Circular seal matrices of copper alloy with three peripheral loops to hold them in place in a seal press. England, 1450-60.

Circular seal matrix of copper alloy

These are the matrices for the common seal of the Benedictine priory of St Mary, Pilton, in North Devon. The obverse is engraved with the Virgin and Child, which reflects the devotional focus of the priory. The reverse is engraved with an image of the Anglo-Saxon king Aethelstan who the monks claimed as founder of their institution. Although this had been rejected by a royal enquiry in the time of Edward III (1327-1377) (Luxford: 2005, p. 148; Heale: 2004, p. 29), the priory persisted with the claim because it suggested their foundation was ancient and consequently of spiritual and political importance. The arms on the proper right of the king (an orb with a trefoiled cross, surmounted by a crown) are those of Aethelstan as imagined by medieval English heralds (see Fisher: 1682, p. 2; Birch: 1887, no. 3841; Williams: 1998, no. M.188). An early Museum label makes the ingenious suggestion that the combination of the figure of the king and the two oak trees that support the armorial shields are a pun on the name of Richard Kengeswode ('King's Wood'), who was Prior at Pilton between 1413-21. However, a seal of the same design is affixed to a 1534 document, long after his death, which makes it unlikely that this seal was Kengeswode's own personal one. The size of the matrices suggests they were for the common, or institutional seal of the foundation, which was affixed to documents that reflected the wishes of the whole community, and not a seal for a prior's personal correspondence. The fine, close black-letter script used for the legends round the rim and the elaborate, architectural canopies over the figures, suggest a mid-fifteenth-century date for the matrices, slightly later than Kengeswode's period of office (Williams: 1998, p. 2). The matrices survived the dissolution of the priory by Henry VIII's commissioners in 1536 and in the eighteenth century came into the possession of the Rev. John Bowle, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (elected 19 March 1767), whose name is engraved on the back of both matrices, with a date of February 1769. It was presumably Bowle who showed the matrices to the scholar Samuel Pegge in 1777; on the basis of their size and the quality of the engraved work, Pegge concluded that they were dies for the common seal of Milton Abbey, Dorset. This confusion is reflected in subsequent histories of the county but was eventually corrected in the nineteenth century when an identical seal was found attached to a document of 1534 in which the Prior and monks of Pilton acknowledged Henry VIII's position as Head of the English church (Nichols: 1872, pp. 251-57; the document translated in Bagley: 1907). Towards the end of the nineteenth century the matrices were believed lost, and the Antiquary John Gough Nichols made a plea for them to be traced (Nichols: March 1872, p. 240). However, in this period they had passed into the collection of the Rev. Thomas Hugo (1820-1876), also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and who is perhaps best-known as a writer on the Newcastle engraver Thomas Bewick. Shortly after Hugo's death, the Museum purchased the matrices for £6 from his widow, Mrs Hugo of The Rectory, West Hackney.

Circular or oval seals of wax, lead or even precious metal, attached to a document with threads, guaranteed the stipulations or conditions laid out in the text above, and the authenticity of the document. They were used regularly in England from the twelfth century onwards. Seal matrices were cut and punched by specialist seal makers or, when matrices were made of precious metals, by goldsmiths. This pair of matrices is for a single, double-sided seal. A cake of wax would be placed on each matrix, the matrices were then lined up and pressed together in a seal press. Each side of the wax cake would receive the impression from the die, and the pressure would also unite the two cakes into a single seal. Many seals, however, were one-sided. Wax was pressed into the die, and then the matrix was gently removed to leave the wax impression. The matrices described here were made for the Benedictine priory of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pilton, North Devon. The priory certainly existed by 1187, when it is mentioned in documents, but the monks preferred to claim it had been founded in the tenth century by the Anglo-Saxon king Aethelstan, and this is why Aethelstan's image and arms appear on the reverse matrix. Although the size of the seal matrices suggests a large institution, in fact Pilton Priory was a very small foundation which was dependent on Malmesbury Abbey (Wiltshire). In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries only three monks carried out spiritual and administrative duties there, which principally involved prayer, and tending to the practical administration of the Abbey estates in the area. Despite its small size, the priory played an important role in the community. In the 1530s, it was the centre of a flourishing local cult of the Virgin Mary, and annual offerings to the monastery totalled £10. Yet by the end of 1536 Pilton priory was no more, suppressed by Henry VIII as part of his plan to establish himself as Head of the Church of England.

746 and 746A-1877