that, as the ordinary device on knightly seals, anterior to the introduction of armorial bearings, was a knight on horseback, the meaning of the grantor's words may be simply that not being as yet a knight, he could not use a seal with the device appropriate to that dignity, to which by birth, as an earl's son, he was entitled. This Geoffrey de Mandeville died circa 1167.
