Another important part of a deed is the ink with which it was written. Each scribe had his own particular receipt for making it, the principal ingredients being oak-galls and sulphate of iron. Many chemicals are recommended as restoratives for faded ink, but these should be avoided as far as possible, as they are liable to stain and disfigure the parchment, and in the end make matters worse. Familiarity with particular handwritings after some practice will enable the reader to make out otherwise unintelligible words without any other assistant than a powerful magnifying glass.
If the ink is very faint the simplest and most harmless restorative is sulphate of ammonia; but its loathsome smell once endured is not easily forgotten; the experiment in consequence is very seldom repeated, for the result is scarcely good enough to risk a repetition of so horrible a smell, and it is liable to affect the MSS.
Coloured inks or pigments were seldom, if ever, employed for legal documents. The use of these was restricted to the cloister, requiring manipulation by an illuminator instead of a mere scribe. Red, blue, and green were in use; these were mineral colours. The red was composed either of red-lead or oxide of iron, the green from copper, and the blue from lapis lazuli finely powdered, or else it, too, like the green, was prepared from an oxide of copper.
Illuminating was a separate profession apart from that of writing. The charter or missal was finished by the scribe, and then handed over to the artist to be adorned with fanciful capital letters and elaborate scroll-works. Such ornamentation was unnecessary for legal documents, yet sometimes these had fancy headings, which, like the illuminations, were put in after the writing was finished, as is proved by the occasional omission of them, although space is left where they ought to have been filled in.
Seals and sealing-wax deserve a few words. These came into use gradually. The earliest deeds are very small, and have very small insignificant seals. There are some very fine seals in the Record Office Museum (formerly the Rolls Chapel).
It is said that neither the Saxon nor Norman noblemen could sign their own names, but instead employed the Christian sign of the cross (still in use among the illiterate) as their pledge of good faith, and to witness their consent and approval. The use of seals as appendices to deeds was a further proof that the deed itself was approved and executed. A man’s seal or signet was always regarded as his most sacred possession. It was destroyed after death to avoid its being used for fraudulent purposes.
The use of signet-rings is very ancient. Many old Roman and Saxon signet-rings have been dug up from time to time in various parts of England. Small private seals bearing devices appear to have been attached to deeds of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Many of the large wax seals are very beautiful, but few, alas! in private collections of deeds exist in any state of perfection. The wax used for them was either its natural colour or else a sealing-wax of a very dark green, also black, or red; white, also, was used, now discoloured by age into a dingy yellow. Besides the royal seals, each abbey had its own particular seal, bearing either a view of the abbey, a portrait of its patron saint, or its badge or shield. Many of these are described by Dugdale in the ‘Monasticon,’ but he was unable to discover the devices pertaining to the lesser houses or cells. The fashion for large seals died out, till at last only royal grants or similar documents of the sixteenth century have them attached. In the Georgian period we find small private seals placed on the margins of deeds. These were not always the arms and crest of the person against whose signature they appear—perhaps belonged to the lawyer or one of the contracting parties. Here it is that a knowledge of heraldry is extremely useful.
The size and shape of a deed at first glance goes far with the experienced reader to determine its age, even before a single word of it has been read; likewise the general aspect will give a slight hint as to the possible contents without deciphering any of it.
The deeds relative to the earliest grants of land are very small in size, a marked contrast to the voluminous sheets of parchment considered necessary to a modern conveyance or deed. The writing often was minute, but each letter was carefully formed. Many early deeds are in far better preservation than some of those written several centuries later, when less attention was paid to the materials on which they were indited, or the ink used.