Plates 3.26-3.30: Scottish Seals
Objects:
On Plate 3.26
1. Seal of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland
2. Seal of David II, King of Scotland
3. Privy seal of David II
4. Privy seal of Edward Balliol, King of Scotland
5. The seal of Robert II, King of Scotland
6. Seal of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland
7. Seal of Mary Queen of Scots
8. Another seal of Mary Queen of Scots
On Plate 3.27
1. Burgh seal of Edinburgh (c.1296)
2. Burgh seal of Roxburgh (c.1296)
3. Burgh seal of Stirling (c. 1296)
4. Burgh seal of Perth (c. 1296)
5. Burgh seal of Aberdeen (c. 1357)
6. Burgh seal of Crail (c.1357)
7. Burgh seal of Dundee (c. 1423)
On Plate 3.28
1. Seal of Patrick, Earl of Dunbar
2. Seal of Dervorgilla of Gallowa
3. Seal of Roger de Quincy
4. Seal of William Comyn, Lord of ‘Kirkincolach’ [Kirkintilloch]
5. Seal of Robert Bruce, Fifth Lord of Annandale
6. Seal of John Balliol
7. Seal of John de Hastings, Lord of Abergavenny
8. Seal John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch
9. Seal Patrick of Dunbar, Earl of March
10. Seal of John de Vesci
11. Seal of Nicholas de Soulis
12. Seal of William de Ross
On Plate 3.29
1. Seal of Hugh de Eglinton
2. Seal of Patrick, Earl of March
3. Seal of William, Earl of Ross
4. Seal of Donald, Earl of Lennox
5. Seal of William Douglas, Lord Douglas
6. Seal of James Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
7. Seal of David Graham, Lord of Dundas
8. Seal of Patrick, Earl of March
9. Seal of Thomas Stewart, Earl of Angus
10. Seal of William, Earl of Sutherland
11. Seal of Thomas Moray, Lord of Bothwell
12. Seal of William Livingston
13. Seal of Robert Erskine
14. Seal of Robert Erskine
15. Seal of William Keith, Great Marshal of Scotland
16. Seal of George Dunbar, Earl of March
17. Seal of Robert Stewart, Earl of Strathearn
18. Seal of Archibald Douglas, Lord of Galloway
19. William, Earl of Douglas and Mar
20. Seal of James, Earl of Douglas and Annandale, Lord of Galloway
21. Seal of Robert Liddale de Balmure
22. Seal of Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus
23. Seal of Andrew Grey
24. Seal of James Liddal
25. Seal of Hugh, Lord Montgomery
26. Seal of William, Lord of Borthwick
27. Seal of Alexander, Lord of Home
28. Seal of William, Sixth Earl of Errol
29. Seal of William de Eglis
30. Seal of William Scott of Balcary
31. Seal of Robert Balcader, Archbishop of Glasgow
32. Seal of Andrew Forman, Prior of Pittenweem
33. Seal of William, Master of Ruthven
On Plate 3.30
1. Seal of Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus
2. Seal of James Hamilton, Earl of Arran
3. Seal of John, Lord Fleming
4. Seal of A Private Seal of the Abbot of Kelso
5. Seal of Robert, Lord Maxwell
6. Seal of John Erskine, Earl of Mar
7. Seal of Master Adam Otterburn of Aldham
8. Seal of William Stewart, Bishop of Aberdeen
9. Seal of Adam Otterburn of Reidhall
10. Seal of William Cunningham, Earl of Glencairn
11. Seal of George Douglas
12. Seal of William Hamilton of Sanquhar
13. Seal of James Lermont of Balcomy
14. Seal of Master Henry Balnavis of Hallhill
15. Seal of Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes
Transcription:
For transcriptions of the seal legends, please see the commentaries on each individual plate by Rachel M. Davis (Plate 3.26, Plate 3.27, Plate 3.28, Plate 3.29, Plate 3.30).
Translation:
For translations of the seal legends, please see the commentaries on each individual plate by Rachel M. Davis (Plate 3.26, Plate 3.27, Plate 3.28, Plate 3.29, Plate 3.30).
Original Explanatory Account: Click here to read the original explanatory account for Plates 3.26-3.30.
Commentary by John Cherry:
Note: For a detailed account of the seals on each individual plate, please see the dedicated commentaries by Rachel Meredith Davis (Plate 3.26, Plate 3.27, Plate 3.28, Plate 3.29, Plate 3.30).
Abstract
This study of Scottish Seals concluded the work of a committee appointed by the Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) to engrave significant Scottish seals, which had not previously been published in the Westminster Chapter House, The British Museum, The Tower of London and other places. It consists of an introduction and five illustrative plates numbered 3.26, 3.27, 3.28, 3.29, 3.30. For each plate Thomas Astle, a curator in the British Museum and Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London, provided a commentary indicating the nature of the document to which the seal was attached, and identifying the person to whom the seal belonged. The printed introduction and commentary, entitled Account of the Seals of the Kings, Royal Boroughs, and Magnates of Scotland, is reproduced here in its entirety. In this edition, an introduction to Astle’s work is provided by John Cherry below. Rachel Meredith Davis provides a detailed commentary on each seal in each of the five plates (linkied above), in which she discusses Astle’s choice and the identification that he made. She further provides examples of those seals which have been published since the late eighteenth century. Davis contributes a modern scholarly perspective to Astle’s discussion of the competitors for the throne of Scotland in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, women’s seals, the seals of Scottish boroughs and the heraldic seals of the magnates of Scotland.
Thomas Astle
Thomas Astle, one of the Curators at the British Museum and Keeper of the Records at the Tower of London, finished his introduction to his work on Scottish Seals at Battersea Rise on the 18th of April 1792. Dedicated to the Earl of Leicester, the President of the SAL, it records
that the Council having appointed a Committee to consider of engraving such seals of the Kings, Royal Boroughs, and Magnates of Scotland, as had not hitherto been published, with directives to seek such, as, in their opinion, were most worthy of attention; the committee repaired to the Chapter-house at Westminster, and they afterwards visited several other repositories where records are preserved: from all of which they have selected the Seals which appear in the following plates. The records to which the seals were appended chiefly relate to public transactions between England and Scotland. They furnish many new and important historical facts, and explain many particulars in our national history, which have hitherto either been misrepresented or not understood. (Astle 1792, 3)Astle (1735-1803) was an English antiquary and palaeographer. Born in Staffordshire, he moved to London and worked on an index to the catalogue of the Harleian manuscripts (then in the British Museum) which was published between 1759 and 1763. Astle was elected a Fellow of the SAL (FSA) in 1763, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1766. He was appointed by George Grenville, the Prime Minister, to a Commission to superintend the regulation of the public records at Westminster. Astle is described as “one of the Curators in the British Museum, and Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London” on the title page of the Account accompanying these five plates of Scottish seals. He had acquired an extensive knowledge of the public records and manuscripts and also collected manuscripts on his own account. His interest in seals was first shown in 1768 by his publishing an etching of the seal of the Benedictine Priory of Tutbury, Staffordshire, which was attached to the deed of surrender of the monastery then in the Augmentation Office. It was engraved by J Bayley (BL Maps K.Top.38.47.c.). This etching can be compared with the actual seal, dated 1538, in The National Archives (formerly Public Record Office) (Ellis 1986, M868 / TNA E.322/347).
Astle’s earliest publication of a commentary on a seal was on the seal or golden bulla of Edmund, King of Sicily, in 1777 (BM PET OA 3017), which Vertue had engraved for Vetusta Monumenta in 1734 (Plate 1.43). Astle was able to compare this to a green wax seal in his collection, and dispose of any suggestion that the golden bulla was a coin (Astle 1777, 195). There is no direct evidence that Astle was concerned with Scottish seals before 1789, but around 1785 he published a short note on Monuments in Ross-shire (SA library Tr 210), which may suggest a visit to Scotland in the 1780s.
Two volumes of drawings of charters and seals, still in the British Library, also suggest a growing interest in Scotland during this period on Astle’s part. The first, entitled Diplomata Scotie (Stowe MS 551), contains transcripts of charters relating to Scotland, made under his direction from originals in his collection. These include charters of Scottish Kings from David I to Robert II, ranging between 1128 and 1382. The originals of these charters are now in the British Library (Campbell charters xxx.1-19). Notes are appended to the charters, sometimes in Astle’s own hand. Bound up in this volume are notes on the Charters in the Scotch College in Paris made by Andrew Stuart in 1789, so the binding must have taken place after 1789. The second volume (Stowe MS 552) contains collections relating to the history of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century also made by Astle, and forms a supplement to the preceding volume. The documents transcribed are from originals in the Record Office at Edinburgh (transferred thither from the State Paper Office in 1793), the English Record Office, and elsewhere. It is possible that further research may reveal a connection between these two volumes and the plates of Scottish seals produced for Vetusta Monumenta. Written documents were Astle’s primary interest, but he also held an unusual respect for seals as independent sources of evidence.
Astle and Scottish seals
The first reference to this publication of the Scottish seals is in a letter, dated 22 June 1789, from Astle to Jacob Schnebbelie, who was the draftsman to the SAL: “Mr Astle acquaints Mr Schnebbelie that several ancient seals of the Kings and Magnates of Scotland, are looked out and ready for him to draw. Mr S will carry this note to Mr Ellis or Mr Thompson at the Chapter House and they will shew him the seals” (SAL MS 267, fol. 77). So, by June 1789, Astle had selected some of the seals to be illustrated.
Almost a year later it appears in the Council Minutes of 12 May 1790 that “instructions be given to the Committee to direct Mr Schnebbelie to take drawings of certain inedited seals in the British Museum of the ancient Kings and Magnates of Scotland” (SAL Council Minutes III.120). Also, at this meeting it was ordered “that Mr Schnebbelie’s bill amounting to £13 be paid,” but this may not be solely related to drawings of seals, or, possibly, only partly related to the Scottish seals.
Jacob Schnebbelie, born in 1760 to a Swiss mercenary and his English wife, was a young draftsman who came to the notice of Richard Gough, Director of the SAL, in 1786 when Gough hired him to produce images for his Sepulchral Monuments. Schnebbelie worked as a drawing master at Westminster school, and the arrangement between Gough and Schnebbelie appears to have been informal, although Schnebbelie came to adopt and interpret his role as “Draughtsman to the Society of Antiquaries.” He adopted this title from at least June 1788. Gough had employed him to produce images of church and funerary monuments for his own book Sepulchral Monuments as well as for Vetusta Monumenta (e.g., Plates 2.45-2.50) between 1788 and 1791.
It is not clear when the Committee for Scottish Seals of the SAL was established but it was presumably in 1789. Astle reported to the Council on the committee’s work between 1790 and 1792. The Council Minutes of 23rd March 1791 record the following:
Mr. Astle reported to the Council that the Committee had carried into execution the order of the 12th of May last relative to the drawing of certain inedited Seals in the British Museum, and upon motion made by Mr Astle [it was ordered] that the said Order be extended to the Chapter House of Westminster, under the inspection of the said Committee and that Mr. Caley be added to the Committee. Mr Astle at the same time delivered to the Secretary the drawings of Seals, by Mr Schnebbelie, two more remaining in his own possession. (SAL Council Minutes III.141)This suggests that more documents with seals were required to be drawn at the Westminster chapter house than Astle had selected in 1789, that Schnebbelie had passed his drawings to Astle who then passed all but two to the Secretary, and that John Caley (1760 – 1834) was to be added to the committee. In 1791 John Caley was a young antiquary who through the influence of Astle worked on the records at the Tower of London, which would lead to a later career of responsibility for the Public Records.
On the 14th February 1792 the Council:
Ordered that the drawings of Seals produced by Mr Astle from the Committee to inspect inedited seals in the British Museum and the Chapter House, West. be engraved on five plates for the Monumenta Vetusta and the account and description given thereof by Mr Astle be referred to the same Committee to see the said seals engraved by such Heraldick engraver as they shall judge the fittest. (SAL Council Minutes III.155)The initial drawings were done by Schnebbelie, given to Astle and thence to the Society, and were to be engraved by a heraldic engraver, one who specializes in the engraving of heraldic arms and devices on metal items, mainly silver or pewter, but also specializes in engraving printing blocks with armorial devices. Barak Longmate, senior, and his son Barak Longmate were then chosen as the heraldic engravers and engraved the five plates.
Schnebbelie’s career in the employment of the SAL was suspended temporarily in February 1791. Matthew M. Reeve points to a letter datable to early February 1791 to Gough from Schnebbelie which records his astonishment at being told he could no longer use his title “Draughtsman to the Society of Antiquaries” at a meeting of the Society. (Reeve 2007, 71-75). His understanding with Gough and the SAL was quickly restored and he was paid for many more drawings in the course 1791; more were purchased from his widow after his death. The Scottish seal drawings, however, were taken over by Longmate junior, who may have corrected the heraldic detail and made other adjustments in preparation for engraving. On 24 January 1792, the Council of the SAL “Ordered, that Mr Longmate be paid 15 guineas on account for the drawing of certain seals selected by the committee and that he be directed to attend on the committee to make such alterations in them as they shall think proper” (Council Minutes III.152). A few weeks later, on 21 February 1792, Schnebbelie died of rheumatic fever at his residence, 7 Poland Street, London, leaving a widow, Caroline and three sons, for whom provision was made by the SAL.
The drawings on the five plates of Scottish Seals were signed by Barack (or Barak) Longmate, junior (1768-1836), while all but one of the plates carry the signature of his father Barak Longmate, senior (1738-1793), as engraver. Both were genealogical editors and heraldic engravers, and the elder Longmate had previously contributed to Astle’s The Origin and Progress of Writing, published in 1784. The only one of the prints to carry a date, Plate 3.27, also has a unique signature on the lower right: B. Longmate Junr del et sculp 1792. All the other plates are signed thus: B. Longmate Junr del (on the left) and B. Longmate sculp (on the right). Since Astle’s dedication is dated April 1792, it seems likely that Plate 3.27 was engraved last, with the others also drawn by the son but engraved by the father, possibly in 1791. Since “Longmate Junr” is designated as the engraver for Plate 3.27, it is possible that the father had retired by 1792.
Barak Longmate, senior, died at his house at 11 Noel Street, Soho, on 23 July 1793, leaving three sons and two daughters, and was buried four days later in the churchyard of St Marylebone (Cheesman 2008). Barak Longmate, junior, his eldest son, succeeded him in his business, and did all of the preparatory drawings for these plates as well as the engraving for at least one (as indicated by the signatures). The style of drawing and engraving is similar on all five plates, suggesting that Longmate junior used Schnebbelie’s drawings, possibly added heraldic detail, and then engraved them all.
Why Scottish Seals?
In the second half of the eighteenth century, there was a change in English attitudes to Scotland. The threat to the English political system from the Jacobites lessened and went away. More Scots came to London to serve in politics, the army and in the Empire. Linda Colley has pointed out that “Jacobitism was dead and because London was desperately eager to secure Scottish collaboration in warfare and empire building, and because Scotland itself was developing into a more prosperous country, men from the north were able to seize upon jobs and opportunities to an unprecedented degree” (Colley 1992, 117-122). Rosemary Hill has traced the change in the English antiquarian attitude to Scotland in the Romantic period particularly through the popularity of Sir Walter Scott (Hill, 2021, 2). The time was right for fresh attention to be given to the unpublished seals and documents in England that revealed Scotland’s history.
Scottish seals had already been studied to a considerable extent in Scotland, particularly by James Anderson (1662-1728), whose Selectus diplomatum & numismatum scotiæ was published in 1739. In 1782 an introduction to this work, with notes taken from various authors and edited by T. Ruddiman (1674-1757), was published in Edinburgh by P. Anderson. Perhaps Astle and the English Antiquaries were trying to catch up with the Scottish scholarship on charters and seals. Selectus diplomatum & numismatum scotiæ is mentioned by Astle with great admiration.
Another reason why Astle’s attention may have been drawn to Scottish seals, particularly those in the public records, was the suspicion that some charters and seals might be forgeries. John Hardyng, a fifteenth-century chronicler, who authored a verse chronicle of British History from the legendary setting of Albion to the fifteenth century, also produced forged documents. Alfred Hiatt (2004) has shown that between 1422 and 1463, Hardyng presented at least twenty documents relating to Anglo-Scottish relations to the English government. Of the seventeen documents that survive, fourteen have been identified as forgeries. Astle launched into an analysis of these forgeries in his account of the seals on Plate 3.26. In particular, he identified the seal of David II attached to a charter (No. 2) as a forgery (Astle 1792, 6-8). He concluded the instrument to be a forgery, owing to its rehearsal of English superiority over Scotland, which would have been a moot point after the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328. The charter also falsely asserts the superiority of the metropolitan Archbishop of York over the clergy of Scotland. The desire to show which seals were genuine and which were forgeries may have been a strong motivation in Astle’s publication of Scottish seals.
Astle was clearly interested in Scottish history, and particularly in the problem of who should succeed to the crown of Scotland both in the late thirteenth and fourteenth century, and in later periods, particularly the sixteenth century. As a result of this he was also interested in genealogy, heraldry, and objects such as rings associated with Queens.
Where do these plates fit into the history of the engraving of seals?
In the early eighteenth century, apart from George Vertue (see, for example, Plates 1.53-54), the main person who caused seals to be engraved was Richard Rawlinson (1690-1755), bibliophile and collector, whose collections of manuscripts, seals, and seal matrices ended up in the Bodleian Library (now housed in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford) (Cherry 2016). Rawlinson approached the engraving of manuscripts and documents in two ways. He either had the charter and its usually appendant seal engraved on one plate or he produced prints of individual seals and seal-matrices, which were sometimes printed grouped together in different numbers, but were detached from the manuscript. For an example of sixteen prints of individual matrices on one sheet, see John Cherry (2016, fig. 10).
The engravings of seals by George Vertue for the first two volumes of Vetusta Monumenta were contained in attractive shell-like frames, with a rather irregular placement of the seals and the tags or laces displayed quite prominently. The engraving by Longmate shows plain rectangular frames and the seals are arranged in lines. Tags (at least one with writing on it) and laces are shown and Longmate uses a convention of two parallel lines to link the obverse and the reverse of double-sided seals. Where the impression is damaged, this is clearly shown (see Plate 3.26, No. 2). Plate 3.26, Fig. 7 and 8 are labeled A and B to indicate that these two are drawn actual size (as confirmed by the caption below the plate).
All the seals of royal boroughs are two-sided, and some of the drawings clearly show the lugs of the matrix preserved in the wax (e.g.,Plate 3.27, No. 2). All the seals on Plate 3.27 have laces, while Plate 3.28 has a mixture of tags and laces. Notable on Plate 3.28 is the clear drawing of counter seals on the reverses of Nos. 1,13, and 14. Plate 3.29 has a mixture of laces and tags, while Plate 3.30 has only tags. The Longmate engravings are valuable for showing the damage of seals attached to the same document, particularly Plate 3.28, Nos. 16 to 21.
Distribution
Astle’s paper on Scottish seals was first ordered to be printed by the Society in 1792; the plates and the printed account together were priced at 15 shillings. The print run is not indicated. A free copy was given to each member of the committee that was appointed to supervise the printing (SAL Council Minutes III.151). There is one copy of this edition in Solander D of the library of the Society of Antiquaries. Astle also retained at least one copy (now in a private collection). He used it to add extra leaves with drawings and prints of seals, some Scottish and some not, and some with comments in his writing. The plate set, originally numbered I-V, was renumbered and bound into the third volume of Vetusta Monumenta (with Astle’s Account) when it the volume was completed in 1796—as originally intended by the Council (SAL Council Minutes III.155).
This Publication
This publication provides digital page images of Astle’s Account along with a re-keyed version of the original text, and adds new commentary by Rachel Meredith Davis on all the seals illustrated on the five plates (Plate 3.26, Plate 3.27, Plate 3.28, Plate 3.29, Plate 3.30). This commentary includes the present location of each original, comments on Astle’s identification with an assessment of its significance, and observations on the locations of other impressions of the same seal, as indicated by the catalogues of different archives, libraries, and museums. Of great use to this study is the Catalogue of Heraldic Seals in Scotland by Stevenson and Wood, published in a very limited edition in 1940. The Court of Lord Lyon holds a collection of casts of these seals.
Works Cited:
Anderson, James. 1739. Selectus diplomatum & numismatum scotiæ was published in 1739. Edinburgh: apud Tho. & Walt Ruddimannos.
Astle, Thomas. 1777. “An Account of the Events produced in England by the Grant of the Kingdom of Sicily to Prince Edmund, Second Son of King Henry the Third. with some Remarks upon the Seal of that Prince.” Archaeologia VII: 232-35.
Astle, Thomas. 1792. “Plate XXXVI. Vo. III.” In Vetusta Monumenta, vol. 3.
BL Stowe MS 551
BL Stowe MS 552
BL Maps K.Top.38.47.c.
BM Prehistory Europe and Treasure OA 3017. British Library.
Cheesman, C. 2008. “Longmate, Barak.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cherry, John. 2016. Richard Rawlinson and his Seal Matrices: Collecting in the early eighteenth century. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum.
Colley, Linda. 1992. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. London: Pimlico.
Ellis, Roger H. 1986. Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office: Monastic Seals: Volume 1. London: HMSO.
Gough, Richard. 1786-96.Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain applied to illustrate the history families, manners, habits, and arts at different periods from the Norman Conquest to the seventeenth century. London: John Nichols.
Hiatt, Alfred. 2004.The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England. London: The British Library.
Hill, Rosemary. 2021. Time’s Witness: History in the Age of Romanticism. London: Allen Lane.
Reeve, Matthew M. 2007. “Jacob Schnebbelie, Draughtsman to the Society of Antiquaries (1760-92), and the Politics of Preservation in Late Eighteenth Century England.” Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, Vol. 51: 69-86.
SA MS. 267.
TNA E.322/347.