220 



Dn % corals of % §i#j)o$s of c^aKskrg. 1 



©pentng ^totirejss of tjje Antiquarian Section at tfte Annual 

 JBeetmg of tfje Institute at Saltsfrurrj. 



By the Right Rev. the Bishop of Salisbury. 2 



An asterisk (*) attached to the number or description of a seal, indicates that it 

 is figured on one of the three plates. 



^PI^HEN I first began to have a practical interest in the matter 

 WolW of Bishop's seals, some two years ago, I made enquiries 

 whether anything had been written on the subject, 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 J>66, 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 encyclopaedias, and a few notices in periodicals 

 or special histories, seemed to exhaust the literature of the subject. 3 



1 Reprinted, by permission of the Royal Archaeological Institute, from the 

 Archaeological Journal, vol. xlv., pp. 22 — 42, with additions. 



2 Read August 3rd, 1887. 



3 There is an excellent list of boohs 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 costume au moyen age oVapres les Sceaux % 

 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 It oof of Norioich 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 



