XII. WHITGIFT GATHERINGS. BY CHARLES SPENCER PERCEVAL, LL.D., F.S.A. EVER since Cranmer, in 1537, "finding," as Strype says, "that the spreading demeans of the Church were in danger to be torn off by the talons of avarice and rapine, to mortify the growing appetites of sacrilegious cormorants," parted with his magnificent Kentish palaces of Otford and Knoll, in favour of the Crown, our county of Surrey has been almost exclusively honoured by the residence within its limits, at Croydon and Lambeth, and latterly at Addington, of the successive occupants of the Archiepiscopal See of Canterbury. Among these prelates no one is more deserving of remembrance by Surrey men than the pious founder of the Hospital of the Holy Trinity, at Croydon, the muniment-room of which institution possesses the interesting deed which forms the subject of Mr. Flower's paper at page 99 of this volume; and no apology can be needed for the introduction into our collections of the engravings which the present remarks accompany. The upper figure, in the large plate (for which the Society is indebted to the liberality of the Rev. George H. Dashwood), gives an accurate representation of the Seal of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, of the time of Archbishop Whitgift. The counter-seal is represented in the lower figure of the same plate. VOL. II. 1 Memorials of Cranmer, ii. 283. Р The example from which our engraving is taken, is from an exemplification of administration out of the Prerogative Court, dated December 31, 1590, and certifying that on Oct. 19, 1575, the administration of the goods of Rowland Hare, late of Stork, in the county of Essex, gent., deceased, was committed by the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, guardians of the spiritualties of the Province (sede vacante), to Nicholas Hare, of the Inner Temple, London. Rowland and Nicholas were sons of John Hare, of Stow Bardolph, Esq. Nicholas, the elder son, in 1589, according to Burke (Extinct Baronetage, sub nom.), rebuilt the mansion at Stow Bardolph, from the muniment-room at which place the instrument in question has, through the great kindness of Mr. Dashwood, been placed at the disposal of our Society for the purpose of engraving the seal. The upper compartment of the seal appears to represent the Disputation in the Temple, while an escutcheon at the base bears the arms of the See of Canterbury, impaling -, on a cross humetté flory, four roundlets, for Whitgift. The legend is [SIGILLUM] CURLÆ PREROGATIVE JOHANNIS WHITEGIFTE, DEI GRATIA CANT [UARIENSIS ARCHIEPISCOPI]. The words in brackets are broken off with the top of the seal, but are easily restored as above. 2 This seal is, with the exception, of course, of the impaled coat, and of the legend, an exact repetition of the Prerogative Seal of Whitgift's predecessor, Matthew Parker, who first introduced this type, which has continued to our own day, with the sole difference that the seal of the late Prerogative Court, tempore Sumner, was round, and not oval. Even such details as the two small 2 Figured in Gorham's Reformation Gleanings. columns on either side of the shield were closely followed in the last seal of the lately abolished Court. The counter-seal appears to represent a mark or personal device of a tree eradicated. I have not been able to learn whether the practice of counter-sealing was usual in the case of Prerogative Seals, or, if so, whose seal was employed for the purpose; and can give no satisfactory explanation of the device. It is to the ready courtesy of our Vice-President, James More Molyneux, Esq., whose hospitable reception of the members of the Surrey Archæological Society, in the summer of 1861, will long be remembered, that we owe the annexed woodcut of the archbishop's signet, and the facsimile of his signature, placed as a tail-piece to this paper. Both are from a letter of this prelate, dated from Croydon, October 2, 1593, and addressed thus, "To my verie loving frend Sir Willm. More, knight, give these.' The letter, which is preserved among the Losely MSS., is, with the exception of the signature, in the hand of a secretary, and in itself is of no peculiar interest, relating merely to some preliminary proceedings of a commission then lately issued for the visitation of colleges, hospitals, &c., of which commission the Archbishop and Sir William were members. The personal arms of the Archbishop appear the same on both seals: the cross being charged, in each instance, with four roundlets (bezants); while on his tomb at Croydon, on the frontispiece to Paule's Life of Whitgift, and elsewhere, the cross is charged with five bezants. The fact is, that the Archbishop had more than one grant of arms, the bearings differing slightly in each grant. The following notes on this subject, for the substance of |