220 
On the Seals of the Mishops of Salisbury. 
Opening Address of the Antiquarian Section at the Annual 
Mecting of the Institute at Salishury. 
By the Right Rev. the BisHop oF Sauispury. 
An asterisk (*) attached to the number or description of a seal, indicates that it 
is figured on one of the three plates. 
whether anything had been written on the festa» and I learnt, 
somewhat to my surprise, that it was one which was almost wholly 
untouched. I was shown, indeed, an excellent book on Scottish 
seals, in two volumes, quarto, by the late Henry Laing, of Edinburgh, 
published in 1850 and 166, which contains a catalogue of two 
thousand six hundred and eight seals in all, of which as many as 
two hundred and twenty-three are seals of Scotch Bishops, with a 
fair number of excellent illustrations. But I could not learn that 
there was a similar book for England, even of this general character. 
One or two articles in encyclopedias, and a few notices in periodicals 
or special histories, seemed to exhaust the literature of the subject.$ 
1 Reprinted, by permission of the Royal Archzxological Institute, from the 
Archeological Journal, vol. xlv., pp. 22—42, with additions. 
2 Read August 3rd, 1887. 
3 There is an excellent list of books and pamphlets in the National Art 
Library, South Kensington Museum, illustrating Seals, printed by Eyre and 
Spottiswoode, 1886, by R. H. Soden-Smith. Of the books I have seen, the most 
generally useful is G. Demay, Le costwme aw moyen age d’apres les Sceaua, 
Paris. Dumoulin et Cie, 1880 (esp. pp. 267-307), which was recommended to 
me by Professor Churchill Babington, whose article in the Dictionary of 
Christian Antiquities is full of interest. Illustrations of English Bishops’ Seals 
will be found at the end of Dean Goulburn’s fine volume, The Ancient Sculptures 
on the Roof of Norwich Cathedral, &c. (London: Autotype Company, 1876), 
which contains a plate with twenty-three seals of the Bishops of Norwich; and 
in Rev. George Oliver’s Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, Roberts, Exeter, 1861, 
containing thirteen seals of Bishops of that diocese. A few others are specified 
