The Coronation Ceremony | The Royal Mint

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An Unbroken Tradition

In an unbroken series that traces back to before the Norman Conquest, Great Seals of the Realm have expressed the will of British monarchs for centuries.

Styled the ‘clavis regni’, or ‘key of government’, they are such important instruments of state that the offence of counterfeiting Seals of the Realm was historically considered high treason and punishable by death.

Representing the Will of the Monarch

The last 1,000 years may have been witness to extraordinary political, economic and social changes but Seals of the Realm remain fundamental and as much at the heart of government in the twenty-first century as they were in the eleventh. Their meaning virtually unchanged, impressions taken from them are appended to a variety of official documents to signify royal assent just as it was during the reigns of Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror.

The Composition of a Great Seal

A Great Seal consists of a pair of silver moulds, or matrices, into which designs have been engraved. Cakes of softened wax, or in more recent times of a plastic compound, together with a set of strings are placed between the upper and lower matrices. Pressure is applied to make a double-sided impression that can then be attached to a document using the loose ends of the strings.

Only one Great Seal should be in use at any given time therefore during a long reign, the silver matrices eventually wear out; Queen Victoria, for instance, had four different Great Seals during her 63-year reign. When a new Great Seal is prepared, the old one is ceremonially defaced and customarily presented by the monarch to the Lord Chancellor of the day.

Lord Keeper of the Great Seal

For centuries, the Lord Chancellor has generally been the custodian of the Great Seal, and the richly decorated purse in which it was kept became one of the elaborate symbols of that high office. It was customary for a new purse to be presented each year, and Lord Eldon is reputed to have received so many during the early part of the nineteenth century that his wife was able to turn them into bed hangings.

Alongside their precious metal content, the power and prestige associated with these seals have sometimes attracted the attention of thieves. In the early hours of the morning of 7 February 1677, Thomas Sadler broke into the house of Lord Finch and made off with the Chancellor’s mace and purse. However, he was unable to locate the seal as Lord Finch, who was mindful of the great responsibility laid upon him, slept with it under his pillow.

A century later, the Seal of George III, together with a pair of silver-hilted swords, was stolen from Lord Thurlow’s residence in Great Ormond Street, London. Those responsible were never caught, nor was the plunder ever recovered, but it was widely believed to be the work of unscrupulous politicians who wanted to prevent the king from dissolving parliament. If this was indeed the case, then the success of the plan was short-lived because a new seal was prepared immediately.

The Great Seal in Modern Times

Over time, the reach of the UK Government expanded greatly and by 1877, the Great Seal was consuming a remarkable four hundredweight (a unit of weight equal to 112 pounds or around 50 kilogrammes) of wax each month. The Crown Office Act of that year directed that many documents formerly passed under the seal, including Royal Proclamations, commissions of the peace and writs summoning parliament, should be authorised by a new device known as the Wafer Seal.

A single-sided embossing seal, it carries the obverse design of the Great Seal and is used to make impressions on paper, either on a document itself or on a separate wafer that can be attached with adhesive. Since the passing of this 1877 Act, the use of the Great Seal proper has been restricted to documents of the highest importance, such as treaties with foreign governments.