An English bequest of Land
Bequest of Land at Eakring to the Cistercian Abbey of St Mary’s, Rufford, Nottinghamshire, in Latin, document on vellum [England, Southwell, late 12th or early 13th century].
A borrowed Romanesque seal on an early Gothic document.

c. 95 × 175mm, with the lower 15mm folded up. 10 lines of elegant documentary script, with a pendent red wax seal depicting the Virgin Mary enthroned, with the Child on her lap, and with the legend ‘Sigillv[m Sancte Marie] de Svella’ (the document with folds, the seal chipped around the edges, but substantially intact)

Provenance:
Colker MS 113, acquired in 1966 from Maggs.

Content:
‘Sciant tam presentes quam futuri quod ego Rogerus filius Alexandri de Eicringhe divisi deo et sancte Marie et monachis de Rufford pro salute anime mee et uxoris mee et liberorum meorum quatuor acras terre in territorio de Eicringhe […] quas Radulfus de Herford dominus meus dedit michi pro servitio meo & quas Hermer tenuit […]’.

Interestingly, Roger explains that because he does not have his own seal, he is appending that of the chapter of St Mary’s, Southwell: ‘[…] et quia sigillum proprium non habui, sigillum capituli sancte Marie de Suwellia huic carte mee appendi feci in testimonium’, followed by a list of eight named witnesses, starting with ‘Thoma clerico de Eicringhe’. Eakring is about 3 miles or 4.5 km southeast of Rufford Abbey, and Southwell Minster is about 6.5 miles or 10km miles southeast of Eakring.

The seal is recorded in two very damaged examples in the British Library (Walter de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, I (London, 1887), nos. 4058, 4059), and another is recorded by C.J. Holdsworth, Rufford charters (4 vols., 1972–81), on a charter dated 1146–66, consistent with the Romanesque style of the image in the centre of the seal. This is therefore a case of a fine mid-12th-century seal matrix being used for another half century or more.

We are grateful to T.A. Heslop for his help with this item.

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