Early lead seals

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Found some lead seals at one of my early water sites. Low tones like these are all thats left. Both have busts on them. Each facing opposite directions. One has nice detail. Looks like Queen Anne(1702-1717) on one side and the Scottish Thistle on the other. Found one here in the past with a bust as well but never figured out what exactly they were for. Kinda on the small side compared to the few early seals Ive found on other sites and Im pretty sure they were cloth/bale seals

 

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Heres the one I found here last year.

 

[Truth]

toasted those are beautifully old any idea how old?

 

[toasted]

toasted those are beautifully old any idea how old?

I updated original post after doing some research on the one

 

[Truth]

Site is mostly 1680-1720 era

Omg those are incredible great job buddy

 

[Digger RJ]

Very Cool!!! Congrats!!!

 

[ajaj]

There’s something about lead seals with writing/figures I love! Excellent finds!

aj

 

[dts52]

Beautiful finds!
dts

 

[Red-Coat]

The Queen Anne seal is a great find.

I believe it’s a ‘alnage’ seal (sometimes spelled ‘aulnage’). Alnage was the official supervision of manufactured woollen cloth. The digit ‘1’ to the left of the thistle indicates the amount of tax paid. Here’s a similar seal where the taxation is indicated as 1 ½. There’s lettering around Anne’s head as MAG.BRI F.ET.HIB for [Queen of] Great Britain, France and Scotland.



Note the broken ends at the bottom of the thistle and below the Queen’s head on yours, since these were usually 4-part seals as shown. The two missing portions would have additional information and, for the example I’m showing, there’s a ligature mark attributed to William III, probably arising from the alnager using an old stamp.


There's a Wiki page on 'Alnage' here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alnage

 

[Elvis]

Those are awesome!!! Congrats!!

 

[Silvermonkey]

Very cool bits of colonial era history. The detail on those bale seals is dynamite.

 

[Garscale]

Great I.D. again RedCoat. You amaze me. Have you ever played any of the major trivia games? I know your ability to research is unmatched but this MUST be based on an unbelievable ability to recall detail.

 

[Red-Coat]

Great I.D. again RedCoat. You amaze me. Have you ever played any of the major trivia games? I know your ability to research is unmatched but this MUST be based on an unbelievable ability to recall detail.

Well thank you, my friend... but your perception is slanted by the <1% of threads on which I comment rather than the >99% on which I don't. I do have a near-photographic memory though (dates and such I have to look up), have spent a lot of time in museums around the world (I travel a lot), have a decent reference library and fairly large collections of items representing the topics which interest me. As they say, the next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to look to find it out, so recognising something you've seen before gives you a head start over speculative Googling. Trivia games? No, not really.

 

[CRUSADER]

Yeap nice details on that cloth seal!

 

[islamoradamark]

nice finds

 

[toasted]

Thanks for the help and comments. Pretty sure the other two are William III as that would be in line with most of the other finds here.

 

[Bramblefind]

Wow! Awesome finds! Could the second one posted be a James II seal? What I thought was a letter S is perhaps the tail of a lion.

Like this one ---

Cloth Seal, James II, Alnage

 

[HunterMF]

awesome finds! Are most waters in MD legal for detecting? Other than the obvious Calvert cliffs. Areas like Monocacy River?

 

[toasted]

awesome finds! Are most waters in MD legal for detecting? Other than the obvious Calvert cliffs. Areas like Monocacy River?

I dont know. I had a run in with a DNR guy once and he had no problems with it

 

[toasted]

Wow! Awesome finds! Could the second one posted be a James II seal? What I thought was a letter S is perhaps the tail of a lion.

Like this one ---

Cloth Seal, James II, Alnage

Could be. It definitely has a lion on it but I think other monarchs did too