60 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SEALS OF COENWALL. 



Two seals of Burian are known, and as they have not been 

 figured by others, and only one of them has been partially des- 

 cribed, their details will here be given. 



1. Seal impressed on a document dated 1612, and per- 

 haps used earlier. This grotesque seal appears to 

 be a copy * of a much older and better one. In form 

 it is a vesica piscis or pointed oval. Device, the 

 demi-figure of a King, probably Athelstan, afironte, 

 beneath the low arch of a canopy ornamented with 

 bosses, balls, and an engrailed ridge, and supported 

 by two baluster-shaped pillars, one on each side. 

 The King wears a double-arched crown, surmounted 

 by a cross. He holds the orb in his right hand, and 

 a drawn sword, point upward in bend sinister, in j 

 his left. In base is a plain arch enclosing a space. 

 Possibly this part of the device is a mistaken imita- 

 tion of the skirt drapery which in an older seal may 

 have enveloped, and depended from the enthroned 

 King's knees. The border legend is : — 



»i< SIGILLYM • PECVLIAEIS • IVEISDICTIONIS • 

 DE • BVEYAN • 



In size the seal is about 2J by 1^ inches. (See Plate). 



The use of this Seal was continued by Bishop Trelawny f 

 and the two Deans (Bishop Blackall and John Harris) who suc- 

 ceeded him. Dean Harris used it in August 1717, but in 

 August 1718 his official impression was made from the following, 

 instead : — 



* If an older seal of Burian did exist, it may have been of artistic merit, and 

 most likely it dispLiyed an Anglo-Saxon King (Athelstan) seated on his throne*. 

 I'his grotesque copy of it, if such it be, exhibits a manifest anachronism •with 

 regard to the crown, for crowns were not arched over in Anglo-Saxon times — in 

 fact, not till the 15th century. Boutell (English Heraldry, p. 275) has stated 

 that it was King Henry V, who first introduced two jewelled bands arched across 

 at right angles to each other, and at the point of their intersection a small mound 

 with a cross on it. All our subsequent monarchs adopted the same arrange- 

 ment, except Henry VI and Charles I, who each placed above the circlet three 

 bands instead, forming six half-arches. The debased style of this Burian seal 

 seems to shew that it is of 16th or early 17th century work. 



t Bishop Trelawny (one of the seven loyal Prelates committed to the Tower 

 by King James II) used, whilst Bishop of Exeter in 1689, in his capacity of Dean 

 of Burian, his small Episcopal seal thus charged : — " Gules, a sword in pale, 

 bladed argent, hilted or, upon two keys, in saltire, of the third " (for Exeter See), 

 inipaling "Argent, a chevron sable " (for Trelawny), the whole ensign ed with a 

 mitre and its infulse. At other times he used the Burian seal. (See Plate). 



