Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/348

 256 REMAKES ON ONE OF THE GREAT SEALS OF EDWARD III. import ; for he could not have overlooked that the sentence was incomplete. Rex in canceU.aria sua, was one of the modes of designating the Court of Chancery, and did not imply the actual presence of the king ; and I would suggest that the omitted words should have followed the word consignand' at the end of the second paragraph, which should have terminated thus — " consignandi gratia brevia et alia de cursu cancellarice sibi accepit,'' or with words to the like eifect. If such words be supplied, the whole becomes intelligible and consistent ; and the general purport of it as regards the seals is, that the Chancellor, sitting officially, caused all the seals in the treasury with either " Anglie et Francie," or " Fraucie et Anglie " upon them to be brought to him ; whereof he took two great seals, with the legends specified, and delivered other seals to the chiefs of the courts of K.B., C.P., and Exchequer, and another to the Clerk of the Privv Seal : and the seals which had been in use since the Peace of Bretigny he sent back to the treasury. The division of the memorandum into paragraphs in the printed copy has added somewhat to the obscurity of it. However, the view I take of the matter does not require any words to be supplied ; for I think, defective as the document is, it suffices to show that two great seals were then taken out of the treasury with '• Anglie et Francie " and " Francie et Anglie " upon them respectively, whatever may have been done with them ; and my only object, in sug- gesting words to complete the sense, is to point out where the omissiou occurs, and how little need be supplied. After carefully perusing Professor Willis's paper, and the various documents in Rymer which I could find bearing on the subject, and the additional information for which we are indebted to Mr. Gunner, a view of the question, whether the newly discovered seal be E or not, occurred to me, consistent, 1 think, with all the evidence ; and this I will now proceed to state, distinguishing the Winchester seal as W for facility of reference. My hypothesis, or I hope I may say inference from all the evidence, is, that between the 20th of June, 1340, and the Peace of Bretigny in May, 1360 (the period during which Professor Willis has assumed there was but one great seal of absence used, viz. Ej, either there were two great seals of absence, viz., W, till October, 1347, and probably later, and afterwards E ; or there was only one great seal of absence, viz., originally W; but which between 1347 and 1360 was converted into E by the inscription being altered from " Francie et Anglie " into '* Anglie et Francie." For the fact of W having been a seal of absence in 1347, Mr. Gunner has proved beyond question ; and that sometime before May, 1360, there was a great seal of absence with the inscription, " Anglie et Francie," is, I think, also proved, though less conclusively, by the document in Rymer, (iii., p. 868.) seeing that F was certainly a seal of presence. Of these two alternatives the latter, viz., that there was only one seal (i. e. matrix), the inscription of which was altered between 1347 and 1360, seems to me the iuore probable for the following reasons: — 1. Such alterations were not uncommon, as Professor Willis's paper shows, and an alteration would satisfy all that the evidence requires to make it consistent. -. If it were found expedient to make the difference between F and W more manifest, an alteration like that supposed was well adapted for the purpose. 3. There is no account of any 7iew great seal having been made or delivered to the Chancellor during the period. I at first thought the