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.
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