Cloth Seal, English Community Colchester, 2 disc variety, Image & Found by John GM.
Found on the Thames foreshore, 25mm, 4.2g.
With the help of Egan* - vertical stave raguly with two crowns/coronets on ornate shield with 1618 to sides. Other side [ENG / LIS]H / [* C]OL * / [CHES]TER / [SAYE / 1618]
See No.39, Fig.15 Geoff Egan*, Lead Cloth Seals and Related Items in the British Museum.
"D.27mm/27/mm; crude engraving. ENG/LISH/ pierced six-armed star COL/CHEST.../SAY..//(offstruck) ornate shield with: vertical line and crown, 16 to left .... found in the Thames ..... More complete parallels show the full legend was 'ENGLISH COLCHESTER SAYE 1618', with the date repeated to the sides of a simplified version of the town arms, a vertical stave raguly with two crowns/coronets... The belated commercial response of the native English weavers of Colchester to the success of the Dutch immigrants' new kinds of textiles appears among the seals with stamps specifying 'English Colchester' and dated 1618, the year the indigenous textile manufacturers formed a new corporation of their own. The device with the town arms on large, four-part seals .... was probably intended to look very similar to those of the Dutch community ...... The four-disc seals are thought to predate the less impressive, cheaper two-disc variety." [Which this one is.]
