Cloth Seal, Leiden, Image & Found by Jon5379.
Found in Yorkshire, "about 1 3/4 inch in diameter".
A pierced, gilded cloth seal from Leiden that has just about every device the city used! Firstly there is the shield with crowned saltire keys, next to that on the opposite edge of the hole is a stamp with the double headed eagle displayed and on the rove disc side is the Belgic lion rampant - the usual sheath of arrows cannot be made out in his left paw but the tip of the sword in his right paw is just visible above his head.
There are several similar seals in Geoff Egan's 'Lead Cloth Seals and Related Items in the British Museum' B.M. Occasional Paper 93. None match this one exactly but as it has the coat of arms of the city there is little doubt that it is a cloth seal from Leiden. Geoff gives some interesting information about such seals on page 110:-
"Leiden's important and varied textile industry is widely represented by finds of seals in England and on the Continent. In the 1660s its products undercut the prices for similar English fabrics in this country. Leiden's Lakenhal (cloth hall) Museum has an extensive collection of items relating to the sealing of cloths which took place there."
No. 322, Fig. 43 Geoff Egan, Lead Cloth Seals & Related Items in the British Museum, shows a Leiden seal with a small secondary stamp of a double headed eagle used to indicate the dye quality and colour (one eagle - light black). There is a placard by the city of Leiden aimed at foreign markets and detailing the eagle tally marks for dye quality and colour, 1587, [Regionaal Archief Leiden]. The rectangular secondary stamp indicates the weight or length of the cloth using a Dutch system of notation that was also used on weights in the Netherlands [K M C Zevenboom; D A Wittop Koning, Nederlandse gewichten : stelsels, ijkwezen, vormen, makers en merken].
