UNNATURAL HISTORY

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 115, 16 May 1936, Page 15

UNNATURAL HISTORY

LIVERPOOL'S WRONG SEAL

Mr. Robert Gladstone, a historian and a graduate of Oxford University, is preparing a case for providing Liverpool with a new seal, reports "The Times." He states that the bird known, as the "Liver," which figures in the present seal, is a cormorant, but contends that this is wrong, and that the bird should be an eagle. Mr. Gladstone first commented, on the errors of the seal some years ago, but the discovery recently of a complete and perfect impression of the original Liverpool Seal in a document at Scarisbrick Hall, dated 1549, has raised the question again. . ■ Before this find, only one good wax impression of the seal was known to exist—that preserved among the muniments at Croxteth Hall, the Lancashire residence of Lord Sefton. There is a slight defect in the newly discovered specimen at one point in the inscription, but this defective portion is-sup-plied by the Croxteth Hall specimen. Mr. Gladstone holds that the case for an amendment of the City Arms is overwhelming, arid' he intends to appeal to the Liverpool Corporation to get a new and correct seal. . He states that the cormorant obtained in 1797 (when it was discovered that no grant of Liverpool Arms existed) is really the eagle of St. John the Evangelist, perhaps adopted in compliment to King John, who first constituted Liverpool a borough. He assumes that when the original seal was carried off, along with the charters in the town's chest by Prince Rupert, in the Liverpool siege, and. recovered -by some unknown means a century, later, the Corporation had a new seal made from c wax impression of the old one, but ii was made with all sorts of blunders bj somebody who did not know Latin. Ir 1743 the Town Council ordered the de I struction of this seal,' but for' some un known reason the original seal wai destroyed instead. It is pointed out by Mr. ■ Gladstow that the eagle of St. John was correct ly incorporated in the arms of th< diocese of Liverpool-in 1882. At pre sent, he adds, architects of new build ings plaster them with grotesque bird which would, make the eagle blusl with shame, and the so-called "live: bird" is a monstrosity, existing only ii the disordered minds! of ignoran people." -: : ■ . •'-;