Cloth Seal, Faulty Cloths, 1464 onwards, Image & Found by Julia.
Found on the Thames foreshore.
An alnage/subsidy seal for Faulty Cloths.
See Nos.110 & 111, Fig.25 p.176 (pictured below), Geoff Egan, Lead Cloth Seals and Related Items in the British Museum. "Unprovenanced alnage seals - for faulty cloths (with bulbous F's)"
"Alnage/Subsidy Seals for Faulty Cloth. Probably late-medieval (Legends and Fs are in Lombardic lettering). Special seals for faulty cloths are first mentioned in Statute 4 Ed.IV cl (1464). The central F on the following seals, standing for 'faulty', is specified in Statute 5 and 6 Ed. VI c6 of 1551-2, though it had probably been in use for some time by then. Seals with a smaller F probably continued in use well into the late sixteenth century.... Over half the alnage seals in groups found in Gloucester and Salisbury have these 'faulty' stamps (this seems to be in contrast to London finds, among which they are somewhat less common)"
