Vellum Document Grant for £600 and a rent of £30 14s 4d; 13 July 1611, the crown to Richard Fermor of Somerton in Oxfordshire, kt, Thomas Purcell of Oakfield in Berkshire, gent, and Adrian Kerbie of Basing in Hampshire, gent, coppices, woods, underwoods and woodland called Pound Coppice...

Falstable Coppice, Homer Coppice, Widell Coppice, Stonislade Coppice, Pyke Coppice and Roundhill Coppice otherwise Dysie Coppices (435 acres), parcel of the forest of Chewtamshire otherwise Chute in Hampshire, now or late in the occupation of Richard Stringfellow, his wife Dorothy and Dorothy’s daughter Christian Searle, reserved: Pound Coppice (47 acres), Widell Coppice (45 acres) and Pyke Coppice (72 acres) within Finckley Walk within the forest of Chute, to hold of the manor of East Greenwich by fealty only in free and common socage and not in chief.

A Splendid Document and Seal in Excellent Condition.

Lengthy and large vellum document in Latin in a neat official hand, initial letter portrait of the King within a strapwork letter ‘J’ in pen and ink and wash, upper margin decorated with scrolling flowers and foliage, folded back at foot, 63 x 80cm, with a fine and intact impression of the Great Seal in brown wax appended by cords, depicting the King enthroned under a canopy, and on the obverse, mounted on a horse, 16cm diameter

The design of James’s Great Seal has been attributed, on stylistic grounds, to Nicholas Hilliard, designer of the second Great Seal of Elizabeth; the only surviving documentation relating to it, being a warrant dated 9 May 1603 for its manufacture by the seal graver Charles Anthony, probably son of the Derick Anthony who had cut Hilliard’s earlier seal.

Held within half calf gilt clamshell case.

(see Roy Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court, V&A, 1983, p. 236).