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!