| Description | The collection consists of 90 detached seals, dating from the late 11th or early 12th century to the 19th century, and a few examples of late 19th century seal packaging. Most of the seals are originals, but a few may be 19th century casts of medieval seals. It is likely that many of these seals were originally attached to documents among the Chartae Antiquae series. The seals and seal packaging were removed from drawers 23 and 24 of Sheppard's cabinets, described below.
Archival history
Note: Nigel Ramsay's chapter on the archives and library, in P Collinson, N Ramsay and M Sparks (eds), A History of Canterbury Cathedral (Oxford University Press, 1995), has been used extensively for this introduction.
The seals attached to the Chartae Antiquae were first catalogued by Osmund Beauvoir, headmaster of King's School, Canterbury in 1776 (Bodleian Library MS Gough Kent 9 - microfilm copy available at Canterbury Cathedral Archives), who produced a detailed, indexed, catalogue of more than 400 seals. Beauvoir's catalogue gives the name of the seal's owner or user, a brief description of the device, with some sketches, the legend, dimensions and date. There is a separate section for the seals of Canterbury Cathedral Priory at the beginning of the catalogue and the remaining seals are grouped under the letters assigned to their charters in the 1730s by Samuel Norris. Documents are identified by Norris's references, but the catalogue is not arranged in numerical order. At this time, the seals were stored in large boxes and a few in smaller, individual, boxes.
In 1806, Cyprian Rondeau Bunce produced an index to the seals attached to the charters, covering more than 450 seals (pp149-167 of Bunce's index to the cathedral registers and his schedule of the cathedral's archives). This index provides no information about the devices or legends of the seals, but gives a brief description of their condition, the date of the document to which they were attached and Bunce's reference number. The seals were stored with their documents, in drawers.
Between Bunce's index and the rearrangement of the seals' storage by Joseph Brigstocke Sheppard in 1873 (Vol III of Bunce's catalogue of the Chartae Antiquae, p516), a number of seals had become separated from their documents. Sheppard mounted the seals in plaster on card or bound them in brass rims and stored them in two cabinets, each containing 11 long, shallow drawers. The seals were arranged in 20 drawers and were numbered, either on their card mounts or on attached, parchment, labels, according to their places in the drawers. In 1874, Sheppard produced a catalogue (DCc-LA/4/11), listing the seals within each drawer. This catalogue covers about 700 seals. It usually identifies the owners or users of the seals, but very rarely describes them. The seals attached to documents were arranged according to the letters allocated in Bunce's catalogue, but not in numerical order. By this time, there was one drawer of detached seals, containing about 36 items. Many of the seals are still on Sheppard's mounts and a few detached examples have been catalogued as DCc-Seal/92-96.
In 1896, Louisa Sheppard, Sheppard's widow, rearranged the seals' storage and produced a revised version of his catalogue (DCc-LA/5//88). The seals were now arranged by a subject classification (English Kings and Queens, Archbishops of Canterbury, Bishops English and Welsh etc) and were stored in small boxes. Each box was labelled with a letter, identifying the drawer in which the seal was stored, in the top left corner, and a number, indicating its place in the drawer, in the top right corner, together with a copy of the catalogue entry. The last drawer, Drawer O, contained several loose seals, but some were also stored in the other drawers, according to their place in the classification scheme. A few boxes and box lids used by Louisa Sheppard have been catalogued as DCc-ChAnt/97-100.
All these early catalogues are selective, concentrating on the more important seals. They do not describe the vast majority of non-heraldic, personal seals.
A number of the loose seals have subsequently been reunited with their documents. A further 45 seals have been reunited, during work on the Chartae Antiquae and on this catalogue, using a combination of physical evidence from the seals and documents and intellectual evidence from the Chartae Antiquae catalogue, Beauvoir's catalogue, Bunce's index and notes by Sheppard. Seals have been reunited with the following charters:
DCc-ChAnt/A/ 150; DCc-ChAnt/B/366; DCc-ChAnt/C/23, DCc-ChAnt/C/32, DCc-ChAnt/C/44, DCc-ChAnt/C/60, DCc-ChAnt/C/61, DCc-ChAnt/C/64, DCc-ChAnt/C/87, DCc-ChAnt/C/90, DCc-ChAnt/C/91, DCc-ChAnt/C/185, DCc-ChAnt/C/248, DCc-ChAnt/C/253, DCc-ChAnt/C/460, DCc-ChAnt/C/995, DCc-ChAnt/C/1035, DCc-ChAnt/C/1161, DCc-ChAnt/C/1270 (2 seals); DCc-ChAnt/D/38, DCc-ChAnt/D/66, DCc-ChAnt/D/100; DCc-ChAnt/E/171, DCc-ChAnt/E/185; DCc-ChAnt/F/155; DCc-ChAnt/G/171; DCc-ChAnt/H/50, DCc-ChAnt/H/102; DCc-ChAnt/L/7, DCc-ChAnt/L/137, DCc-ChAnt/L/242; DCc-ChAnt/M/73, DCc-ChAnt/M/210, DCc-ChAnt/M/240, DCc-ChAnt/M/242, DCc-ChAnt/M/304; DCc-ChAnt/R/39, DCc-ChAnt/R/48; DCc-ChAnt/S/8, DCc-ChAnt/S/270, DCc-ChAnt/S/333; DCc-ChAnt/T/35; DCc-ChAnt/W/164, DCc-ChAnt/W/182
15 other seals, for which the evidence was inconclusive, have been linked intellectually with documents from which they may have been detached.
Arrangement
The seals have been arranged in the following sections:
CCA-DCc-Seal/1-18
Royal seals, from Henry II to Queen Victoria. A number of these seals are fragmentary and bear the same device, so it has not always been possible to assign them to a particular monarch. This section includes one fragment which was part of half a great seal used for sealing a document close (Seal/7).
CCA-DCc-Seal/19-23
Archbishops' seals, from Lanfranc or Ralph d'Escures to William Warham.
CCA-DCc-Seal/24-27
This section contains a seal of Robert Grossesteste, bishop of Lincoln, and 3 seals which have not been identified and may be bishops' seals but could also be the seals of religious houses.
CCA-DCc-Seal/28-32
Seals of Canterbury Cathedral Priory. The priory's first and second seals and seal ad causas are represented.
CCA-DCc-Seal/33-36
Seals of other religious houses.
CCA-DCc-Seal/37-38
Clerical seals.
CCA-DCc-Seal/39-43
Seals of corporations and corporate bodies, including a good example of the seal of the city of Canterbury as modified in the 16th century (Seal/39).
CCA-DCc-Seal/44-49
Equestrian seals.
CCA-DCc-Seal/50-54
Heraldic personal seals.
CCA-DCc-Seal/55-78
Non-heraldic personal seals.
CCA-DCc-Seal/79-90
This section of miscellaneous seals contains three seals which cannot be classified in any other sections because their owners or users cannot be identified and a number of small, unidentifiable, fragments.
CCA-DCc-Seal/91-100
This section contains examples of seal packaging used by J B Sheppard and Louisa Sheppard.
The following information is given for each seal, using the scheme described in The Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office, Personal Seals: Volume 1 (London, 1978):
• Date. Where is has not been possible to assign a date in connection with the owner or user of the seal or by reference to another example, a conjectural date has been assigned according to the style of the device and the seal's general appearance.
• Name of the owner or user of the seal.
• Description of the seal device.
• Transcription of the legend.
• Shape of the seal.
• Dimensions of the seal, in millimetres. Where a seal is oval or pointed oval, the vertical measurement is given first.
• Colour of the seal.
• Method of attachment.
• Completeness and quality of the impression.
This scheme has also been used to catalogue the seals attached to the Chartae Antiquae.
Where the seals have been identified by reference to other examples among the Chartae Antiquae, the illustrations in A B Wyon, The great seals of England (1887), or descriptions in the British Museum Seal Catalogue this has been noted. |