106 THE ARMS OP DORCHESTER AND DORSET. 



" There is no law and no custom which requires a Corporation to 

 obtain a grant of Arms ; consequently there is no excuse for the 

 display of a bogus escutcheon invented or borrowed. The seal of the 

 Corporation may not look so well without them, but it will render 

 a document every whit as valid." He further says : " I cannot 

 urge it too strongly as the proper thing for a boi?y of persons when 

 erected into a Corporation to petition for Arms. It is better to 

 start fair at once than to start with bogus Arms, and then when 

 matters have been put right have to alter everything or let it stand 

 as a reminder of the ignorance or folly of a former-day Corpora- 

 tion." When the Dorset Council was about to enter upon its 

 corporate existence it appointed a small committee to consider and 

 report upon a design for a county seal. The committee had to act 

 somewhat hurriedly, as a seal was one of the first requirements of 

 the Council. It is clear that this committee should have reported 

 to the Council that it was open to them to use a plain seal without 

 any heraldic device, or, in the alternative, if they required their 

 seal to be adorned with Arms, that the proper course was to make 

 application for a grant of Arms. Unfortunately, this committee 

 did not so report, but took a different course, and recommended 

 the adoption of the Arms of England, stating that the three lions 

 passant were upon " the most ancient seal of the Borough of 

 Dorchester one used under the charter of Edward I., a copy of 

 which was hung on the wall." If we assume for the moment 

 that this statement was correct it would still fail to justify in 

 any way the appropriation by the county of a seal belonging 

 to the county town. But the statement itself is misleading, 

 for this seal was in no true sense a seal of the Borough of 

 Dorchester. At that time Edward I. boroughs in default of 

 Arms of their own were in the habit of using the Arms of England. 

 If this committee had opened Mr. Moule's admirable " Records of 

 Weymouth and Meloombe Regis" they would have seen on the 

 first page a precisely similar seal with the three lions passant used 

 in very early times by the Borough of Weymouth. If they had 

 pursued their enquiries further they would have found that other 



