Cornworthy

This was a small nunnery near Totnes.  Founded in 1238, this was a poor and isolated community.  The seal probably dates from then.

The seal inscription is + SIGILL' CONVENT D' CORNEWRThI.

Finds.org, where you'll find this seal, says:

'Incidentally, although not much is known about Cornworthy Priory, it does feature in one of the most exciting stories about a medieval English nun - the tearaway Alice de Flixthorpe of Stamford Priory (Lincolnshire). Eileen Power tells the story in Medieval English Nunneries. She was so much trouble, repeatedly escaping from her nunnery, turning up in men's clothing, completely impenitent after excommunication etc, that she was taken as far from trouble as possible and Cornworthy was chosen as her new home. After months in shackles and years of isolation it seemed that her spirit was broken, so she was returned to Lincolnshire. But as Eileen Power puts it, 'her native air blew hope and rebellion into that wild heart' and she was soon back to her old tricks! The end of the story is not known."'  Intriguing...

Birch gave Cornworthy as an Austin priory; the seal is BM 3003.

Langdon Abbey (Premonstratensian)

Well, we have to include this one. The Premenstrualtensions were Augustinians of a sort, anyway.

VCH Kent says:  "The abbey of St. Mary and St. Thomas the Martyr, Langdon, was founded by William de Aubervilla and colonized from the abbey of Leiston in Suffolk. The founder, by a charter which is witnessed by Hubert, bishop-elect of Salisbury, and must therefore belong to the year 1189, with the assent of Maud his wife and his heirs, granted all his town of Langdon for the making of a Premonstratensian abbey by Robert, abbot of Leiston, and gave to it the churches of Langdon, Walmer, Oxney, and Lydden, for the soul of Henry II and the souls of William his son, Emma his daughter, Hugh his father, and Wymarc his mother, and Ranulph de Glanvilla and Berta his wife. The phrasing seems to indicate that Henry II was then dead, and in that case the date of the foundation must lie between 6 July and 22 October, when Bishop Hubert was consecrated."

The seal is from the late 13th century, and is now in the British Museum.

And here is the BVM and Child:

And on the other side, the murder of Thomas Becket.

Gisburne (Guisborough)

Nat.Archives: SC 13/R 23.
13th century.

The BVM sits enthroned with the Christ child on her left knee, under an arch and church canopy; around her the legend:  AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA.  To her left (possibly mirrored to her right, but the seal is incomplete) is a canon kneeling in prayer, in a separate arch.  The trefoil windows with tracery underneath on the canopy recall the east end of Guisborough, so perhaps this seal was actually based on the priory, and not just a flight of gothic fancy.

The legend on the rim (incomplete):  SIL. PRIORAT. BEATE MARIE DE GYSEBURNE.

Above the canopy are censing angels, similar to the ones on the Canterbury second seal (which you can see and read about here) or Norwich's seal.  There's a nod perhaps to Merton's seal; there's also perhaps a nod to Walter Giffard's seal, with the full-length figures in niches, although this wasn't uncommon.
PS.  Gisburne Part II.  I've just discovered Charles Clay's 1928 paper on 'The Seals of the Religious Houses of  Yorkshire', in Archaeologia (online! Hurrah!).  He gives the counterseal to this seal (pictured left).  It has the same architecture, but with a rather fat St Augustine in the middle, on a similar seat - but beneath that is an arcade of pointed arches; the BVM has one of fleurs-de-lys.  His staff is in his left hand, and his right hand is in benediction, and he is vested for mass, as befits a bishop (cf. Augustine on Merton's seal, or Nicholas on Drax's).  Around him are the words ORA P[RO] NOBIS BE[ATE] AVGV[STINE].  Dexter, beneath a crocketed canopy, a kneeling canon, with a crescent above him (cf the star above the kneeler on the seal); sinister, the remains of a corresponding canopy and presumably another figure.  The inscription is very incomplete.
Compare this with Anthony Bek's seal (right).  Bek was the first bishop of the 13th century to sit, and the compositional similarities are striking - he has Oswald and Cuthbert either side of him.  Bek's seal is extraordinary for its aesthetic innovations, its workmanship and its sheer effrontery - he's asserting himself as quasi-royal; at once holy and, with his heraldic chasuble, a massive temporal power.  Gisburne's seal-maker and/ or commissioner surely knew Bek's seal.

Clay also showed Gisburne's previous, 12th-century, seal.  It's much less architectural, but not necessarily less ornate.  It's a pointed oval, 2 ½ x 1 ¾", and has the BVM in conventual dress, seated on a chair ornamented with round arches, reading a book on a lectern, with a star of eight points in front of her on the dexter.  The inscription reads:  + SIGILLVM • SANCTE • MARIE • DE • GISEBVRNC [he gives the last letter as C, but it's a weird C.  Perhaps it's N?]  I'll have to look up the BVM (and other saints) reading.  It's the Word, but does it also show the importance of learning?  All this is on a dainty carved corbel.


Clay describes two counterseals to this: 1) Pointed oval,1 5/8”. A bird.* SIGILLUM : SECRETI :  2) BVM and Child; below, a kneeling figure. AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA DOMINUS TECUM.

Stone

Oval, 
Stone:  St Michael & St Wulfhad
Brit.Lib.:

A few years ago, a seal was discovered in Cobham, Surrey, belonging to Stone Priory, Staffs.  How it ended up in a field in Cobham, no-one knows.  The good people of Stone stumped up £8000 to buy it from a detectorist (ouch), and it's now back in Stone.  And quite right, too.  It's a lovely seal.

You can read a description of it and see more pictures here.

The legend is +S'ECCE SCE MARIE ET SCI W(V)LFADI MARTIRIS DE STANIS.  The BVM appears to be holding a distaff.

No reverse matrix survives, so far as we know; perhaps that would have had the junior saint of the priory's dedication, St Wulfade, on it!
 

Southwick

A seal of Southwick Priory was apparently this:

The Priory was dedicated to the BVM, but here we seem to have St Peter at the top, holding a key and a book and standing on a church.  Underneath, a canon? and the legend SIGILLU’M: PR’ : CRIS[?] CR[?]TESEY[?]E.  This is from a history of a neighbouring parish, and I have yet to check it all out, and so far, I'm unconvinced.  It bears striking resemblance to the 13th-century Dodnash Priory seal; the finds.org page says that 'Harvey & McGuinness (1996) illustrate a similar seal matrix of the Archdeacon of Cardigan on page 74, fig.69, which is dated to c.1292. "Seals of lesser church dignitaries followed a pattern similar to bishops' seals though smaller in size. Thus they are usually a pointed oval, by the late thirteenth century showing a saint - here the Virgin and Child - with suppliant figure below" (ibid, 74).'

Definitely Southwick is this one:

This is rather splendid.  The BVM sits enthroned, with Christ child on her knee, in a magnificent church - not just a canopy, but something resembling Salisbury Cathedral (13th century).  Those may be faces peering out of the windows (q.v. Merton).  The legend is SIGILLUM : ECCLESIE : SANCTE : MARIE : DE : SUWIKA.

According to one source (19th-century), this had a counterseal on an indenture of before 1216, on the reverse was a counterseal, ‘displaying an eagle and inscription : SIGILLUM GUIDONIS PRIORIS SVWICENSIS’.

However, Harvey and McGuinness date this to mid-13th - in fact c.1258 - which, from the style, looks convincing - so the 19th-c source needs checking!  The seal matrix is a stonker - it's got 3 parts.  The obverse is as pictured above (and right, below, on this picture from Harvey and McGuinness, p.14).

The two matrices to the left are an aesthetic delight.  You get your hot wax, stamp the middle one on it (with Christ and the Annunciation), and then you put a very thin layers of wax over this, and stamp the left-hand matrix.  This means that Christ and the Annunciation appear in the windows - but they give 'the impression added depth, even an effect of undercutting.' (H & McG, p.13.)


Although the seal design is unique, the BVM bears similarity to Gisburne's.

Seal description:  Tri-partite seal matrix, 7cm diameter (2 3/4"). Two lugs for lining up seal. 

c.1258/ mid-13th century.  Hampshire Record Office, 153M88/1.

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PS: the bibulous canons of Southwick.  I've just seen an entry in Bishop Woodlock's Register for 1308, being his visitation of Southwick.  He forbids the canons to go to the tavern in the village to eat or drink.

Merton Priory

Oval seal, 1/2",
Brit.Lib. BM Add.5614, BM Add.22869 Merton Coll. Ox.: c.iv Soc.Ant.: 1241

John Cherry wrote that 'the seal of Merton Priory (1241), considered the finest English medieval seal, had the Virgin and child on one side with St. Augustine of Hippo on the other.'  H. Kingsford said 'The obverse of this is to my thinking the finest seal ever cut.' Here it is:

The Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) sits crowned and enthroned with the infant Christ on her knee, and a ‘virga,’ a rod or stick, in her right hand.  The virga is a pun on ‘virgo’ (virgin’), probably also a reference to the ‘virga Jesse’ (the family tree of Jesse), and perhaps also a nod to erudition:  you use your virga to inscribe your wax tablet.  In the lovely Age of Chivalry catalogue, Sandy Heslop mistakes this as a mirror, which is a result of the juxtaposition of the virga and the dexter panel.  That would make the scene asymmetric, which is a no-no!

The BVM’s throne and canopy are elegant, up-to-date gothic architecture.  The corbel holding up her throne seems to be an flowingly floriated fleur-de-lys, which by the 11th century had become associated with Mary, the ‘lilium inter spinas.’  The canopy is unlikely to be a real building, but rather the artist’s flight of fancy. The background is diapered (divided into lozenges or diamonds), with quatrefoils in each.  Heales suggests these are roses, which again are symbols of Mary (‘rosa sine spinas’); roses also begin and end the inscription around the seal.  Out of two roundels (or ovals) peep two canons.

*SIGILL’ : ECCLESIE : SANCTE : MARIE : DE : MERITONA
The seal of the church of St Mary of Merton

On the reverse bears St. Augustine standing on a small, but decorated, corbel, with another ornate gothic church canopy, under which is an arch supported by filigree shafts.  He is in full episcopal gear, with mitre and crozier, his right-hand blessing us.  The same diaper work in the background, and the legend:

+MUNDI : LUCERNA : NOS : AUGUSTINE : GUBERNA
Light of the world, our rudder, Augustine

Heales notes that ‘the rim of this fine seal also bears the following legend:’

AUGUSTINE : PATER : QUOS : INSTRUIS : IN : MERITON : HIS : CRISTI : MATER : TUTRIX : EST : ATQUE : PATRONA
 Father Augustine, you instruct those in Merton to whom the Mother of Christ is guardian and patroness

Heales also writes that ‘The finest impression is that attached to the original grant by the Priory of the manor and advowson of Maldon to Sir Walter de Merton in 1265, now preserved amongst the records of Merton College, Oxford.  Good impressions also exist amongst the charters in the British Museum.  The use of the reverse of this seal seems to have been discontinued or the matrix may have been lost.  A charter dated 1407 [BM Add.5614] is sealed with the obverse, but the revers is simply stamped with the letters S and M…

Of the seals of the Priors three examples are known.  The earliest is that of Prior Eustace attached to a deed dated 1252 [Merton Coll c.iv].  The seal is imperfect, the upper half alone remaining; it is a pointed oval, the centre design being a hand holding a cross, the arms of which terminate in fleur-de-lys with a crescent and an estoile below.  Only a few letters of the legend remain:  E…… RITONE

Another affixed to a deed dated 1349 [BM Add.22869] has a somewhat similar design with a few illegible letters placed bendwise over the hand. The third example is a cast in the BM said to have been taken from an impression in the Records Office [now the National Archives], but no reference can now be obtained to the original.  The seal is imperfect:  the central device is a hand supporting a branch whereon are two birds, and the legend reads:  …CITIUS BEATE MON’E Z MAT…’

Henry III's first seal has similarly intricate gothic architecture, but his first seal has real similarities in folds and general treatment.  This was made by Walter de Ripa, who is assumed to have died in the late 1220s, as 'no later work by him has yet been discovered' (Heslop).  Merton's seal is from 20 years later.  It's possible Walter was still going.  Kingsford, in his classic article on seal engravers, attributes it to a later royal engraver, Edward of Westminster, but only because he was employed by the king - in fact, earlier, Kingsford expresses doubt as to Edward's being a seal-fabricator anyway!

Kingsford points out the similarity with the seal of Bruton Priory, Somerset.

_________________________________

Oval
Late 12th century.
Merton had a seal before that, photographed and recorded by Heales, and dated by him to 1197, from an entry in the Annals of Merton, Corpus Christi MS059 fol.168v.  (This replaced an even earlier one.)  This seal was in his own collection, and I have yet to find out what happened to it.  Again, the BVM is seated with the Christ child (who looks as though he's about to leap off her lap).  It's a dynamic image.  The legend is:  ...SC...MARIE : DE : MER..., and reverse CELI REGINA MARIA MVNDI DNA and + MATER : MISERICORDIE  + PATRONA MERITONIE.


A letter in support of the canonisation of Edmund of Abingdon from February 1242 that is now in the Yonne archives has the obverse of the 1241 seal, but as its reverse, the older counterseal, with a perfect impression.

St Frideswide's

Picture courtesy of Andrew Dunning.

In 1180 the relics of St Frideswide were translated to a shrine built for pilgrims by the Augustinian canons of the Priory of St Frideswide.  At this time, according to T. A. Heslop, the Priory acquired this rather fine seal.

Frideswide is enthroned, holding a fleur-de-lys and a book or wax tablet, with a canopy of three domes, bearing remarkable similarity to the seal of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, 1185 (perhaps suggesting parallels between the shrine to St F and the shrine of the Sepulchre.  Cute!).  She isn’t crowned or mitred, as you might expect from a saint, but looks much more like Grammar on Chartres Cathedral.  Heslop also finds similarities between the figure of Frideswide and those of Geoffrey, bishop-elect of Lincoln, and Constance, duchess of Brittany and countess of Richmond, both from the 1180s; stylistically, therefore, the seal can be fairly confidently dated to the 1180s.