Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/16

4 require them in the ordinary transactions of life, and yet were not entitled to bear armorial distinctions, then the prerogative of the knightly order. Thus yeomen, merchants, substantial artificers, and the like, in short all persons comprehended by the term middle class, continued to fashion their seals according to their own taste, and in the same arbitrary manner as they had done at the earlier period; occasionally with slight modifications imitative of heraldic arrangement, as in the use of shields.

For a time they were content with the small variety of devices already described; the fleur-de-lis, birds, Agnus Dei, &c.; then rebuses on the christian or surname were adopted: these were quickly followed by symbols of occupation or handicraft; thus, the miller would bear an ear of corn fleur-de-lisé; the musician his viol or croute, the farrier or smith proclaimed his calling by a horseshoe, and the schoolmaster figured on his seal with that valuable instrument and symbol of discipline the birch. About the same time that grotesques make their first appearance on marginal paintings in manuscripts, that is at the commencement of the fourteenth century, we find them on personal seals, and they are met with in great variety throughout the same period.

The several types or devices above enumerated, sometimes in combination with architectural details, are those which are of chief occurrence from the thirteenth to the end of the fourteenth century. It was during this, which I would call the second, period that medieval seals attained their highest artistic excellence. The impulse given to all branches of the arts soon after the accession of Henry the Third, apparent in all the monuments of that reign, is nowhere more conspicuous than in the design and execution of seals; and these objects continue to present features of considerable beauty from that time until the year 1400.

The shape of seals during the thirteenth century was generally oval, more or less acute; so ordinary was this form that any one having to arrange a mass of unsorted deeds might easily pick out most of those anterior to the year 1300 by merely observing the contours of the seals. As no rule is without exception, so there are many circular and even heater- shield shaped seals of this date; but the ovoid will be found to predominate. I do not pretend to offer any decided opinion as to the symbolical import of that form; although it may be