SOME NOTES ON THE ANCIENT HERALDRY OF PLYMOUTH. 407 
necessary to repeat that there was a corporation here many years 
anterior to this date; and that what the act-charter did was simply 
to bring the entire community under one jurisdiction, to link the 
fortunes of Sutton Prior, which until then had remained under 
the sway of the monks of Plympton, with those of its elder sister, 
Sutton Valletort, or Vautier, on the slopes above, on the site which 
we now call Old Town Street, but which was known within living 
memory simply as Old Town. 
The seal itself seems to indicate something of its history. It is 
mixed ecclesiastical and civil in character. In the centre under a 
Perpendicular canopy is St. Andrew, the patron saint of the town, 
fit protector for a community of fishermen. Under a similar canopy 
on the right is an angel with a shield, bearing a cross of St. George. 
Under a third canopy on the left is another angel, with a shield of 
the royal arms, France and England quarterly. Beneath, in the 
exergue, is an escutcheon of the familiar coat, a saltire between 
four castles, with two lions as supporters. The legend is, as badly 
spelt as the whole workmanship is rude, ‘‘ THE : COMEN : SELLE : OF 
THE : BOROVGH : & : COMENALTE : OF : Y® : KYNGS : TOWNE: OF: 
PLYMoTHE.” Here then it seems to me are all the marks of a 
change and a compromise. St. Andrew retains his superior place 
as patron; but Plymouth is the king’s town for all that. And the 
same idea is repeated in another ancient seal, which for a while 
seems to have displaced this one: a seal bearing the saltire and 
castles on an escutcheon surmounted by a crown of fleurs-de-lis, 
the field filled in with Gothic tracery. This is the common seal 
described in the Visitation of 1620; but the inscription there given 
plainly indicates that it was the seal of the mayor: S: offctt: 
maforatus : borgt: ville : Dut: regis: De: Plymovth. It is 
of decidedly superior workmanship to the 
seal first-named, but received intentional 
damage, probably during the Common- 
wealth, by the words ‘‘ dnt. regis” being 
battered out. Perhaps this was the 
reason why the St. Andrew seal was 
taken into use again, if indeed it had 
ever been totally abandoned; though 
the description of that with the simple 
armorial device, as the common seal, in the Visitation, leaves little 
doubt on that head. 

Woes 
