Very Good Impression of the Court of Common Pleas, in wax, with vellum document tag embedded, slight wear to extremities but in excellent condition, 90 mm in diameter, 1565
Attached to a vellum document titled ‘Exemplification of Property in Great Bentley and Thorrington’
The seal of the Court of Common Pleas shows an impression of the Queen enthroned on the obverse and the royal arms on the reverse. The Court dealt with matters of property and was considered by Sir Edward Coke to be the “lock and key of the common law”. Sir James Dyer (1510-82) was perhaps the most well-known judge of Elizabethan England, was appointed as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1559, gaining renown as a judge of near-unrivalled fairness and knowledge of the law .
Sir Thomas Honywood (1586-1666) was an English soldier during the English Civil War and later a Member of Parliament and also called to Parliament as Thomas, Lord Honywood. The seat of Marks Hall in Essex, descended to him on the death of his father, Robert Honywood, and on the outbreak of the Civil War it became the headquarters for the roundheads in Essex.
Essex, London and the eastern counties backed Parliament in the English Civil War, and Honywood aided the effort by raising troops for Parliament. In 1648, with Colonel Whalley and 2,000 horse and foot soldiers, he advanced on the Royalist held Colchester. The Siege of Colchester followed, and after ten week’s starvation and news of Royalist defeats elsewhere led the Royalists to surrender. In 1654 Honywood was one of the knights of the shire for Essex.
Provenance: Beeleigh Abbey
