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The Seals of London's Governing Elite in the Thirteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2013

John McEwan
Affiliation:
Aberystwyth University
Janet Burton
Affiliation:
University of Wales
Phillipp Schofield
Affiliation:
Aberystwyth University
Björn Weiler
Affiliation:
Aberystwyth University
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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.

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Chapter
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Thirteenth Century England XIV
Proceedings of the Aberystwyth and Lampeter Conference, 2011
, pp. 43 - 60
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2013

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