History of Wimborne Minster Author:Charles Herbert Mayo Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: V. The Seals of Wimborne Minster. The last edition of Hutchins's History contains drawings more or less correct of the Decanal seal, the seal of Brembre's ... more »Chantry, that of the Official, that of the Peculiar, and that of the Grammar- school; besides one or two private seals. The first of these, described as bearing an effigy of Edward the Confessor, has disappeared altogether. A similar fate has befallen the second, of which, however, excellent impressions can be procured; the next two are so modern and coarse as not to be worth engraving; and the last is still in use. Drawings of it and of the Chantry seal of the exact size of the originals, are given at page 57 of this work. The latter represents Saint Cuthberga, with book and pastoral staff, under an elaborate canopy. The former is more complicated, though much less delicately finished. It is of a lozenge shape, divided into an upper and lower triangle by a transverse band of inscription, in continuation of that which runs round the edge. The upper half contains a rude drawing of the church with the spire still standing, probably from the north-west, but the details are so clumsy that very little can be recognized. By the side of the church are the arms of England, quartered with the lilies of France. In the centre of the lower half sits the schoolmaster, wielding in his right hand the ensign of his authority, the birch. Rows of scholars are placed on each side, and in front of him is a boy saying his lesson; the boy stands facing the schoolmaster, and holds up an open book, which is represented above his head in order to bring it into view. This seal is engraved and described in Vol. XII. of the Journal of the Archaeological Association, page 70; where the writer, after inveighing, not without reason, against the inaccura...« less