by the Carolings, although no actual examples of the last have survived, by the emperors of Germany, and by other sovereigns and rulers. Such specimens as have descended to us show that the golden bulla of the middle ages was usually hollow, being formed of two thin plates of metal stamped with the designs of obverse and reverse, soldered together at the edges and padded with wax or plaster. On rare occasions it was of solid gold. The popes attached golden bullae to their confirmations of the elections of the emperors in the 12th and 13th centuries; and they issued them on such occasions as when Leo X. conferred on Henry VIII. the title of Defender of the Faith, in 1521; on the coronation of Charles V., 1530; on the erection of the archbishopric of Lisbon into a patriarchate in 1716, &c.; and quite recently papal golden bullae have been conferred on royal personages. Comparatively few examples of golden bullae have survived. The value of the metal sufficiently accounts for their scarcity. Some examples are in the British Museum, viz. of Baldwin II. de Courtenay, formerly emperor of Constantinople, attached to a charter of 1269; of Edmund, king of Sicily, son of Henry III. of England; and of the emperor Frederick III., 1452–1493. In the Public Record Office, of Alfonso X. of Castile, ceding Gascony to Edward, son of Henry III. of England, 1254; of Clement VII. confirming to Henry VIII. the title of Defender of the Faith, 1524 (this example being the work of Benvenuto Cellini); and of Francis I. of France, ratifying the treaty with Henry VIII., 1527 (the counterpart with Henry’s bulla being in Paris).
Authorities.—W. de G. Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the British Museum (6 vols., 1887–1900); A. Wyon, The Great Seals of England (1887): G. Pedrick, Borough Seals of the Gothic Period (1904); H. Laing, Catalogue of Ancient Scottish Seals (1858, 1866); Douet d’Areq, Collection de sceaux (Inventaires el documents des archives de l’Empire) (3 vols., 1863–1868); G. Demay, Inoentaire des sceaux de la Flandre (2 vols., 1873), de l’Artois et de la Picardie (1877), de la Normandie (1881); G. Schlumberger, Sigillographie de l’empire byzantin (1884); J. von Pflugk-Hartun, Specimina selecta chartarum pontificum Romanarum (for papal bullae) (1885–1887); Catalogue of Engraved Gems in the Dept. of Greek and Roman Antiquities (British Museum, 1888); F. H. Marshall, Catalogue of the Finger-Rings, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman, in the British Museum (1907); E. Babelon, Histoire de la gravure sur gemmes en France (1902). There are also numerous papers on seals in Archaeologia and in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, and in the archaeological journals. Handbooks on diplomatic devote some attention to seals, e.g. A. Giry, Manuel de diplomatique (1894); H. Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien (1889). (E. M. T.)
SEALSFIELD, CHARLES, the pseudonym of Karl Anton Postl (1793–1864), German novelist, who was born on the 3rd of March 179 3 at Poppitz near Znaim in Moravia. His schooling completed, he entered the Kreuzherrenorden in Prague, where he became a priest, but in the autumn of 1822 he fled to America, where he assumed the name of Charles Sealsfield. In 1826 he returned to Germany and published a book on America (Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika), which was followed by an outspoken criticism of Austria, written in English (Austria as it is, 1828) and published anonymously in London. Meanwhile he had returned to America, where he published his first novel, also in English, Tokeah, or the White Rose (1828). He now turned journalist, first in New York and subsequently in Paris and London, as correspondent for various journals. In 1832 he settled in Switzerland, and in 1860 purchased a small estate near Solothurn. Here he died on the 26th of May 1864. His will first revealed the fact that he was the former monk, Postl.
It is as a German novelist that he is best known. His Tokeah appeared in German under the title Der Legitime und die Republikaner (1838), and was followed by Der Virey und die Aristokraten (1835). Lebensbilder aus beiden Hemisphären (1835–1837), Sturm-, Land- und Seebilder (1338), Das Kajütenbuch, oder, Nationale Charakteristiken (1842). Sealstield occupies an important position in the development of the German historical novel at a period when Scott’s influence was beginning to wane. He endeavoured to widen the scope of historical fiction, to describe great national and political movements, without forfeiting the sympathy of his readers for the individual characters of the story.
Sealsfield’s Gesammelte Werke appeared in 18 vols. (1843–1846); his chief novels are also to be obtained in modern reprints. See Kertbény, Erinnerungen an Sealsjield (1864); L. Schmolle, Charles Sealsfield (1875); L. Hamburger, Sealsfield-Postl, bisher unveröffentlichte Briefe (1879); A. B. Faust, Charles Sealsjeld, der Dichler beider Hemisphären (1896).
SEAMAN, OWEN (1861–), English humorist and author, was educated at Shrewsbury school and Clare College, Cambridge, where he took a first-class in the classical tripos in 1883; in the next year he became a master at Rossall school; and in 1890 he was appointed professor of literature at the Durham College of Science, Newcastle-on-Tyne. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1897. He was introduced to Punch in 1894, with his “Rhyme of the Kipperling,” a parody of Rudyard Kipling’s “Rhyme of the Three Sealers.” He also wrote for The National Observer and The World. In 1894 he published a volume of parodies which is a classic of its kind, Horace at Cambridge, followed by The Battle of the Bays (1896), In Cap and Bells (1899), Borrowed Plumes (1902), A Harvest of Chaff (1904). He joined the staff of Punch in 1897, and shortly afterwards became assistant-editor, succeeding Sir F. C. Burnand as editor in 1906.
SEAMANSHIP, the general term for the art by which vessels
of all classes and sizes are handled in all conditions of weather.
It is commonly distinguished from “boatman ship,” but the
distinction is arbitrary. In ordinary speech it is frequently
used as meaning the same thing as navigation (q.v.). But the
two subjects are essentially different. Navigation is a science
based on observation of the sun and stars in their apparent
movements, on their bearings to one another, and the earth,
and on time. It may be acquired from the study of books, and
by a student who has never been in sight of the sea. Seamanship
is an art. Its principles may be stated in literary form, but a
mastery of it can only be acquired by actual practice on the sea.
The art is far older than the science, but because of its practical
character its history is much more difficult to trace. Navigation,
being one form of the study of mathematics and astronomy,
has been written about from the beginning. Seamanship has
been practised in perfection by men who were perfectly illiterate
for thousands of years before any treatise on it appeared. Seamen
have at all times been, as Clarendon noted, a people, apart.
Till recently they have believed in practice only, and being
jealous of, and hostile to, landsmen, have generally endeavoured
to preserve their knowledge as an “art and mystery” to be
handed down by oral instruction from master to apprentice.
Sir Henry Manwayring, whose Seaman’s Dictionary appeared
in 1644, claimed that it was the first treatise on seamanship
ever written. After explaining that a writer who had not acquired
the art by practice could not expound it, he goes on: “And
as for the professed Seamen, they either want ability and dexterity
to express themselves, or (as they do generally) will, to instruct
any Gentleman. If any will tell me why the vulgar sort, of
Seamen hate landmen so much, either he or I may give the reason
why they are so unwilling to instruct them in their art, whence
it is that so many gentlemen go long voyages, and return (in a
manner) as ignorant and as unable to do their country service
as when they went out." Though the Seaman’s Dictionary
did not appear in print till 1644, it is described on the title-page
as having been presented to George Villiers, duke of Buckingham,
the lord high admiral of Charles I., who was murdered in 1628.
Manwayring’s book is therefore probably, if not the first treatise
on seamanship written in English, at least as old as its only
rival the Accidences, or the pathway to experience necessary for
all young seamen, published in 1626, by the famous Captain
John Smith, of Virginia. On the continent of Europe, as in
England, while works on navigation and gunnery were common,
treatises on practical seamanship date from the 17th century.
The books of Manwayring and Smith are rather glossaries of
terms than expositions of principles.
We are therefore left with very few documents from which to learn what the seamanship of antiquity and the middle ages was. But such testimony as we have confirms the conclusion to be drawn from our general knowledge of the construction of their ships, and of the scientific learning of their times. The old seamen were coasters, who acted on the fisherman’s adage—
