England's Lost History
Medieval Seal Matrix 1250-1300 AD
Medieval flat circular copper alloy seal matrix.The central decoration depicts a hawk perched on a gloved hand and arm, with the two lines below probably representing the hawk's jesses. This is a personal seal as opposed to a generic type.
The style of cross on the seal is a cross potent type and the inscription looks like:
+S'. ?E?'. DENqVESTO?' (Seal of ?E? DENqVESTO)
It may be an I ( capital i ) at the end, I'm guessing it's an Old French name, so maybe it ends …stoire?..still working on that!
Update.. A good friend asked on a forum with regards to the inscription and this was his take...
"I am sure of the first bit '+S'RAD:' which translates to 'seal of Ralph' but the last part is more problematic. It looks like 'DENPAPTOLL' where the P's are reversed. The last letter looks to be a ligature representing two L's instead of a Y, but that is still possible as the P's are also reversed. I first thought that the 'DE' may indicate 'of' as in 'Ralph of.....' but as there isn't a dot after the 'DE' like after '+S' and 'RAD' I think that it can be discounted.
So possibly +S'RAD:DEPAPTOLL or +S'RAD:DEPAPTOY or something else!! It is possible that the upper birds tail is splitting the last word in two instead of using dots as earlier in the legend."
Medieval Seal Matrix 1250-1300 AD
Medieval flat circular copper alloy seal matrix.The central decoration depicts a hawk perched on a gloved hand and arm, with the two lines below probably representing the hawk's jesses. This is a personal seal as opposed to a generic type.
The style of cross on the seal is a cross potent type and the inscription looks like:
+S'. ?E?'. DENqVESTO?' (Seal of ?E? DENqVESTO)
It may be an I ( capital i ) at the end, I'm guessing it's an Old French name, so maybe it ends …stoire?..still working on that!
Update.. A good friend asked on a forum with regards to the inscription and this was his take...
"I am sure of the first bit '+S'RAD:' which translates to 'seal of Ralph' but the last part is more problematic. It looks like 'DENPAPTOLL' where the P's are reversed. The last letter looks to be a ligature representing two L's instead of a Y, but that is still possible as the P's are also reversed. I first thought that the 'DE' may indicate 'of' as in 'Ralph of.....' but as there isn't a dot after the 'DE' like after '+S' and 'RAD' I think that it can be discounted.
So possibly +S'RAD:DEPAPTOLL or +S'RAD:DEPAPTOY or something else!! It is possible that the upper birds tail is splitting the last word in two instead of using dots as earlier in the legend."