Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Politics and the People in Thirteenth-Century England
- Peasants, Litigation and Agency in Medieval England: the Development of Law in Manorial Courts in the late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries
- Medieval Accounting Memoranda from Norwich Cathedral Priory
- The Seals of London's Governing Elite in the Thirteenth Century
- The Marriages of the English Earls in the Thirteenth Century: a Social Perspective
- Monks and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Wales and Catalonia
- Lope Fernández, Bishop of Morocco: His Diplomatic Role in the Planning of an Anglo-Castilian Crusade into Northern Africa
- On Kingship and Tyranny: Grosseteste's Memorandum and its Place in the Baronial Reform Movement
- St Edmund of Canterbury and Henry III in the Shadow of Thomas Becket
- Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas: Ritualised Communication in Text and Practice
- Thomas of Lancaster in the Vita Edwardi Secundi: a Study in Disillusionment
- John and Henry III in the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut
- Genealogiae orbiculatae: Matthew Paris and the Invention of Visual Abstracts of English History
- The Genealogical Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Edition
The Seals of London's Governing Elite in the Thirteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Politics and the People in Thirteenth-Century England
- Peasants, Litigation and Agency in Medieval England: the Development of Law in Manorial Courts in the late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries
- Medieval Accounting Memoranda from Norwich Cathedral Priory
- The Seals of London's Governing Elite in the Thirteenth Century
- The Marriages of the English Earls in the Thirteenth Century: a Social Perspective
- Monks and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Wales and Catalonia
- Lope Fernández, Bishop of Morocco: His Diplomatic Role in the Planning of an Anglo-Castilian Crusade into Northern Africa
- On Kingship and Tyranny: Grosseteste's Memorandum and its Place in the Baronial Reform Movement
- St Edmund of Canterbury and Henry III in the Shadow of Thomas Becket
- Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas: Ritualised Communication in Text and Practice
- Thomas of Lancaster in the Vita Edwardi Secundi: a Study in Disillusionment
- John and Henry III in the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut
- Genealogiae orbiculatae: Matthew Paris and the Invention of Visual Abstracts of English History
- The Genealogical Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Edition
Summary
As Andrew McGuinness observed in the proceedings of the fifth Thirteenth Century England conference, scholars have traditionally focussed on the seals of monarchs, nobles, and ecclesiastics (as well as monasteries and boroughs), and overlooked those of people of lesser standing. Our understanding of the seals of relatively humble people has been considerably enhanced by his work and that of a number of other scholars, but much remains to be learned. Indeed, historians still do not know if people outside the aristocracy, in a similar fashion to the aristocracy, had seals whose iconography indicated their position in society. The problem is that historians have not yet assembled sufficient evidence to draw definitive conclusions. Only a fraction of the seals have been catalogued or published; before scholars can study the seals of people outside the aristocracy, their seals need to be made more accessible by the archive community. Moreover, as those seals become available, historians will need to prepare biographies of the sigillants to set the seals in their social contexts. As the lives of people outside the aristocracy are generally poorly documented, this will be challenging. However, as historians begin to compare and contrast significant numbers of seals indexed according to the social position of their owners, then they become able to consider whether features of the seals conveyed information about the social standing of their owners. This paper aspires to make a modest contribution to this project through a case study of the seals of men who directed London's civic government, c. 1150–1300.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thirteenth Century England XIVProceedings of the Aberystwyth and Lampeter Conference, 2011, pp. 43 - 60Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013