No. 81—In Wright's edition of Peter Heylin's Helps to History, published 1773, this variation is used, but of rather longer proportions.
About 1780, seals are noticed to follow the same character, and with angular or French bases, just as we see them prevailing even to the present day.
Plate VI.
This shield therefore, with slight variations in the ears, may be found from 1533 to the present day; and the date given in Parker's Glossary was fixed upon insufficient research.
Counterseals
in England are usually of the same shape and size as the seal proper; the pendant cake of wax thus showing two complete impressions, one on each side.
Edward the Confessor and his successors have continuously used them; but among subjects they do not appear before 1130—excepting, perhaps, that remarkable instance of two seals conjoined back to back on the charter of Odo, Bishop of Baieux in 1075. See Archæologia, vol. i, p. 335.
Nobility of the blood royal, their wives and daughters, seem to have used counterseals pretty generally from the middle of the twelfth century. The greater titular nobility also adopted them occasionally during that century; but in the next, and until the Baron's letter (1301), a much larger number occur. Their use, however, was very irregular: many prominent titular nobles neglected them, and, on the other hand, we find many families of only moderate territorial position placing secreta on the back of charter seals. I notice as quite remarkable how many ladies who had come to represent a manor, about the middle of the thirteenth century, when the fashion was at its height, at once beautified or safeguarded their seals with a secretum.