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Description: | A silver seal matrix, the conical handle (with slight hexagonal facets) having broken off; the break appears fresh and granular. The die is slightly oval, being longer than it is wide. It has a grooved and beaded border around a neatly engraved shield of arms, with no inscription. The shield has a flat top, very slightly concave sides, and an ogee curve to the base. Dimensions: Height 8.91 mm. Diameter 18.34 mm Weight 5.3g.The arms are party per pale (divided in half vertically) with two different sets of arms represented. On the right as you look at the matrix (so on the left-hand side of any impression) the arms are Per pale, both crusilly, overall a lion rampant (divided in two vertically, both halves sprinkled with crosses crosslet, and a lion overall). On the other side the arms are six annulets (rings) set 3 over 2, over 1.Irene Szymanski has seen an image of the seal and comments that the two sets of arms represent a marriage. If you imagine the seal produced, the husband's arms will have been on the left, the wife's on the right. The woman's arms were thus the annulets and the man's the crosses crosslet. She may have been a member of the Vipoint family, who had lands in Cumbria and North Yorkshire.Clive Cheesman, Richmond Herald of Arms, has seen an image of the seal and comments that it is likely, from the lack of an inscription on the matrix and the style of the engraving, that the matrix dates to the 16th or early 17th century. It is possible that the Vipoint family are represented on the female side, but there are in fact also several other families with these arms; most prominently, in Tudor and Stuart Yorkshire and the North East, the Musgraves. What is certain is that the male half shows the arms of a family called Hutchinson. A well known Hutchinson family lived at Wykeham Abbey near Scarborough in the 16th and 17th centuries, and not one but two of them married women of the Musgrave family. Stephen Hutchinson, MP for Scarborough in 1626, briefly mayor of Scarborough, and a supporter of Parliament in the Civil War, married Catherine Musgrave in 1612; it seems most likely that this seal belonged to either Stephen or Catherine. Their grandson, Edward Hutchinson (c. 1644-1688), is an alternative candidate.
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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