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Description: | Lead goods seal (?possibly for customs duties?) in the form of two circular valves each 1mm thick and 15mm in diameter with a very short linking strip. The outer faces of the two discs are embossed by hammering, as if in the production of a hammered coin. One side shows the portrait of Queen Anne (1702-1714) within a beaded ring, with the circumscribed legend MAG BRI REGINA. The other shows a central shield,with three lions (for England) in the dexter half and one lion rampant (for Scotland) in the sinister. There is a crown above the shield: to the left is the number 1 and to the right the fraction for one-half. The Union of the English and Scottish arms, and the title 'Queen of Great Britain' both therefore refer to the Act of Union of 1703 when the Scottish and English crowns were formally united. Despite the coin-like appearance of the dies from which these were struck, they do not correspond to any known coin, but must represent a duty or tax of three-halfpence on the goods to which the seal was attached. Furthermore the resemblance to the coin portraits and dies indicates that this is an official tax imposed in Britain under royal/parliamentary sanction. The die axis of one to the other is 180 degrees. Note that another example of this seal has been recorded (Monks Eleigh, SF-F1D944) and also another with the head of George I, presumably a similar official duty seal (Claydon, SF-7978A0), though in that case the portrait is reverse-impressed, not embossed. This Queen Anne example can be dated precisely to the decade 1703-1714. See the next Cransford record for a cloth-seal of 1670 bearing the earlier Charles II British arms with grand quartering of France and England with Ireland and Scotland, on an official seal for SAY cloth, to contrast with the present example 40 years more recent.
Original Image | Publisher: | http://finds.org.uk | Source: | Portable Antiquities | Identifier: | http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/r... | Go to resource |
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