Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/14

2 to the end of the fifteenth centnry. As land became more and more subinfeudated, and wealth generally, more distributed, the use of seals was diffused among all classes legally competent to acquire or aliene property.

On personal seals of this early date, that is of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which may be termed the first period, the devices are entirely arbitrary and literal in character. Thus barons and persons of knightly degree used seals representing a horseman, armed at all points, spurring to the fight, or riding, falcon on wrist, to the chase. The seals of females, single or married, sometimes bore their effigies attired in a costume generally indicating that of their time: besides these rude attempts at the human figure, birds, as eagles or hawks, lions, dragon-like forms, crescents and stars in a variety of combinations, and fleurs-de-lis are the subjects which most commonly occur. No device adopted at this time was sufficiently distinctive in character to identify the ownership of the seal; that object was attained by the surrounding legend, containing the title or name of the person to whom it belonged.

The shape of seals used by secular persons during this period was generally circular; the seals of females, like those of ecclesiastics, were mostly of a pointed oval form; the circular model however appears to have been the most prevalent.

There are no reverses to baronial or knightly seals of this date, produced, as was the case at a later period, by impressing a smaller seal, termed a secretum or privy-seal, on the back of the wax after the application of the great seal. The earliest example of this fashion, with which I am acquainted, is the