Cloth Seal, Cloth Worker's Personal Seal, Privy Mark, MB, 1597

Cloth Seal, 1597, Image & Found by Tomredmayne.
Found near Louth, Lincolnshire, 20mm, 7.84g.

Privy mark inside a circular border of pellets with MB incorporated at the base and the date (15?)97 split to the sides. The other side is blank.

See Figs.30 - 32, Geoff Egan, 'Lead cloth seals and related items in the B.M. (B.M. Occasional Paper 93)' - Clothiers', weavers' & searchers' seals with privy marks.
"Relatively little of specific significance can be said about the majority of seals of this very common category. To all intents and purpose, none of the large numbers of privy marks recorded on cloth seals in this country has been identified with any well-documented individual ... The style of the marks or initials can provide a rough guide to dating, but the continuation of a reputable trade symbol within a family or a business beyond a single generation is well known, and there are also documented cases of temporary use by otherwise unconnected individuals."

As an example of cloth workers putting privy marks on cloth seals - every fuller was to put his privy mark on a leaden seal on each cloth he processed. One of the rules from 1475 of the Fullers' Company of Coventry concerned the 'settynge of marks on cloth'. A searcher checked this and any fuller found using another’s privy mark was fined one noble. (V. C. H. Warwickshire 1908, 253-4).