Cloth Seal, Alnage, Lennox, CL

Cloth Seal, Alnage, Lennox, CL, Image & Submitted by Monuments and Archaeology, city of Amsterdam.
Found in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 21mm (overall length 51mm).

Blank rove disc // CL ligature, L E N O X C E (partially covered with ?star) around // blank rove disc

This image was kindly supplied by Professor J. Gawronski, and is copyright to the Bureau of Monuments and Archaeology, city of Amsterdam. The item is recorded as MH2-13 and has the following information, "MH2:excavation under caisson during 1975 construction metro, address Leprozengracht 17-33 / Nieuwe Amstelstraat 12-20,context landfill 1450-1660".

Three discs from a rare 6 lobed alnage cloth seal. The Dukes and Duchess of Lennox and Richmond held the major alnage farming rights for England and Wales from 1605 until the system finished in 1724. This fits with the end of the landfill context above.

A Lennox alnage seal of the same construction is recorded as No.22, Fig.29 in G.Egan, Lead cloth seals and related items in the B.M. (B.M.occ.papers 93), "This cumbersome form, lacking any clear advantage from its complexity, seems to have been briefly in vogue for some alnage seals issued by the Duke of Lennox, probably under James I. ... The initials CK are presumably those of the local alnager or an assistant."
The initials on this seal are almost certainly CL and not CK.