The seals of Malmesbury Abbey and Pilton Priory

Study of the evidence for seals of Malmesbury abbey and its dependency at Pilton in Devonshire makes a distinctive contribution to what can be known of the administrative and artistic history of these monasteries. The surviving evidence is small in relation to the uncertain but vast number of seals originally in existence: the article mentions only a handful of seal-designs and not many more impressions. However, an early thirteenth-century common seal with an image of St Aldhelm on it and the late fifteenth-century common seal of Pilton (a double-sided object whose matrices survive) suggest corporate identities steeped in local history and would be worth discussing in any general account of English medieval seals.