The State Seal.
The coat of arms of the State is familiar to every citizen, for it is impressed on public documents and meets the eye on monuments and in newspapers. Its simplicity and its significance, as well as its correct heraldry render it superior to that of any of the other states; and the words by which it is described in our statute book, have a singular force and beauty. “There shall continue to be one seal for the public use of the State; the form of an anchor shall be engraven thereon, and the motto thereof shall be the word Hope.”
This has been the seal of the State ever since the adoption of the charter, in May, 1664. Previous to that time the seal consisted of an anchor only, on a shield, without the motto “Hope.” At the first meeting of the General Assembly under the “parliamentary patent,” in 1647, it was “ordered that the seal of the province shall be an anchor,” and on the margin of the original manuscript, now preserved in the office of the secretary of state, is simply an anchor upon a shield, drawn by the pen of the writer.
But this was not the first seal the State may claim to have possessed. At a meeting of the Newport Colony at Portsmouth, in 1641, six years before the establishment of the anchor as the seal, it was “ordered, that a manual seale shall be provided for the State, and that the signett or engraving thereof, shall be a sheaf of arrows bound up, and on the liass or band, this motto: Amor omnia vincit.”
The seal of the anchor with the motto “Hope,” was surrounded by a circle, in which was inscribed the words Colonie of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and several impressions of it may be found among the old records of the State. This seal Andros broke, at the time of his usurpation in 1686–7. But after his expulsion, and on the reorganization of the General Assembly, 1689–90, a new seal was ordered, precisely like the old seal, except that the words “Colonie of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” were omitted; nor did these words ever again form a part of the seal until this year, (1875), when they were restored by an act of the General Assembly, in January last, and the date 1636 added. Of course the word “Colonie” was altered to the word “State.”
No impression of the Newport seal—the sheaf of arrows; nor of the seal under the parliamentary patent—the anchor alone—exists among the archives of the State. Perhaps some of the antiquarian readers of the Journal may know where such impressions may be found. And perhaps also some one may know why the anchor originally came to be chosen as the device of the seal. Was this the “bearing” of the shield of the family of Roger Williams, or of any of the families who accompanied him? Did the idea arise from the depressing circumstances of the time? If so, why was the word HOPE not added until seventeen years afterwards, and in comparatively prosperous times? Was there any reason why the legend “Colonie of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” was omitted after the expulsion of Andros? Whence came the cable now surrounding the shank, and thus converting the anchor into a “foul anchor”? And whence the rock and the waves, with light-house and ship in the distance, as is now frequently seen? And how came the shield altered into unmeaning scroll-work? Is there any more authority for these changes than the ill-informed fancy of the seal-engravers from time to time?
Note.—For this excellent dissertation on the seal of Rhode Island, I am indebted to my friend, the Hon. T. P. Shepard.