Cloth Seal, Privy Marked LI Seal, Image by StuE, Found by Goretex.
Found in Yorkshire, 25mm, 11.2g.
A typical privy mark on one side with an L and I (possibly an H) either side. The other side has a the number 6 (could be 9) stamped deeply into it with 30? scratched before it.
See Geoff Egan, Lead cloth seals and related items in the B.M., B.M. Occasional Paper 93, p.78, "Clothiers', weavers' & searchers' seals with privy marks etc." No.220, Fig.31 he tentatively dates as late eighteenth century to early nineteenth based on style but No.241, Fig.32 is judged to be "(?)sixteenth- to eighteenth-century." Both of these have a privy mark based on the number 4 resting on XX and an initial to the sides of the 4's extended vertical. There are differences in the style of the figures and border but it is hard to be certain of them, particularly on the average worn and incompletely struck seal. The same format of privy mark is found on London Dyers' Company seals, No.267, Fig.35 (ibid) and these are dated more closely from the late sixteenth- to seventeenth centuries. Assuming the entire date range is the safest if not the most definitive course of action, 1500 - 1825.
