Cloth Seal, Germanic Merchant's Seal, Tudor England Arms

Cloth Seal, Germanic Merchant's Seal, Tudor England Arms, Image & Found by S.Bostelaar.
Found in Middelburg, Netherlands, 18g, 41mm.

Arms of Tudor England, HONI SOEIT.QV+MAL.V.PENSE around (both s retrograde) // missing*

*Assuming this is a double disc fused seal of the 'Germanic merchant' type but it could be an inner disc from a conventional English four-disc cloth seal with part of the conecting strip remaining and the remains of the attachment to the smaller rivet or rove disc smoothed off, however the botched inscription and crude arms tend to rule this out. Also some of the fused areas on the reverse could be interpreted as points where it was soldered to another disc, see Egan, G., 1995, p.121.

See also Huszár L 1961, Merchant’s seals of the 16th and 17th centuries, "As to the place of production of these medals, the English hold the problem as undecided. In their opinion the medals were undoubtedly closing seals, chiefly for cloth bales but they had not been made in England. For supporting this opinion one of the principal arguments is that such medals have been found in several countries but never in England. Furthermore the aforementioned Hans Han medal, is entirely Flemish in character. Finally a medal has come to light near Moscow, of similar character but of later date (after 1603), bearing in its legend, besides the name of Jacob I, the foreign Flemish or German word 'Coninck' (König). All these proves to be a foreign production." pp.193-194.