BSG.CS.01448 — Cloth Seal, Exeter, Alnage, PW

Found in the Home Counties, 15mm.

Missing // P/W, *EXON ** around // missing // missing

An inner disc from a four-disc alnage seal for Exeter (EXON) with the alnager initials PW.

The P over W is believed to be the mark of a particular post-restoration alnager who applied his seals in several counties in the West of England from 1661 to at least 1676 [Egan, G., 1987, p.112]136. A complete four-disc PW alnage seal was found in Anne Arundel County, USA [Luckenbach, A., & Cox, C.J., 2003, p.21]. Most unusually it was linked to local clothier, Peter Wells, through a number of trade tokens issued by him in a corresponding time frame with the same initials. BSG.CS.00386 is another PW Somerset seal, but of particular interest as it appears to have a faint figure 4 cast to the left of the letter P, which would indicate an alnage/subsidy charge of 4d on the cloth to which it was attached. p.231, Elton, Cloth Seals, Archaeopress, 2017.