Great Seal Research Articles

The Eye of Providence.

The eye in a triangle that appears on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States was called the Eye of Providence by the designers of the seal. The origins of this symbol which appeared in the last half of the seventeenth century are documented nowhere. However, consideration of analogous symbols and seventeenth century writers makes it clear that the origins of the Eye of Providence lie in the Greek classics. The subsequent paths are via alchemy, astrology, kabala, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. This symbol which suggests the protective observation of a benevolent diety has been with us for three centuries now and may be consulted at any time on the back of the United States one dollar bill.

Bishop John Hacket and his teaching on sanctity and secularity

John hacket was the son of a Scot who had prospered in business in London and had become a burgess in the city of Westminster. John was born in 1592 and passed through Westminister school to Trinity college, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1616. His later episcopal eminence is attested in the full-scale portrait which adorns the walls of the Wren library in the college and in the bishop’s hostel which was founded in the college by his generosity in 1670. He was ordained by bishop King of London on 20 December 1618. By then he had already come under the influence of John Williams, a fellow of the neighbouring St John’s college, whose ability and charm were soon to take him to the deanery of Westminster, the bishopric of Lincoln, and the high office of lord keeper of the great seal. He took Hacket into his household as his chaplain and furthered his career by introducing him to the court where he became a royal chaplain. Williams also assisted his rise in the ecclesiastical firmament by appointing him to a prebend in Lincoln cathedral and then to the archdeaconry of Bedford, and by influencing the king to secure his appointment to the rectory of St Andrew’s, Holborn, and to the rectory of Cheam. His Holborn pulpit proved to be a position of great influence and he drew a large congregation, especially from the upper classes of society. His prestige among the clergy of London was so high that he was chosen by them in 1634 to be the second president of Sion college, an institution founded in 1633 as a centre where the city clergy could meet and study.

Modernization and the Modern Personality in Early America, 1600-1865: A Sketch of a Synthesis

universals-life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A nationalism bathed in empathy, in which the liberty-loving of every nation might become American citizens, was a distinctly modern aspect of the new national consciousness. modernity of nationalism was apparent in other ways as well. America was seen as a doubly-chosen land, chosen by God for his blessings, but also deliberately chosen by its inhabitants, rationally and purposefully, to advance their legitimate interests as well as the cause of liberty. America was perceived in a dynamic way as a society which was physically expanding the same time that it was developing its economy and perfecting its social order. American nationalism, therefore, was not merely a unifier in the common political science sense; it also defined an open, essentially voluntary citizenship in a dynamic novus ordo seclorum.33 What came to prominence in the generation following the Revolution was a society of people who were, according to the definitions of both Inkeles and Lerner, not only strikingly modern, but also living in a society which nurtured and stimulated their modern characteristics. As Inkeles puts it: There is a set of personal qualities which reliably cohere as a syndrome and which identify a type of man who may be validly described as fitting a reasonable theoretical conception of the modern man. Central 33 There is no systematic study of the formation and early development of American nationalism, and so the generalizations here have been based primarily on my own analysis of discussion surrounding the design of the great seal of the United States, contemporary newspaper rhetoric, Fourth ofJuly Orations, and the emergence of national symbols in the decorative arts. Hartz has some significant observations on the functions of nationalism in early America in his Founding of New Societies. For the period 18 r5-i860, Fred Somkin, Unquiet Eagle: Memory and Desire in the Idea of American Freedom, 181 1860 (Ithaca, I967), provides important insights. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.148 on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 04:37:10 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 216 I RICHARD D. BROWN to syndrome are: (I) Openness to new experience, both with people and with new ways of doing things ...; (2) the assertion of increasing independence from the authority of traditional figures like parents and priests and a shift of allegiance to leaders of government, public affairs, trade unions, cooperatives, and the like; (3) belief in the efficacy of science and medicine, and a general abandonment of passivity and fatalism in the face of life's difficulties; and (4) ambition for oneself and one's children to achieve high occupational and educational goals. Men who manifest these characteristics (5) like people to be on time and show an interest in carefully planning their affairs in advance. It is also part of syndrome to (6) show strong interest and take an active part in civic and community affairs and local politics; and (7) to strive energetically to keep up with the news, and within effort to prefer news of national and international import over items dealing with sports, religion, or purely local affairs.34 Lerner stresses the empathic capacity and the use of transpersonal common doctrine formed in terms of shared secondary symbols, that enable persons unknown to each other to engage in political controversy or achieve 'consensus.' Coupled with this, Lerner says, is the expectation that citizens should hold opinions on public matters, and that such opinions matter. It is, in Lerner's words, this subtly complicated structure of reciprocal expectation which sustains widespread empathy.35 modernity of American personal attributes, in part cause and in part consequence of the Revolution, was visible in nearly every aspect of social life. In a revealing analysis of Crevecoeur's American, Handlin depicts a central theme in modern personality-the willingness to plan calculated risks as a matter of course, as part of the ordinary pursuit of one's livelihood. The speculative temperament, Handlin maintains, asserted itself at every level of society.36 34 Alex Inkeles, Making Men Modern: On the Causes and Consequences of Individual Change in Six Developing Countries, American Journal of Sociology, LXXV (1969),

History in the Library of Salisbury Cathedral

ON MONDAY the fifteenth of June 1215 the profligate King John came down from Windsor Castle to Runnymede to keep an important appointment with the Barons of the Realm encamped at Staines. Tall, glowering, with a paunch from licentious living he listened to the ‘Articles of the Barons’ before reluctantly affixing his Great Seal. These articles drafted in the form of a royal charter promised a return of ‘ancient and accustomed liberties’ putting an end to the arbitrary and unjust rule that the King exercised over his subjects. Thus the most famous possession of the Salisbury Cathedral Library came into existence, the ‘Magna Carta’ or Great Charter upon which our political and legal history is founded.

William Ockham, Theologian: Convicted for Lack of Evidence

William Ockham, Theologian: Convicted for Lack of Evidence CONNOR J. CHAMBERS WHILE CHARGESOF "Pelagian" and "heresiarch" continued to circle around the character and legend of William Ockham long after the processes at Avignon had resulted in his excommunication on June 6, 1328, recent studies have revealed that the clerical complexity and personal intrigue surrounding the proceedings against Ockham played a more decisive role in his conviction.Z But personalities aside, and heretic or apostate, the fact remains that it was Ockham's suspicious doctrinal lectures upon the Sentences at Oxford which afforded the Oxonian Chancellor, John Lutterell, the opportunity to have Ockham summoned before the Papal Court then (p)residing at Avignon. Ockham had seemingly insulted (the now highly regarded) Aristotle with his wild notion of quantity, and his strange doctrine of a deceiving God provided Lutterell with just the cue to challenge Ockham's theological integrity. But the processes against him dragged on and off for almost four years, and Ockham's gradual entanglement with the deteriorating position of Michael of Cesena over the question of Franciscan poverty led to their joint flight from Avignon (with the Great Seal of the Order in tow) during the night of May 26, 1328, to seek refuge with the German Emperor, Louis of Bavaria. As Brampton remarked, Ockham's "subsequent excommunication on 6 June was for apostasy, and had no doctrinal connexion with the process, though John XXII was satisfied that Ockham's sudden and unexpected departure was owing to his sense of guilt_" 9 But if the lack of any evidence of William was adjudged by the Pope as sufficient grounds for his conviction (regarding the lesser question of Franciscan poverty), it must be kept in mind that the much larger historical question of Ockha~a's longstanding theological notoriety as a traditionally sinister "nominalistic" culprit was first and foremost the result of his theological teachings which have since greatly overshadowed (while pretextually attracting at the time) some of the "curia's" personalities at Oxford and Avignon. The location of theology in the classification of human knowledge was a lively and central problem during the course of thirteenth-century scholastic speculation. And the question had been raised more than a century earlier as to Cf., e.g., the recent study of C. K. Brampton, "Personalities at the Process against Ockham at Avignon, 1324-1326," Franciscan Studies, XXVI (1966), 4-25. Brampton, p. 4. [38H 382 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the possibility of employing the dialectical procedures of the newly discovered logical works of Aristotle in the sacred area of revealed truth. The enfranchisement of Aristotelian science in the succeeding century, however, reversed the question considerably, so that early fourteenth-century thinkers such as Ockham, who respected the established cognitive autonomy of the scientific categories of Aristotle , asked the inverted question of whether the contingent truths of revelation, accepted as they must be on faith, are congenial to scientific formulation. Ockham has been labeled the Venerabilis Inceptor, a pioneer in paving the via rnoderna. While surely Ockham's original logical insights presaged, e.g., many contemporary developments in symbolic logic, nevertheless his theological enterprise can be just as profitably grasped when viewed as an expansion or refinement of the Aristotelian via antiqua. Ockham's novel expansion of the Stagirite's rigorous canons of scientific procedure, however, consisted largely of his momentous discovery and explorations of whole new dimensions of logical predication opened up through his theories of signification and especially of supposition. How would an exacting theologian (or better, "theo-logician"), an unswerving epistemologist (or better, "epistemo-logician"), reply to the cardinal scholastic question of the permeability of the truths of faith by rational methods? Are revealed truths susceptible to analytic inclusion within the well-defined categorical methodology and requirements of a properly Aristotelian science? Two generations before Ockham, Thomas Aquinas found a solution to this vital "theo-logical" question in the notion of the "subalternation" of a lesser science to the principiating evidence of a higher one. Aquinas saw no ditticulty in the imputation of a properly scientific character to the creditive reasonings of the theologian. For Aquinas the nature or ratio of a science consists very simply in recognizing lesser known...

David II and the Government of Fourteenth-Century Scotland

Any attempt to discuss the reign of David II of Scotland is bound to be patchy and unsatisfactory because the evidence itself is so. There is for instance no good chronicle of the period. It is true that John of Fordun left some notes on the reign, through which he had lived; but his history was so largely de-voted to remoter and even mythical periods that he never worked up these notes into the history of his own times that he could have written. Later writers all based their work on his; they embroidered on what he wrote, but could not fill in the gaps. Hence the accounts that have survived of the reign consist of a number of isolated incidents rather than a continuous and intelligible narrative. Many more details can be discovered in the records of government, such as the Register of the Great Seal, the Exchequer Rolls, and the large number of surviving texts of the documents issued by David II; but these are again isolated scraps of evidence. What is missing is the framework into which this evidence needs to be fitted.

MODERNIZATION RECONSIDERED—with Special Reference to Industrialization—

MODERNIZATION RECONSIDERED—with Special Reference to Industrialization—

Great Seal of South Carolina

Great Seal of South Carolina

The Authorization of Letters under the Great Seal

The Authorization of Letters under the Great Seal

Corrigendum

Notes and Records , volume 17, number 2, page 111. The second paragraph should read: On 17 July 1962 we celebrated the Tercentenary of the passing of our first Royal Charter by the Great Seal on 15 July 1662, when our meeting was graced by the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, F. R. S.

The tercentenary of the Royal Society’s Charter

In July 1960 we celebrated the Tercentenary Year of the formal constitution of the Society by our Founders, when for the first time in history the reigning Sovereign, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, our Royal Patron, graced our meeting with her presence. On 17 July 1962 we celebrate the Tercentenary of the passing of our first Royal Charter by the Great Seal on 15 July 1662, when our meeting will be graced by the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, F.R.S. On 28 November 1660, our twelve Founders met as usual after a lecture by Wren at Gresham College and agreed that they would continue their weekly meetings and pay a subscription towards the expenses. They drew up a list of forty-one suitable persons to be invited to join them. At their next meeting on 5 December, Sir Robert Moray ‘brought in word from the Court that the King had been acquainted with the designe of the meeting. And he did well approve of it and would be ready to give encouragement to it’. On 12 December they adopted simple regulations, ‘concerning the manner of election and Concerning the Officers and Fellows of the Society’. The Officers were to be a President or Director chosen monthly, a Treasurer and a Register.

The Great Seal of James II: A Reply to Sir Hilary Jenkinson

The conventional story of the fate of James II's Great Seal, that he cast it into the Thames in the course of his flight from Whitehall in the early hours of 11th December 1688, was challenged by the late Sir Hilary Jenkinson in an enthralling article in the Antiquaries Journal in 1943. He perceived that in design and size the counterseal used by William and Mary for their Great Seal (1689) is wellnigh identical with that used by James II, except that a figure of Mary mounted on horseback has been crudely intruded into it; the inscription is new. With this in mind he examined the statements of a number of contemporary writers and later historians about what happened to James's Great Seal and, finding a number of discrepancies among them, argued that the conventional story is extremely doubtful, if not false, and that William and Mary made use of James's counterseal—the actual matrix—with comparatively slight alterations. In a final section he noted the resemblance between impressions of both seal and counterseal of James II and those of William III's seal and counterseal (1695), and suggested, with only a slight reservation (‘I am afraid we cannot say with absolute certainty that the actual matrices engraved by John Roettier in 1685 were still in existence in 1702’), that William was now using both of James's matrices. The suggestion appears as a statement of fact, with no reservation, in Sir Hilary's Guide to the Seals in the Public Record Office, 1954.

THE SCOTTISH HIERARCHY, 1513-1565

The collapse of Catholicism in Scotland at the reformation, has been attributed to the failings of the hierarchy. Such was the judgment of Ninian Winzet and Nicholas de Gouda, which has been endorsed by historians. In their opinion, the success of the reformers was due to the misappropriation of benefices, to the indifference and immorality of the prelates and the consequent ignorance of the faithful.1 Of clerical delinquency there is ample evidence in various acts of parliament, in the statutes ofprovincial councils, held immediately prior to the reformation, and in the records of legitimations under the Great Seal and the Privy Seal. Nowhere else, it has been observed, would the pious champions of the church be compelled to say so much that was evil of those who should have been their pastors. The weight of this evidence seems to have inhibited a detailed assess-

Three great seals of Queen Victoria

(1959). Three great seals of Queen Victoria. Journal of the Society of Archivists: Vol. 1, No. 9, pp. 255-256.

The Primitive World and Its Transformations By Robert Redfield (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1953; 2d ed., Great Seal Books, 1957.) Pp. xiii+185. - Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf Edited and with an Introduction by J. B. Carroll, Foreword by Stuart Chase (New York: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Wiley &

The Primitive World and Its Transformations By Robert Redfield (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1953; 2d ed., Great Seal Books, 1957.) Pp. xiii+185. - Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf Edited and with an Introduction by J. B. Carroll, Foreword by Stuart Chase (New York: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Wiley &

The Contribution of the Religion of the Colonial Period to the Ideals and Life of the United States

The Great Seal of the United States, designed in the early days of the Republic, has on it symbolism whose significance is often overlooked. On one side is an eagle which grasps with one talon a branch and with the other a sheaf of arrows. Above its head are “E Pluribus Unum” and thirteen stars for the original states bound together in one nation. The other side has on it an unfinished pyramid. The foundation bears the number MDCCLXXVI. Above the pyramid is the eye of God flanked by the words “Annuit Coeptis,” namely, “He smiles on the undertakings.” Underneath is the phrase “Novus Ordo Seculorum,” meaning “New Order of the Ages.” Here succinctly is the vision which inspired the founding fathers of the new nation. The thirteen colonies had become one, prepared to face together the exigencies of the future, whether for preservation in self-defense or for cooperation in the arts of peace. Here was an attempt at building something novel in the history of mankind—a new and ordered structure. That structure, as yet incomplete, was based upon the Declaration of Independence, with its best-remembered phrases: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Here is “the American dream.” As “four score and seven years” later Abraham Lincoln even more briefly described it, the new nation was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” and its success or failure was a test whether “government of the people, by the people, for the people” could “long endure.” To that dream faith in God, in His creative activity, and in His sovereignty was basic.

Great Seals of Iowa

Great Seals of Iowa

The Privy Seal and the English Ordinances of 1311

THE seals of England still baffle their historians. Neither Stubbs nor MIaitland' gave serious attention to the administrative history of the royal seals. Ilubert Hall was of the first to appreciate the great significance of the history of the various offices of the seals, and in particular the seal.2 Since 1920 Tout, Maxwell-Lyte, and Wilkinson3 have done much to elucidate the workings of the mediaeval English chancery one of the finest administrative achievements of the middle ages'4 and, incidentally, to clarify the use of the various seals. But much work still remains to be done. Before considering the opposing views of the bearing of the Ordinances of 1311 on the office of the seal, the early history of the seal itself about which little is known may be briefly sketched. Although Richard I had some sort of small seal, the first evidence of something that may be termed a privy seal comes from the reign of John.5 John used his small seal as a warrant to the chancellor to draw up acts under the great seal. When letters had to be sent along dangerous roads in the disturbed days of 1215, the king apparently considered them more secure when they bore the privy, rather than the great seal.6 Henry

Photographs]: Record of release granted by Queen Elizabeth I, to Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, with Great Seal of Elizabeth I, 1588

Photographs]: Record of release granted by Queen Elizabeth I, to Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, with Great Seal of Elizabeth I, 1588

Great Ormond Street Journal, Published for the Board of Management, The Hospital for Sick Children

This is a new journal in the pediatric field, being the Proceedings of the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London. The first issue is dated June 1951. The paper cover is in french grey blue with the great seal of the hospital making a very pleasing appearance. The issue consists of 59 pages with illustrations covering 9 individual articles on a variety of subjects. It is a pretentious publication and should find its place in pediatric and hospital libraries everywhere.