[MR] History Blog: Lost Seal of Edward the Confessor

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble friends,

Today's History Blog entry details the rediscovery of a missing wax seal
from Edward the Confessor. It is the oldest known example of a royal
English wax seal, from the only known pre-conquest "seal". [The text is
somewhat confusing here; a *seal matrix* is the reversed stamp that makes a
positive wax seal that is affixed to a document.]

The seal was originally affixed to another document dating from as early as
1053. The seal was then reused on a 1059 charter granting an Oxfordshire
manor, Taynton, to the French Abbey of Saint-Denis. [A reuse seems somewhat
odd, to say the least, but that is what the text says.] The charter was
removed to the French National Archives during the French Revolution. At
some point the seal became detached from the document. In the 1980s the
loss was discovered causing considerable controversy in the historical
community.

But all, or it, was not lost! In 2021 the seal was rediscovered in the
Archives' detached seal collection, safely inside its own cardboard box.
Whew!

This whole story was reported because a new paper analyzing the seal has
just been published in the scholarly journal *Early Medieval England and
Its Neighbors*.

The story is found at https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/75831 .

Yours Aye,

Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆
Continuing a crusade to keep the original Merry Rose relevant and in
business.