Lost seal of Edward the Confessor found after 40 years

A seal impression on wax made by 11th century Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor has been found after disappearing more than 40 years ago. A new study of the rediscovered seal impression has now been published in the journal Early Medieval England and its Neighbours.

The seal of Edward the Confessor is the only authentic royal seal from before the Norman Conquest, and there are only three genuine impressions of it known to survive. (There are five others that were thought to be authentic until researchers in the 1950s proved they were forgeries made at Westminster Abbey in the first half of the 12th century.) One is in the British Library attached to a Christ Church writ. It dates to between 1052 and 1066. Another is on a Westminster writ dating to between 1062 and 1066. Third is probably the oldest, originally attached to a writ of 1053-1057 and then in 1059 reused on a charter donating the manor of Taynton in Oxfordshire to the Abbey of Saint-Denis just north of Paris.

Despite its age and travel history, the Saint-Denis impression is by far the best preserved of the three. For centuries the seal impression and the document it authenticated had been kept in the monastery of Saint-Denis in northern Paris. It was removed to the newly-established French National Archives by the Revolutionary government in the 1790s. It was cast there in the 1830s to make a hardier copy of the impression and was extensively published by English scholars. One of them noted in 1957 that the seal had become detached from the charter.

It wasn’t published again until the mid-1980s, but when scholars applied to the curator of the seal collection, they were told the seal was lost with no explanation. The loss of so special an item, of pivotal interest to both English and French history, caused much dismay in the scholarly community at the time. It turns out it wasn’t stolen or destroyed, but simply misplaced. It was rediscovered in 2021 in the Sceaux détachés (detached seals) section of Archives, stored in an individual box. While there are no records explaining the move, the seal was likely moved during conservation of the parchment and someone simply failed to stick a Post-It note to the document to let people know where the seal had been moved to.

The seal impression was made on a round of brown wax and affixed to a parchment tongue. The obverse depicts Edward the Confessor on his throne holding a fleur-de-lis scepter in his right hand and an orb in his left. The surviving inscription (a little chunk is missing from the top) reads: EADVVARDI ANGLORVM BASIL[EI]. The reverse again shows the king enthroned, but he holds a different scepter in his right hand and a sword in his left. Different parts of the legend survive, allowing the full inscription to be pieced together: [SIGI]LLVM EADVVARDI ANGLORV[RVM BASILEI] (Seal of Edward King of the English).

Not only is it the oldest surviving royal wax seal impression from England, but it is also the oldest known example of a hanging wax seal of the “majesty” type, meaning with a monarch holding a sword, from the Latin West. It contains multiple icons of imperial authority, Byzantine and Western, as well as distinctly British elements. Scholars believe Edward was adopting this assemblage of imagery to convey a new vision of powerful kingship.

Considering the seal itself, the two authors [of the study] say that the inscription ‘Anglorum basileus’ – the latter term being the title used for the Byzantine emperor – was “if not a nod to Byzantine traditions of rule” then a likely reinterpretation of their venerable style. And the inclusion of a sword on one side of the seal is also evocative of contemporary Byzantine coins that depicted sword-bearing rulers, such as Constantine the Great.

“You might think that it’s self-evident that a sword should be a royal attribute,” said Dr Dorandeu. “But at this point in English history, it’s almost not been used. We do see it, however, in the Byzantine coinage, where it had been introduced no more than five to ten years earlier. So, this suggests strong connections with, and quick responses to, Byzantine iconography, either directly or as it was transmitted through Europe.”

In the paper, the authors consider the seal in relation to the emergence of a new type of document called the writ-charter – used by kings to grant land or rights and simultaneously command local officials to enforce that grant. Records show that seven originals and numerous copies survive from Edward’s reign, compared with no originals and a handful of copies before it.

“The writ-charter, in its classic form as a sealed document, is almost certainly a novelty of Edward’s reign,” said Professor Roach. “And we are seeing a new kind of seal to authenticate this new document. Edward is adopting a continental form of authentication, which sits perfectly alongside the iconography of the seal itself, and his own hegemonic ambitions.”

* This article was originally published here