Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/88

76 kenzie. This relic in addition to the interest created by its execution has the peculiar advantage of being a dated specimen of English skill in working iron, during the early part of that period which is architecturally named the Decorated. It appears from the third roll of accounts rendered by the executors of Queen Eleanor, dated in the twenty-first and twenty-second regnal years of Edward I., A.D. 1293-4, that master Thomas de Leghtone, smith, was employed to make this screen, by contract, for twelve pounds, and that he received two payments of sixty shillings each, on account, in Michaelmas term of the former year; and the balance, including twenty shillings for the carriage of the work from Leighton to Westminster, and the expenses of himself and men in London while engaged in fixing it beside the tomb, in Hillary term 1294. The place from which the cunning smith derived his name was, probably, Leighton Buzzard in the county of Bedford. The whole is of wrought iron, riveted. The ornate compartments are not of uniform design, four patterns being introduced; the screen which curved outwards towards the aisle was crowned by a sort of chevaux de frise. Taking into consideration the altered value of money, the cost of this fabric was about one hundred and eighty pounds of the present currency.

We are indebted to Francis H. Dickinson, Esq., M.P., for the communication of a fine matrix of a seal, here represented. No facts relating to it or the locality where it had been found, could be ascertained. It is the seal of an ecclesiastic, who is represented kneeling at the lowest part of the design, invoking the intercession of the blessed Virgin, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and St. Edmund, who is distinguished by his usual symbol, an arrow. The most singular feature, however, of this curious seal, is found