Butley Priory

Earlier this year (2022), a young boy called George was out with his metal detector in a field near Butley Priory and found this seal. He was 'tagging along' with his dad, who'd been detecting for 20 years. No doubt his dad had that special mixture of pride and envy!

Not much is left of Butley Priory, but what is left (the gatehouse*) is stonking. I'll complete this post when I've found my 20-year-old notes on the complete heraldry of the gatehouse (I hope I didn't chuck them away), but for now here are some pictures of it I took the other day, showing front and back.

* There are a few more ruins, actually, as you'll see from the excellent Wikipedia article.

The seal predates the gatehouse by a few years - the gatehouse being c.1300 and the seal, from the , mid-13th century, although it might be mid-to-late. You can find a full description of it on the wonderful finds.org, where these images are from. (finds.org will eat your day. Be warned.)

Left is the matrix; right an impression. The BVM, crowned and enthroned, with the Babe, nimbed, on her lap; she holds the orb, which he pats. Finds.org describes the orb as a sceptre, but it looks to me like an orb such as on Oseney's seal.

On her right, what looks like a fleur-de-lis virga (finds.org describes it as a f-d-l and its opposite as a lily, but ?). Above, a trefoiled canopy with two columns, atop which, a cross (and some sort of roof?). The cross cunningly becomes the start/end separator for the legend. In base, two trefoils either side of a trefoiled arch with a canon praying.  There are pellets in four places, chief and base, marking or representing something.

The legend is a bit hard to read. The first bit is easy:  S’PRIORIS ET CONVENT’ DE BVTTEL. But then... Finds.org gives it as O[or D]E AD CR [or A], with a possible interpretation of ‘canonico regulare’ (CR). But I think that's problematic - I've seen this nowhere else, and I'm not convinced that an Austin priory would describe itself thus. I find their second interpretation more convincing - that it's DE AD, being 'de Adae', of Adam the prior (who could be the figure at the bottom - that's not unusual). There was a Prior Adam - he was in office from c.1219 to 1235/6, when he was perhaps the prior of Butley sacked by Archbishop Edmund of Abingdon. That still leaves two letters - CA or CR to deal with - the 'canons of Augustine' or 'canons regular'. I'll need to do some research here, as I just cannot be convinced by this. 

The later, 14th-century, seal, described by Birch, is no help:

816. Pointed oval: BVM, crowned, seated on a throne, with Babe, nimbed, on left knee; r. h. a fleur-de-lize sceptre, with birds billing in the foliage at the top, in an elaborately carved niche with buttresses at the sides, and canopy pinnacled and crocketed. In the field outside the niche, on each side a palm branch. In base under a carved arch with a window of tracery on each side, the Prior kneeling in prayer to the left. Legend: :S’.9E’.ECCE’.SC[E’.M]ARIE DE [:BV]TTELE

This seal is a great find. Sadly, it's up for auction, and not being given to a museum, but people need money...

Talking of which, if you have a few thousand to spare, you can hire Butley's gatehouse.

Haltemprice

This seal is from the 14th century, and so we're now firmly in the heraldic age, as it demonstrates rather nicely.

Haltemprice was a late foundation. In late 1320, Thomas Wake, lord of Liddell, received permission from the pope to found an Austin priory in Cottingham. Failing to find a suitably long-term site, Thomas got the king’s permission in 1322 and the pope’s in 1325 to move his monastery (which by now had some canons from Bourne) to Newton (which was also known as Haltemprice), a couple of miles down the road. The priory was dedicated to the Holy Cross, the BVM and SS. Peter and Paul, and its first prior, Thomas de Overton, was elected in 1327. Wake bequeathed various lands and properties; in 1361 John de Meaux granted the manor of Willerby for a yearly mixed rent of money and requiems. The priory was always small: in 1328, it seems to have had four brethren, including the prior; in 1424 it had 11; at its dissolution in 1536, it had nine. By then, there were also forty servants and boys – we must remember that a monastery wasn’t just its monks, nuns or canons.

Haltemprice was not rich, and any financial mismanagement had grave consequences. In 1367, Archbishop Thoresby of York intervened to get the priory out of its massive debts. In 1400, the pope granted it an indulgence for almsgivers, and an indult for the prior to hear confessions (and, delightfully, in 1402, an indult for the prior and canons to wear shoes rather than their Austin sandals). Disaster struck Haltemprice sometime around then – the bell-tower collapsed during a storm, taking with it much of the church and cloister, and fire destroyed the priory gate and surrounding buildings. To help monastic finances, the pope regranted the indulgence for ten years.

As a local shrine, it boasted an arm of St. George, a piece of the Holy Cross, and a piece of the BVM’s girdle (for women in childbirth). People also prayed to Thomas Wake for fever.

It's now a derelict farmhouse.

Its seal is splendid. 2¾ inches in diameter, the seal obverse shows a building (presumably the priory church) flying two banners with Thomas Wake's arms on (two bars, three roundels in chief). The three shields are: right (sinister), Wake; left (dexter) ?Stuteville; in base, a cross paty (the Holy Cross?).

On the obverse, (fn. 68) inclosed in an octofoil, having fleurs de lis and leopards' heads alternately in the spandrels, is a representation of the house, with two banners on, its roof of the arms of Thomas, Lord Wake of Liddell, the founder. On the right is a shield of his arms, two bars with three roundels in the chief, and on the left is a burelly shield which perhaps represents the arms of the Stutevilles of Liddell, whose heiress was great-grandmother of the founder. Below is a third shield charged with a cross paty. The design is contained within an octofoil which has, alternately, fleurs-de-lys and leopards' head in the spandrels.

The legend is ✠ CEO EST LE SEAL LABBE E LE COVENT DE COTINGHAM QVE NOVS THOMAS WAKE SINGNOVB DE LIDEL AVOMES FOVNDE.

The counterseal has another octofoil, with trefoils in the spandrels. Two more Wake banners flutter, this time from a big screen, which has the Holy Cross in the top middle (with Christ, Mary and John), and either side two canon thurifers praying. Below is the prior, kneeling in prayer, between St. Peter and St. Paul, and below them are five praying canons. Outside this screen are the two founders - dexter, Thomas, Lord Wake (with armorial ailettes); sinister, his wife. The Wake arms are in base. The legend continues that of the obverse:

✠ EN L'AN DE L'INCARNACION MILL' CCCXXX SECOVNDE AL HONOVR DE LA VERAI CROYZ E DE N[otr]E DAME E SEYNT PERE E D' SE[yn]T POVL.

 

Chichester's seal

A slight departure here, but one which helps us think about the iconography of seals. An interesting article by Lloyd de Beer (hereafter LdB) on Chichester Cathedral seal is here.  I'll summarise it, as it's not written very concisely.

The second seal of Chichester is interesting because on the obverse it has a church, landscape on an oval seal (highly unusual, if not unique), and the church is labelled 'templum iusticie' (temple of justice).  The inscription reads SIGILLUM SANCTE CICESTRENSIS ECCLESIE - seal of the holy Chichester church.  LdB makes much of this, saying that you'd expect 'the chapter of the cathedral' on the inscription - and, for sure, lots of cathedral seals have that (the everyday ad causas Chichester seal, for one).  But Norwich, for example, doesn't.  LdB makes much of it because he uses it as a brick to build up his thesis that Ralph Neville, the bishop of Chichester, commissioned the seal. But I think we have to discard it - although that doesn't make his thesis any less sturdy.

The counterseal (making the reverse of the imprinted bit of wax) is Christ nimbed (with a halo), under a gothic canopy, enthroned on a church, holding (l-h) a book or tablets and blessing with his r-h.  The inscription is EGO SUM VIA VERITAS ET VITA (I am the way, the truth and the life).  LdB links this to Christ described in Revelation (he says 4:1, but I think he means 4:3), and also to Ezekial 43:6-7.  Nice.  After a bit of over-egged flannel, and ideas about the obverse, LdB compares this to Ralph Neville's own seal, and you only have to look at them to see that they are related.


So, back to the obverse seal.  (Image :  British Museum.)  LdB makes a good point about Christ being the temple, and compares it to the Canterbury second seal.  He also compares the counterseal, which is... Christ and the way and the truth and the life - so similar to Chichester's one that, again, you only have to see it to accept the link.  Anyway, the seal has Christ in the doorway of a cathedral-like structure.

Obviously, no-one is in Chichester's doorway.  LdB maintains that the door is half-open, half-shut, and links it to Isaiah 22:20 [sic - it's 22:22] and Revelation 3:7-13.  But I don't think you can necessarily interpret the door as being half-open, and neither passage talks of a half-open door.  So that's flannel, but the door is nonetheless prominent, and his argument may stand, even if his reasoning is a little fanciful.

LdB says that 'templum iusticie' is a reference to John of Salisbury's Policraticus, where he complains that King Stephen expelled Roman law.  John, he says, taught it at Canterbury.  He could well have done - he and Master Vacarius were in Theobald's stellar household, and no doubt the latter was there to teach law, Roman (civil) and canon.  John himself was a decent legal mind.  And, yes, Canterbury was England's top ecclesiastical court, and therefore a temple of justice.

LdB points out that Chichester was not England's top ecclesiastical court.  The 'templum iusticie' may have a more metaphorical/ allegorical significance, especially if it's linked to John of Salisbury's Policraticus.  It could all be linked, indeed, to the role of the church in the government of England.  And this is interesting.  This was the time of Magna Carta.  Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, was instrumental in MC, and it now transpires that his bishops had MC copied in order that it could be published whether King John liked it or not!  When Henry III removed the bit that allowed his magnates to force him to comply with MC, Langton eventually responded by threatening excommunication to any who broke MC.  (You can read more in chapter 4 of this.)

Churchmen, whether John of Salisbury or Stephen Langton, believed that we should be striving to live according to God's will.  That means following the Decalogue, loving thy neighbour etc.  If you are a king, you should be a just king - like Christ, not like the king that Samuel counselled the Israelites against.  (This will eventually find itself into the language of John Fortescue in the fifteenth century, of his politicum et regale.)  In the words of Flanders and Swann, medieval churchmen believed that the king needed 'bishops to show them the way'.  Ralph Neville was Chancellor as well as bishop of Chichester.  As someone heavily involved with government, perhaps he was suggesting that the church was the 'temple of justice', and that the church must guide the king.  In this way, the seal of Chichester Cathedral is a political-theological statement.

I like this thought.  However, there's something else which doesn't get discussed in this article, although I believe he discusses it elsewhere.  The building itself.  It's a weird building - it ain't Chichester, by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, it doesn't look Anglo-Norman at all.  It does look basilicoid (to coin a word).  I can't find any model for it, but I bet there is one.  The whole church looks as though it would fit better in Jerusalem than in Sussex. It could represent the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, and 'justice' refers to Jesus' trial at the Sanhedrin. (Thanks to Julian Litten for pointing this out.)  Hildegard's vision of Jerusalem has a similar sort of fantasy Jerusalem architecture.  She depicts the kingdom to come - just as Revelation describes.  LdB writes that Cantebury's third seal, from the 1230s, showed the kingdom of heaven, rather than, as before, the temple.  The angels on the obverse of Canterbury's seal are thurifers; on the back, they look very like they are bearing keys - to the kingdom of heaven.

Lloyd de Beer has packed a lot in this article!

Dale Abbey

 While we're in Derbyshire (see previous post), we'll stop awhile at Dale Abbey.

There was once a baker of Derby who, once he'd put bread on his family's table (so to speak), went to his local church and gave all else of his earnings to the poor. After a while, the BVM appeared to the baker and told him to drop everything and set up an hermitage at Depedale. The baker hadn't a clue where Depedale was, but he headed out of Derby nonetheless. He found it: a marsh in the middle of nowhere. Dispirited, he turned around, and lo! he found a friendly rock, so he carved a little hermitage out of it.

One day, the local lord saw smoke coming from this rock and thundered over to tell someone where to go... but then he saw it was a holy, poor hermit and instead gave him the land and a bit more. The baker-hermit built a dwelling and an oratory.

Around 1160, Serlo de Grendon, husband of the lord's daughter Margery, on the advice of his godmother, the Gomme of the Dale (I think I shall be called Gomme by my godsons - the stuff of legend), invited some Austin canons over from Calke. But these canons, finding themselves in a woodland, forgot themselves and took to hunting and enjoying themselves. Serlo's son William sacked them and replaced them with Premonstratensians. These white canons didn't last long, overcome by poverty. William was dispirited. But his cousins Matilda and Geoffrey de Salicosa Mara (which I take to be the sallow mere) came to the rescue and endowed and re-founded the monastery with white canons from Newhouse, Lincs.

All this, and more, is written in the chronicle of Thomas de Muskham, one of the canons.

Here's the thirteenth-century seal. A pointed oval, with BVM and Babe under a pointed arch and on top of a trefoiled arch with the abbot praying, with his pastoral staff. On either side are mini-towers with trefoils. The legend: S' ECCLESIE : SANCT : MARIE : DE : PARCO : STANLEE. (Stanley Park being the land next to Dale that the Sallowmeres gave.)

Darley Abbey

How about this for seals?

You can enlarge this photo and see another photo of it, on the Derbyshire Record Office blog. The seal on the far side is the bishop's; the 15 on this side are various layfolk - and I say folk with reason: look at the third from the right! The chirograph (the medieval equivalent of carbon-copy paper) was the resolution of a dispute between the villagers of Glapwell and the Abbey of Darley over the Glapwell chapel roof. (Disputes between church and parish over chancel repairs are nothing new.) The Abbey gave 'our parishioners' 5 acres in return for their accepting responsibility for chancel repairs. The abbot at the time was called Walter de Walton. Great name. Almost as good as the carpet salesman, Walter Wall...

The Austin canons who became Darley Abbey was collected together by a burgess of Derby called Towyne in 1137 and given a house as an oratory for St Helen (Constantine's mother). Then, in 1154, Robert Ferrers, earl of Derby, gave the canons and their abbot a substantial foundation in churches, land and tithes. The canons looked to move from their town house, and in the 1160s Hugh, dean of Derby, gave them his lands at Little Darley for their building site. Here, under Abbot Albinus, they built a monastery dedicated to St Mary (like most Austin houses). Albinus by name, albineus by nature: according to a canon chronicler of Calke, Albinus was "brightly manifesting so many of the requisites of a holy and virtuous life, that the interior of the cloister and the church, and the most inward sanctuary of religion, may be perceived to this day to be redolent with the fragrance of such a father."

Sadly I don't have a picture of Darley's (13th-century) seal for you (yet). It is a pointed oval, with the BVM, nimbed and seated on a throne; she dandles the Babe with her right hand and holds an orb with fleur-de-lys sceptre (a bit like Merton's). The legend is SIGILLVM : SANTE : MARIE : DE : DERLYE.

Darley Abbey became a mill vill, and one of the only traces left of the Abbey is now - aptly - an inn.

 

White Ladies, Brewood

 A slight departure - no seal for this one yet, but some capitals instead.

White Ladies, or the Priory of St Leonard, Brewood, was founded during the reign of Henry II by - well, no-one knows whom.  English Heritage suggests a wealthy patron because the church was built in a single campaign, but that patron didn't give the priory any suitable endowment.  The White Ladies remained gently poor; the church is as it was (albeit now in rather more ruinous a state) when it was first built, and the nuns numbered no more than half a dozen.  Although in a very different part of the kingdom, this priory recalls Sylvia Townsend Warner's fictitious Oby Priory.  The only thing I can ever remember about White Ladies is one 14th-century prioress (Alice Harley) being chastised for going hunting with her hounds. 

A friend insists on finding nice, interesting places to stretch one's legs on a journey, and that's how we found ourselves at White Ladies. Only the remains of the church are left - nothing of the conventual buildings stands.

The capitals are here:

They are unlike, for example, those at Buildwas, but they may bear comparison with Lilleshall. I stick them up here to invite comparisons!

Lesnes

Richard's son Geoffrey would become bishop of Winchester, and continue a close relationship between the de Lucies and various Austin houses of his province, including Merton.

The remains of Lesnes, with Toby,
who runs the children's entertainment at
Merton Priory

 Lesnes Abbey was founded by Richard de Lucy in 1178.  Richard had had a distinguished career:  he started out serving Henry I, was governor of Falaise under Stephen, and became chief justiciar under Henry II, who didn't seem to mind that Richard had stood against him in the civil war.

As justiciar, Richard was instrumental in Henry's campaign to remove or reign-in Thomas Becket.  Becket's murder in 1170 rode on the European Zeitgeist and Becket was canonised (made a saint) in 1173 - a remarkably short time.  Thomas' sainthood did Henry II's reputation no favours, and he undertook a pilgrimage of penance in 1174 to Canterbury to get his former friend's forgiveness.  

Four years later, in 1178, Richard de Lucy founded Lesnes Abbey (at the Westwode in Lesnes).  As well as being dedicated to the BVM (the usual saint for Austin houses), Lesnes was dedicated was to St Thomas the Martyr, so we may imagine that this was Richard's penance.  Richard retired to Lesnes that year and died a few months later, in July 1179.

A seal survives, showing Thomas, vested for mass, right hand in benediction, left hand holding his staff of office. This is typical for episcopal seals; the cross of his crozier shows that he is archbishop.  The 12th century was the inventor of heraldry, and an important part of heraldry is canting, or punning.  Either side of Thomas are two great fish.  These are pikes - or luces, to give them their other name.

De Gray Birch's description: 13th cent. Pointed oval : St Thomas Becket, full-length, with mitre and pall, lifting up the r. h. in benediction, in the 1. h. a crozier. In the field, on each side a luce or pike hauriant palewise, in allusion to the arms of the founder, Richard de Lucy ; on the r. also a pierced mullet of eight points.  *SIGILL' ECCL'IE S THOME MARTIRIS DE LIESNES.

He also notes a small round counterseal with the mark of the matrix handle: St. Thomas, half-length.

De Gray Birch seems to be describing the seal of our image.  (The image of the seal is from lucy.net, which has lots more information on the Lucies and lots of pictures of Lesnes.)  However, his dating of 13th century seems too late to me. The style of Thomas' mitre is much more 12th-century, when they wore them side-on (at least, they did on seals). Compare Nigel of Ely (left).  I suspect that the Lesnes seal was made pretty soon after the abbey's foundation.

Lesnes Abbey makes a nice day out.