Abstract
Presenting research conducted by the ‘St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster’ project at the University of York, this article focuses on the Great Seal devised in 1649 and re-issued in 1651 to enable the Commonwealth to function following the execution of Charles i. As a familiar and ancient image of monarchy, the Great Seal posed an obvious challenge to the authority of the Rump Parliament. A radical new design, authorised by parliamentary committee and executed by engraver Thomas Simon, replaced royal iconography with images of popular sovereignty and nationhood: a map of England and Ireland on the obverse of the Seal, and the interior of the House of Commons chamber (formerly St Stephen’s Chapel) on the reverse. The result was a striking evocation of political authority located in the House of Commons and deriving from the English people. Engravings of the Commons chamber, in circulation since the 1620s, are identified as a probable source for Simon’s work. The Great Seal also re-asserted England’s dominion over Ireland and the waters surrounding the British Isles. Overall, this article argues for continuity as well as alteration in the iconography of the Great Seal of England, at a time of revolutionary political change.
Highlights
In the early weeks of, an iconographic revolution took place at the heart of English law and government
Tasked with devising a new Great Seal representing the English people as ‘the original of all just power’ and parliamentary government, the authorities looked to the interior of the House of Commons itself: namely, the former upper chapel of St Stephen in the Palace of Westminster, which since Edward VI’s reign had served as the meeting place of the elected burgesses and knights of the shire and was the exclusive home of Parliament
Dale Hoak, for instance, traces the imagery of a closed ‘imperial’ crown back to the s and the third Great Seal of Edward IV. Another leading exponent of Tudor royal iconography, Sydney Anglo, notes Henry VIII’s decision to rework his father’s Great Seal in and again in, while pointing out that as senior a courtier as Stephen Gardiner was capable of mistaking its iconography for St George rather than King Henry
Summary
Otherwise the field is comparatively under-explored by the current generation of historians; deterred by the inadequacy of modern scholarly catalogues, and perhaps uncertain about venturing into territory with unfamiliar technical conventions This is a pity, because the study of seals in terms of their manufacture, usage and iconography has the potential to enrich the writing of mainstream political and religious history as well as more specialist administrative, legal or antiquarian endeavours. Photograph: seal impression, courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries of London, LDSAL A. history of representations of royal and parliamentary power dating back to the Reformation era, helping us to understand its radical design; and the architectural and political culture of the Palace of Westminster since the conversion of St Stephen’s Chapel to become the first permanent and dedicated House of Commons. Whatever the truth of this, Elton’s conclusion that ‘in the main the day of seals was past’ does not take account of the potency of the Great Seal as a visual and physical representation of power; a quality that both Crown and Parliament understood very well
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