The earliest instance of a _date_ upon the face of a shield is said to occur about the middle of the thirteenth century, but such are very uncommon until the sixteenth century, when they are found both on personal and official seals.
The inscriptions on English seals of this fifteenth century are almost universally in Latin and in Gothic lettering. I have, so far, only noted one seal with Roman letters, and that occurs in 1403.
Before entering upon our subject during this period, it is necessary to consider the great changes, social and legal, which passed over England from say 1450 to the end of the reign of Henry VIII.
Events for thirty years before the accession of Henry VII. (1485) had been gradually reducing the power of the nobility. Enactments had been passed which facilitated the transfer of lands; and the disastrous wars of the Roses, in which the blood of the nobility flowed like water, brought also the dispersion of a large portion of their estates, and the consequence was that when Henry VII. began his reign, and the conflicts between the rival Houses of York and Lancaster were completely hushed [say 1485], he found himself in possession of the sole power. The great nobles who had hampered the actions of his predecessors had disappeared from the scene. At his first Parliament Henry VII. only summoned twenty-eight peers; and so gradually did this class recover itself that we find at the first Parliament of Henry VIII. only thirty-eight peers were summoned to attend.
We can thus understand how those seals of exceeding size and magnificence, which we found prevailing during the middle and third quarter of the fifteenth century, entirely disappear. The greater nobility, as an assertion of their dignity and importance, had then attached to their charters seals of great pretensions, and gradually increasing in size until, as Sandford [_Genealogical History_, p. 108] remarks of those of the Dukes of Lancaster, they rivalled or even exceeded in size what were used by the crown itself. Had their embarrassed affairs allowed them to enter again into mutual rivalry, the stern government of Henry VII. would have regarded such an assumption of dignity as treason to the throne, and therefore we can fix the date 1485 for the disappearance of such large and splendid seals. Only occasionally do they continue to appear, and within the limit of ten years after this time.