 We move on to our final panelist for this afternoon, final paper, Alistair Sutherland. He recently completed his PhD at the University of Leicester, looking at non-armorial personal seals. And he's now working on the Ark Hives Project at Copenhagen, Cambridge, that I mentioned earlier. But today he's going to be talking to us. Alistair, I can't actually see you. Oh, there we are, good. He's going to be talking to us today about widows and their seals. So a nice follow-on from the previous paper. Over to you, thank you. Thanks very much, Elizabeth. Okay, hopefully you can all see that. Oh, hang on, where's the start gone? That's much better. Yeah, hopefully you can all see that now. Thanks very much, everyone, for tuning in today. This paper stems from some of the work that I did draw my PhD in which I explored non-armorial personal seals and the ways that they were used to express personal identity in rural English communities between the late 12th century and the middle of the 14th. Non-armorial simply means something that's devoid of heraldic motifs and coats of arms. So we're looking at seals that many of the seals we've already seen today that have like plants and animals, crosses, stars and figures on them. And it means the same as other terms you might have seen in previous publications on the subjects such as non-armorialists and non-heraldic. Traditionally, studies of seal impressionists and seal matrices have concentrated on the seals of government, the pure, essentially, ecclesiastical elites and corporations. In spite of the fact that they make up possibly only around about 20% of all surviving seals from the medieval period. However, over the last few decades there's been a welcome shift in the study of seals to focus on the much greater numbers of non-armorial personal seals that survive in archives throughout the British Isles. This may be about 80% of the total. Scholars such as Elizabeth New, Fitch, Gofield and John McEwen have used these seals to refocus attention towards the seals and sealing practices of ordinary men and women. Groups such as peasants, craftsmen, artisans, small landholders and merchants are examples of where this research has been concentrated. But one group of non-armorial seals that have hardly entered the discussion are those that were used by widows. Therefore, the aim of my paper is to draw attention to this overlooked group by looking at their seals, the ways in which they use them and what this can tell us about the widow's sense of personal identity. To do this I'll be drawing upon the seals from two rural settlements. These are salt fleet being Lincolnshire, which is just up here. And then Tamworth and Morrickshire, which is just down here. There's a couple of more focused maps there showing that position within their respective counties, salt fleet be just here and Tamworth just over here. Both of these localities are rich and surviving deeds recording small land transactions between their inhabitants. And a great many of them retain their original seal impressions, excluding duplicate impressions made by the same matrix. There are 285 surviving impressions from salt fleet be another 184 from Tamworth. And the case of the former, they've run throughout the late 12th century until 1300. And the case of the latter again from the late 12th century until about 1348. That's where I drew the line on the time period I was looking at. I will first provide a general overview of the numbers of widow seals from my case studies and the contents of their legends. And I will then move on to the main part of my paper beginning with an examination of seals that identified their owners as widows. Specifically, before proceeding to look at a seal that may identify its owner as a wife. Having dealt with marital status, the next part of my paper will focus on the more common nonmarital means of identification in seal legends. And finally, I will investigate whether there are any motifs associated with widows from either of my case studies. But widows were an important subgroup of non-marital seal users common to both salt fleet be in Tamworth. Of the 45 surviving women seal impressions from salt fleet be 13 were made by widows. You can see them here. This is the orange section for widows, blue section for non-widows, which amounts to nearly 30%. Looking at Tamworth now of 30 women seal impressions that survive from here, Tam belong to widows. So exactly one third of the total. From this evidence, it is clear that widows made up as a substantial proportion of seal users in both localities. They should not come as much of a surprise given that widows were major landholders in the medieval period when it was common for the holdings of the deceased husbands to pass to them. This table shows you how salt fleet these widows identified themselves through their legends. They did so in a variety of ways but not normally as widows as you can see. By far the most common legend involved the use of a patronym which appears on nearly half of the impressions. So A daughter of B for example and nearly a quarter used locative by names. These are names that identify their owners by a place. This can be in a landscape. This can be a place name or a feature such as a hill. We then have a couple used by a couple that include widow in their legend, one possible example of a wife. And then we have an example of another person's seal being used by someone, possibly Pory. Tamworth, there are only five impressions with legends, partly legible. But two appear to use a locative by name. Two use another person's name. So indicating that they're using another person's seal. One possible example of a family name. And unfortunately five of the 10 have legends that are unidentifiable. So we can't do an awful lot with those unfortunately. Seal matrices and impressions which identified their owners as widows are rare as the following national figures reveal. Of the two and a half thousand plus seal impressions in the DL25 collection at the National Archives, just four have legends identifying their owner as a widow. This is amounts to about 0.16% the total and two of these are the ones from Salt Fleet that I'm going to talk about next. Of the 6,394 medial seal matrices recorded on a Portland ticker scheme database as of about last week, I found there were 12 that have identified their owners as a widow. Helen said that were there were 11 but either way it's around about 0.2% of the total. This probably just relates to like the kind of search terms that I used. In comparison, Salt Fleet is a high proportion of women who use matrices with legends describing them as widows, even when considered as a percentage of all the men's and women's seal impressions and matrices from the locality. This is, it's nearly 1% for Salt Fleet. The evidence suggests that widowhood was not something that the majority of widows actually included in their seal legends. Those that did, there were three principle ways of doing so. You could use the words, the first two mean widow and the third means formally wife. So basically it means widow as well. And it was the latter that was used by Genevieve, widow of William, son of Robert of Salt Fleetby here on the left, and Matilda, widow of William Smith of Salt Fleetby, as shown by their legends. I've transcribed the legends down here. So we have seal of Genevieve. And then this whole thing that looks like a nine is a symbol for a woman's seal. A symbol for this little symbol on the legend here, which looks a bit like a nine when it's viewed from the correct side. It's obviously upside down here, it's a particular nature of the impression. But it means con. And then we have following on from this dam, the con dam, and over here we have a B and an X, an apostrophe indicating a wife. So we've got seal of Genevieve, formerly wife of William. And we have a similar situation over here with Matilda, except it's formatted slightly differently, but it continues to use a little symbol indicating con. The phrase con dam, or con dam, is normal to find in the deeds. This seems to be unusual for seals. And the only other example I am aware of is from Reston, which is about six or seven miles away from Salt Fleetby to the Southwest. Raylite appears to be the most common throughout the collections I've looked at, such as Porto Mantic with this scheme. And Fidgetway appears to be quite rare. There's only one example from Norfolk with this legend that simply says seal of Constance Whitter, also found on the Porto Mantic with this scheme. As suggested by Elizabeth New, seals were generally the choice of their owner and provide a brief insight into the ways in which people saw themselves or the ways that they wanted to be seen. Seals are therefore objects that provide an exceptional insight into personal identity, into the personal identity of the seal owner. Moreover, Brigitte Bedos Rezac largely looking at seals in a more elite context, stated that seals were intended for repressive use in a wide variety of circumstances as representatives of individuals who often had multiple titles and sexual roles. These conditions of usage and the small size of seals necessitated economy and legends, which included the most essential elements of a sealer's identity. On non-armorial seals, which tend to be a bit smaller than noble seals, space was even greater premium because of their typically small size. Therefore legends on non-armorial seals which diverge from conventional formulas, specifying filial relationships and locative by names, for example, could be argued to be an even more potent expression of an individual's personal identity. Thus widows like Genevieve and Matilda identify themselves as widows through their seal legends because it was key to their personal sense of identity. Widow had changed the status of women in a way that did not apply to men. Judith Bennett argued that it brought about an expansion in the availability and exercise of public power, which surpassed that of other women. In her study of the land market at Briggstock, Northamptonshire, she revealed that widows more than daughters and wives emulated the participation of men by independently trading, exchanging and selling parcels or property. She observed that the widows were distinguished from other women by their legal actions. Like daughters, they owed soup to the court, answered complaints and pursued litigation without the coverage of a male. And like husbands, they were legally liable for the actions and problems of their dependence. Bennett also noted that the social experiences of widows revealed a similar breadth of social activity and power to men. The court associations of most women were characterized by strong focus on kin, but associations of widows more closely matched those of men with a wide and varied reliance, not just on kin, but on neighbors as well. Consequently, as a widow, a woman in early 14th century Briggstock faced many more public opportunities and responsibilities than she encounters a married woman. So too would have Genevieve and Matilda in salt fleeting. And indeed, clauses and widows' charters would stress their legitimacy and power to engage in land transactions and their ability to formulate property-related agreements further attested this. So the addition of a seal, which identified the sealer as a widow to a deed, was not only an extension of their legal independence as specified in the document, but a forceful statement or assertion even that was represented in material form and visible to others. Condemn Luxor followed by the name of the husband stressed the marital relationship that had existed between the two, that the husband was now dead and the sealer was sealing independently as a widow. These two seal impressions therefore represent a stark shift in their identity from dependent spouse to independent widow, a point reinforced by the fact that the seal must have been made after the husband had died. The object itself and the legend therefore embodied a new phase in the life cycle of these women that they wished to demonstrate to others. Most widows, however, did not identify as such on their seals. Alice, widow of William Stinnell of Saltfleet Me, identified herself as a wife in her seal legend. This is the seal impression, by the way. Owing to the illegible nature of the seal legend, we are dependent on the partial transcription in TNA's catalog, which are provided down here. This was taken a long time ago, the seal has since deteriorated considerably since while I'm working with this transcription. But the letters FEM, Fem, likely indicate feminine meaning wife. If this reading is correct, then it is almost certain that Alice would have acquired her matrix prior to the death of her husband William. And the choice of wording here tied her identity to him. Whether this was initiated by Alice herself or William even cannot be said. But what is interesting is that it was appropriate for her to carry on using the seal after his death, even though the legend did not accord with her new marital status. Her impression suggests that she continued to define herself in a sealing context by her marriage and her legal dancing on William alive or dead. Evidently, this did not impede her ability to quick claim her right in the Dower land of one Toft and one Croft, as well as all of that land that William had sold to one Andrew Gore. The connection of the land to William that she was quick claiming may have been significant in her continued use of the seal. And it also indicates that widowhood was perhaps not as important to her sense of identity as it was to Genevieve and Matilda in the sealing context. I mean, Alice may well have expressed her widowhood in other ways that are now invisible to us. Indeed, she may also have been stressing that this relationship was particularly valuable or important to her. But I'll touch on this a little bit more in a moment. It's much more normal for widow's legends to identify their owner by means other than as a widow or a wife. At Salt Fleet Bee, we've got six widow seals identified them through their patrilineal descent, so as daughters of their fathers, which is nearly half of the total surviving widow's impressions from the locality. For instance, a seal impressionant Agnes, daughter of Richard Legerefter, has the legend seal of Agnes to Richard. So this is the seal right here on the right-hand side. Transcriptions just provided down below as well. And patronymes were very common among men and women in the medieval period, and it comes as no surprise that they would make it onto seals as well. One explanation for why they would appear on so many seals might be because these women were heirs to land. Season John's noted that aristocratic female heirs tended to be identified through the patronymic because that name was the most prestigious and identified the connection of the family land. But at the level of non-lead women, the situation may have been similar in some respects, with many deities continuing to identify widows by their relationship to their father and potentially linking them to land that they might one day inherit from them. Again, to touch on the point made by Helen that maybe these legends emphasised a particularly valuable and important relationship, this is also another possibility in this situation. Agnes may have felt that her relationship with her father was much more valuable, whether emotionally, personally, or legally, and thought to emphasise that. The reasons why widows did not identify themselves as widows on their seals may also have been one of pragmatism or economics. It is very apparent that it was not compulsory for a woman to acquire a new matrix when she entered widowhood as the example of Alice, wife of William, that I've just spoken about, demonstrates. This is apparent also in the case of Horwissia, daughter of Walter, who used the same seal matrix for an impression appended to an acknowledgement of a gift made in conjunction with her husband William Mason to one Philip ghoul. After William's death, she used the same matrix to make a gift of six acres of land on her own to the same Philip. Clearly, some of these widows already had a matrix on which was an engraved an element of their personal identity that was most essential to them at the time they acquired it. And it was unnecessary to acquire a new one when personal circumstances changed. An ordinary seal matrix was not particularly costly as it was made of base metals, but many may not have wished to spend money on another matrix if it was not necessary, especially if it was for single use, as has already been pointed out, many of the seal matrices for people of low status may well have been. This point is reinforced by the fact that there are three impressions, one from Salt Fleetby and two from Tanworth. They have legends that do not match the name of the individual in the document and were almost certainly borrowed or acquired second hand. So here on the left is rather fantastic looking seal. It says on it that it's the seal of Gnil de Burrell. But in the document that it's attached to, the sealer is actually called Alice, daughter of William Burrell. Now if we move over to this example from Tanworth, we have a partial survival of the legend and it says seal of Mary. And then there's an F possibly indicating that what was to follow would be a daughter. But the name of the person in the document is actually identified as a Marjorie. Having focused on legends for most of this paper, I would now like to consider the motifs on widow seals that fall drawing into a conclusion. By far the most common motif used by widows at Salt Fleetby was the stylized Lee. A motif that looks like a flirt Lee because it is found on seven of the impressions from the locality, which is over 50%. You can see them here. These are quite kind of crude, almost angular style ones. And I saw a comment earlier asking about the stylized Lee being upside down. This is an example of that that I've got from my source material. And there are multiple other examples as well. That's of interest. To see if the popularity of the stylized Lee was significant, we can compare it with the number of non-widows using it. So altogether there are 24 stylized lilies at Salt Fleetby on women's seal impressions, seven belonging to widows and 17 belonging to non-widows. And looking at the proportion that survive for widows, we get a figure of 53.2%. And then if we compare it with non-widows, we get a figure of 53.8%. So only a 0.6% difference indicating that the use of the stylized Lee by widows at Salt Fleetby was not significant in the context of widowhood. Additional types of motif on widows seals include two different types of plant or flower. Two of a radial motif that resemble flower heads, as well as an occupational motif and a fish. My research suggests that none were associated with widows in particular, but the very small numbers of the other examples of motifs used by widows makes it very difficult to actually make a statistically meaningful calculation in this respect. At Tamworth, we have one widow who used a stylized Lee. Two that use motifs that may or may not have been stylized lilies. One using a radial device to also look like a flower, in this case we've got six petals. One a bust facing right with the hands in the prior position. One a figure, maybe the Virgin Mary, and two with some blank shields. Another two of the motifs are sadly unidentifiable. This suggests that there was no one motif that was particularly associated with widows at Tamworth either, even when compared with non-widows motifs. However, a clear understanding of the situation at Tamworth is somewhat compromised by the small numbers of each motif type available. The study on sealed impressions and the damaged condition of the impressions making accurate description problematic. The seals from Tamworth do not survive as well as the seals from Salt Fleetby at all. Nonetheless, the variety and the types of motif that they used are in keeping with the popularity of motifs of all of Tamworth's women, widows or not. It therefore appears that no one motif was associated with widows from Salt Fleetby at Tamworth. I'm just gonna draw my paper together into conclusion now. Widowhood redefined a woman's identity because it led to a number of important changes in her life, most notably the increased degree of personal and legal freedom that she could exercise. But for most widows, it was clear this was not an important aspect of their personal identity, specifically with their sealing context, because it was rare for a widow to identify itself as such on her seal through the legend. Much more common were legends emphasizing aspects like patrilineal descent, perhaps they've owned the fact that there was some potential heirs to their father's lands. Even so, just as viable explanation is that they were trying to emphasize particularly personal relationships as well, or that fundamentally it was not necessary for a widow to acquire a new seal if she already had one. So on the odd occasion where a widow did identify as one with a seal legend, we can conclude that the widowhood was particularly important to her sense of personal identity. Seals like those of Genevieve and Matilda are a rare moment showing the point in time at which a new matrix was commissioned and the reason for it. These seals embodied their own as new sense of personal and legal freedom and were a public display of it. Having looked at legends, you can see they're associated with widowhood, but it seems that motifs based on my research cannot be associated with widowhood. And thank you very much for listening. Right, thank you very much indeed, Ulster. As you say, so little work's been done on seals and sealing patterns of widows, but that's just so interesting to have this information. There's a question from John Cititon to start with. At Salt Fleetby, you've got around 70% of women who are not widows. Of that 70%, do you know the split between wives and spinsters? Wives and unmarried women. So within the 70%, what's the split between wives and... Sorry to put you on the spot. Sorry, can you repeat the question for me? Of the 70% who are not widows, how many of those are single women rather than married? Very hard to say. We only have what the documents can tell us, and they don't always give us the full impression. There are a number of married women who appear. The exact proportion of them I do not know off the top of my head. But by the nature of the way that the documents were written, it is not always easy to tell whether someone's married or not. Quite a lot of them are also used, and they didn't specify whether they were married. But we don't know if that means they were or not. Yes, no, I'll tell you that. I hope that answers the questions. Yes, I think so. I can't see any more specific questions at the moment in the chat, but I have one for you in terms of... Widows using seals that call themselves widows who then remarry. Have you come across this and what happens in those cases? I have come across no examples of remarrying that I can discern from the documents. Again, because of the nature of the documents, we wouldn't necessarily be told that information. But you've not been able to say, yes, I'm pretty sure this is the same individual who calls herself widow here, and then in a couple of years' time, she uses a different matrix. No, I can't... There are no obvious examples that I can see, which say that. Right, thank you. A good question from Caroline Barham. To what sort of documents are these widow seals attached? Is this different from the documents to which other women's seals are attached? No, it's almost all deeds recording little land transactions. Basically, my entire source base was these little deeds. Basically, I had no other source material on which seals were attached to them, so very deed heavy. Again, I'm going to take chairs prerogative and ask you another question. It's a bit unfair. Do you have any thoughts on what we call upside-down lilies in terms of if you're taking the start point to the legend as 12 o'clock, they look as though they're upside-down. Any thoughts on this? I did look at this in a little bit more detail. In some cases, there doesn't seem to be any particularly obvious reason for it, but I have an example of a widow, actually, and her two daughters, and all three of them use stylized lilies, and all three of them are upside-down. I don't know whether there's an awful lot in that. It may be that they all decided that when they got their matrices commissioned that they all wanted them to be upside-down for some particular reason, or maybe that was the way that a particular craftsman liked to do his in particular. That's very interesting. Helen's geeks just commented that we have mirrored lilies too, so symmetrical around a horizontal line, which is interesting. A final question from Caroline, because we're very nearly at the end now. One from Stephen Freeth. From Caroline, do you have any wills to which seals are attached? From Stephen Freeth, does the law help us to identify single women? In answer to Caroline's question, no, no wills whatsoever with seals attached. I mean, I had no wills in the first place anyway. What was the second question? Will there be more helpers to identify single women for a sealing? What's meant by that, sorry? If they're married, could they have any property to sell independently of their husbands? Or are single women indeed always going to be either heiresses or widows? Generally married women were at least required some sort of permission from their husbands to engage in land transactions. A lot of the deeds that I've got show that the women and like a man and a wife doing it together as such. So there's quite a few examples of joint ownership specifically. No, thank you very much. If we don't mind, I'll just finish by a follow up Stephen's point that I actually think and I'm sure lots of others will agree that it's a very interesting point that married women sealed and used seal matrices that identified them as individuals anyway, because after all unless it was specifically their land or property in legal terms, they actually there was no need for them and really they shouldn't have done. So I think that's interesting and from the imprint project we have very strong circumstantial evidence from the prints, hand prints that's in at least a couple of cases women were actually including married women were holding the wax into which their matrix was impressed so they were physically active in that process. Right, thank you. I see we've gone just a couple of minutes over but I'm sure everyone will have borne with us.