Daily Yellowstone journal., 1886-06-13
THE GREAT SEAL OF ENGLAND.
What Its Fortunate Custodian Receives I'm
Rank and Money.

What Its Fortunate Custodian Receives In
Rank and Money.
The mere holding Of the great seal OF
England entitle the fortunate custodian
to $50, 900 year, to immense patronage
in church and state, to be speaker OF the
house of lords, a private counselor, and
the head of all Judiciary authority in the
kingdom Of Great Britain, and keeper of
the royal conscience, and to rank next
to the royal family the second subject in
the realm. II is very difficult, if not i'm
possible, to say when England first had
q great seal. Seals were not much used
by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, but came
largely into fashion during the Norman
reigns. The gilt crosses or marks of Ed
ward the Confessor, and other Saxon
kings, can scarcely he called seals, and
partook more of the character of sigma
lures of an illirerate age; but a grand and
perfect seal of William the Conqueror
exists, having the monarch crowned and
throned on the one side and mounted on
horseback on the other-attitudes which
have been invariably observed to the
present day.
One remarkable circumstance con-
nected with the great seal is its pro-
gressive growth in size as time advanced.
Originally, 500 years since, not larger
than the top of an ordinary modern tea
cup, it has been gradually enlarged from
age to age, till il offers now the size and
appearance Of a muffin, and requires to
be enclosed in a tin box for protection.
Indeed. so cumberous and unwieldy had
the great seal become that some three or
four years since an act of parliament
passed-containing very extraordinary
provisions-directing that all the minor
and many, even of the more important
documents passing under it should, for
the future, be authenticated by paper
wafer, of moderate size, which should be
gummed on the instrument, and be
deemed and taken to be the great seal
Itself
The great seas has only three times
been lost-twice temporarily and once
permanently. James ii, on leaving the
kingdom on his abdication, threw the
seal into the Thames, whence, however,
it was next morning fished up and
brought to Whitehall. Lord Eldon bur.
led it in his garden in Queen square,
during one night when his house caught
fire, as he thought in the confusion it
might he stolen. "And," writes the
chancellor in his diary, "when the fire
was extinguished quite forgot in the
morning where ! had buried it. and
while the carriage waited to take me to
court, my lady and and all the house,
hold were digging with pieces of stick
till we luckily found it," Lord Thurlow,
who always held it during the night in
his bedroom, had it actually carried off
by burglars, from whom it was never re-
covered. A privy council was called the
next day, new seal was rapidly made,
and during the remainder of his continu-
ance in office Lord Thurlow invariably
deposited it under his pillow.
Down to 1877 the great seal itself was
made of copper. since then silver has
been the metal employed. 1t is in two
halves, somewhat like two very thick,
bright TN saucepan lids fitting closely
together, their inner surfaces deeply
sculptured with the royal devices in
tended to be formed on the wax when
squeezed between them. Instruments
having a limited duration are sealed with
yellow wax. Others supposed to exist in
perpetuity, such as patents of peerage,
etc., are exemplified under green wax,
and in the case of some letters patent.
likely to be exposed to a good deal of
knocking about or journeying from place
to place, such as were the assize commits
sions, the wax seal was stamped after be-
ing ingeniously inclosed in cream-colored
leather.-New York Observer.