Cloth Seal, Bocking 100 Bay, Cockerel

Cloth Seal, Bocking 100 Bay, Cockerel, Image & Found by Michael Butcher.
Found in spoil from London deposited in Thurrock, ?mm.

Blank // cockerel with (?)617 above back, BWCKING.100.BAYES. around // missing // missing

A very interesting Bocking Bay seal as it shows a cockerel, which is normally associated with Coggeshall bay seals. However it seems that the weavers of Bocking often tried to pass their wares off as coming from other (better?) manufacturing centres. Museum of London seal MOL 86.237/1 has an angel facing with THE PRIME BAY OF (B)WCING inscription around. It is recorded in Egan, G., 1987, as seal 1905, p.96, and the following comment made, “The incomplete word is presumably BWCING - an eccentric version of the town name. The angel is very similar to those depicted on mid-17th century 'de Londino' seals of the capital (q. v). This stylistically slightly inferior provincial version may have been an attempt to confuse customers into believing that the cloth to which it was attached had been examined in London.” MOL 2000.214/5 is an example of the deliberate use of an element of the Colchester arms, three crowns on an ornate shield, in imitation of the Dutch weavers of that town whose bays were held in high esteem throughout Europe.

Bocking was, “greatly enriched by the Bay-trade, carried on here with great fpirit and fucfefs by the families of Mayfent, Ruggles, Inglifh, etc.” [Morant, P., 1768, Vol.2, p.383].