Deciphering an old seal…

[J. Hemsley]

Seven year lease dated 1831 Durrant Ade and Samuel Hemsley both of Lewes.
This seal was attached to ‘Hemsley’ as you can see.

But what is it of? (My guess is a crane or stork )
And what does it mean? By that I mean the meaning of what is on the seal, and the meaning of having a seal?

Does the existence of a seal increase the likelihood of the bearer being an armiger?


Cheers

J


East Sussex Record Office ref: HIL/7/8/1

[Adrianne]

Hi J

Can you rescan the seal at a higher DPI as it's very difficult to make out anything on it as is. When I zoomed in it just pixellated.

Adrianne

[PrueM]

Hi J,

I can't really see any detail of the seal, can you post a bigger image?

Partly the use of a seal was to authenticate a document, and partly it was to provide security for the document (if anyone tried to remove the seal, it would break and not be replaceable).

The use of a seal at this date doesn't necessarily indicate that the user was an armiger.  I have a document from the 1830s with several family signatures on it, each of which is suffixed by a seal on dark green ribbon (as is yours).  The seals all look the same although the families are different.  The same document was added to several times from the 1810s up to the 1830s, and each time the witness's signatures (not my family) were sealed, and each time the seals are the same for each set of signatures.

I'm sure you'll get a more informed opinion from others  

Cheers
Prue

[J. Hemsley]

Hi

Yeah, sorry, I can see the quality is poor. The seal is a very small part of an A3 digitally scanned record sent to me from the East Sussex Record Office (ESRO). When I try and zoom in the quality goes down, so I have asked the ESRO if they might re-scan just the seal.

This image is the best I can do…

[GR2]

Definitely a long-legged bird (crane, heron, stork). Many people had seals, especially in the days before modern envelopes. The design was often just decorative, perhaps a monogram. Men often wore one on their watch chain.

A grandmother of mine in early 16th century Edinburgh had to get a document sealed in the absence of her husband (who had his seal with him). She got one of his friends to apply his seal instead. It provided acceptable security.

[J. Hemsley]

This is much clearer, though I still don't know what it is.....

Doesn't look like it's armigerous Must be just a seal.

Any ideas about what kind of bird it is?

[PrueM]

Hmm...magpie? (looks like an Australian one, but I mean the English kind  )

Something with quite a lot of artistic licence applied, probably... 

[macintosh]

Probably a raven or crow on wreath, I don't think it is a wading bird

Used often as the seal of the Corbett family
www.heraldsnet.org

James

[copperbeech5]

Could it be a Great Bustard (with it's tail down)?

Copperbeech5