Catalogue description PAPERED SEALS: SIGNETS AND GEMS

Papered seals accidentally or deliberately detached from their parent documents listed for the first time. Most are signets, either armorial or from gems, without legends, and are probably of seventeenth or eighteenth century date. There are some royal signets of the reigns of James I and Charles I, whose most likely provenance is the so-called Privy Seals for loans (E 34); and some episcopal seals, possibly detached from the Certificates of Institutions (E 331), although no provenance is indicated. These latter seals have, wherever possible, been identified with named bishops. The dates can be given with confidence, since the matrices included the year of appointment to the see, and so continued for the duration of tenure of the see.