Being English(?) In Ireland: Women’s Seals and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland

The use of seals to authenticate documents became widespread in the English controlled areas of Ireland following the conquest of 1169-1171. Thousands of wax impressions from seal matrices survive throughout Europe. The situation in Ireland, however, is different. Many seals and the documents they confirm were destroyed with the Public Record Office in 1922 during the Irish Civil War. The comparative scarcity of seals in Ireland has created a scholarly vacuum regarding these valuable sources. As a case study, I examine three fourteenth-century seals containing hunting motifs belonging to lower class secular women from the Ormond Deeds, a collection of documents at the National Library of Ireland. The text and image of these seals conform to English models, pointing to a desire for these sigillants to promote an English identity rather than an Irish or Anglo-Irish one. The hunt was a beloved activity of the elite of society. The lower, non-noble classes proclaimed their status by grasping a piece of elite culture through the depictions of rabbit hunts and falconry on their seals. The multivalent images on these seals also provide commentaries on stereotypical gender norms and reference the English conquest of Ireland and the superiority of the English over the Irish.