My readers would notice at page 52 and again at page 79 that I could
not accept the statements that seals so early as 1648-9 could possibly
show tincture-lines. I therefore gave my authorities, and showed pretty
evidently that I could not, in the face of other _facts_, accept
them. Since the writing of those pages, Mr. W. H. St. John Hope has
very kindly examined for me the original document preserved among the
muniments at the House of Lords, and reports that in _none_ of the
seals attached to the death-warrant of Charles I. are the tinctures
indicated by lines. It is not for me to explain how so accurate an
observer as the late Mr. Planché made such a mistake. I think it is
probable that the late Mr. Bouttell followed him and enlarged somewhat.
The fact, however, is now definitively settled.
I had observed that in those earlier printed books which have copper
plates, the invention of Father Silvester de Petra Sancta had been very
cautiously and undecidedly adopted. In Spelman's _Aspilogia_ [included
in that small folio published by Edward Bysse in 1654, and to which I
have frequently referred as containing also the works of Nicholas Upton
and John de Bado Aureo] most of the shields have tincture lines; but in
some of the copper plates, signs of various planets are given instead
of those letters for tinctures which are usually seen in "tricks."