346 ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS.

Dean, which is also a pointed elHpse, is a bird resembling a crow, and round it S' DGCSNI BRISTOLLI'^; and on the seal of the Vicar, which is round, is a human head, and about it S' DNI STePi:^ DG NOVSJ^SL'. Noushall was probably Gnoushall, now Gnosall, in Staffordshire. The spelling of this name in the document as compared with the seal is a curious instance of unsettled orthography^ All the seals are of green wax, and those of the Dean and Vicar perfect. The excommunication, to which Hawisia agreed to submit, was of the more formidable kind ; for there were two kinds, the greater and the less. The latter merely excluded from the rites and sacraments of the Church ; but the former had not only that effect, but was pronounced with more affecting solemnities, and prohibited all dealings and intercourse with the excommunicated person ; which was no light matter in an age when such sentences were carried into execution with considerable rigour. The peculiarity in the form of the instrument may, I think, be to some extent accounted for. In the twelfth century a great contest commenced between the secular courts and the ecclesiastical authorities. Among other things in dispute was a practice, which had sprung up, of the ecclesiastical courts assuming to take cognizance of contracts, and to enforce the performance of them by excommunication, where the con- tracting parties had sworn to observe them, whatever may have been the case where there was not an oath. This the royal badge, which appears on the great grade probably than the others ; for ac- seals of Richard the First and Henry the cording to Tanner, Botoner's ancestors were Tliird, and is said to have been borne by engaged in trade. Richard de Calna may the servants of King John, and though not not have been of higher rank, for a Richard on his seal, is found on his Irisli coins. It de Calne was one of the bailifls of Bristol is not however an uncommon device. Many in 1335. have supposed it to be referrible to the cru- ^ Tlie present deanery of Bristol was sades : but this is very questionable. Pro- created by Henry the Eighth. The Dean bably it had some symbolic or emblematic above mentioned was in all j^robability the meaning as it occurs so olten, and it may Uean of the Christianity (court Christian) on that account have been assumed by this of Bristol. Barrett in his History of Bristol, lady. From the Rot. Hundred. I learn p. 451, gives a document partly in the there was a Henry de Wygornia in Wilts, original Latin and partly translated, relating temp. Hen. III., and a Rich, de Wygornia to the Kalendaries in All Saints parisliand was sheriff for that county temp. Edw. dated about 1318, wlierein " Robertus Ha- I. A .John de Wygornia was rector of zell rector ecclesi<e de Derham et decanus St. Michael's Bristol, in 1313. It is pos- Christianitatis Bristollise," is mentioned; sible furtlier research might identify and in the translated part he is called Phillip, William, Peter, Henry, Richard, Dean of Bristol. and .John as members of the same family ; « According to Barrett, p. 458, Stephen but if William of Worcester, sm-named Gnowshale gave to the parish of All Saints Botoner, a scholar and anti(iuary of the a tenement in All Saints-lane about 1350. fifteenth century born at Bristol, was of Query, should it not have been 1250 ? the family of Peter, they were of humbler