Cloth Seal, Clothier's Seal, Exeter, Francis Collins?
Cloth Seal, Clothier's Seal, Exeter, Francis Collins?, Image & Held by Mike Patrick.
Found near Exeter, 45 x 30mm.
Blank // blank // privy mark of the 4 & heart type with F C / * within the heart // blank
From Mike Patrick, "I appealed to Peter Maunder, the expert on the South-West cloth trade, who is familiar with the Exeter Port books for the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century (1680 to 1754). On the basis of a search he concluded: 'Only one name with initials F.C.comes up - Francis Collins. Collins exported a few pieces of serge to Bruges in 1698, and was a relatively small scale serge exporter to Rotterdam, from 1700 to 1710. After this he sent a handful of pieces of serge to Lisbon and Bilbao in 1711 to 1715 and then disappeared from the records. The fact that one side of the seal is blank may suggest it was not destined for Holland'.
On the basis of this it was possible to find the following:
List of Exeter Freemen
1691 Aug 03 - Francis Collins, fuller, apprentice of John Short, fuller
1739 Sep 10 - Francis Collings, goldsmith, son of Francis Collings, fuller, by succession.
Exeter city oath rolls
Michaelmas 1723 - sworn at the Guildhall, Exeter: Francis Collins, fuller [Signed]
Although this all seems to make sense there is the possibility that the seal had a totally different provenance and came from some other part of Europe."