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By the Right Rev. The Bishop of Salisbury. 223 
English legends he dates from 1745. We have no seals of his first 
period, and I could hardly make such very strict divisions from the 
limited number of our seals, but no doubt they correspond generally 
to Mr. Hope’s order. Such being the different studies to which 
these objects minister, I have no need to apologise to you for the 
subject I have chosen, but only for the incompleteness of my treat- 
ment of it, I trust that before this paper is printed the interest 
which has clearly been aroused in this branch of antiquities will 
stimulate friends far and near to assist myself and other Bishops to 
complete their sets of seals. I believe that the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and the Bishop of Durham have, like myself, called in 
the aid of the veteran, Mr. Robert Ready, of the British Museum, 
to lay a foundation, and they will, I am sure, be grateful for any 
help that our members can give them in filling up gaps in that 
collection and in the Way collection of the Society of Antiquaries. 
Pre-Reformation Bishops’ seals are divided by Mr. Hope into four 
main groups :— 
(1) Seals of dignity, or great seals, of an oval shape, more or less 
pointed at top and bottom, with 
(2) their counterseals ; 
(8) private seals, or secreta; and 
(4) Seals ad causas for public instruments of a less important 
nature than those attested by Nos. 1 and 2. 
Of these four kinds the second does not seem to have been by any 
means universal, the private seal being not unfrequently used in 
place of the counterseal ; but where counterseals exist they are often 
very interesting and beautiful. Bishops of Salisbury after 1375 
seem comparatively rarely to have used counterseals at all, or, if 
they did so, used their private signets or the seals ad causas. The 
use of the seals ad causas for their proper purpose seems to have 
been pretty general since the Reformation, and they have come to 
1 Counterseals, according to Demay, p. 45. have the Latin names contrasigillum, 
antisigillum, subsigillum, clavis or custos secreti, clipeus, scutum, consilium, 
custodia veritatis, testis, fides, nuntius. The counterseal of Richard, Bishop of 
Winton, in 1174, contains the legend ‘‘ Swm eustos et testis sigilli” ; ib., p. 
43, Bishop Joceline’s (see below) has munio sigil/um. 
