STEELYARD WEIGHT

Cast copper alloy heraldic escutcheon from a spherical steelyard weight, as the curvature of the fragment suggests it would have had a diameter of about 60 mm, which compares well to the steelyard weight referred to below. The weight would originally have had a lead core within the hollow sphere with a triangular projection for suspension from the steelyard. There would have been one, two or possibly three more raised shields charged with heraldic devices around the girth of the weight. This device consists of a triangular shield with a raised border, 9 mm wide, that contains twelve circular bezants running around the shield, with an incised linear border within. This border surrounds a lion rampant, standing on its hind legs, which run vertically towards the tapered base of the V of the shield, its two forelegs pointing to the right with three circular roundels for paws. The head has a bifid mouth, pointing to the right, and a jagged mane with three pointed clumps of hair, pointing to the left. Some of these angled projections on the head may represent a crude crown. The body is divided into two sub-circular sections and the tail starts at the bottom of the lower section and curls up and around the back of the upper section curving back on itself so that the lobed terminal is adjacent to about the half way point of the ascending tail.

Ward Perkins illustrates a similar lion rampant with a wild mane and expanded paws with claws within a shield-shaped escutcheon on a copper alloy steelyard weight which is 2.1 inches in diameter, in the London Museum Medieval Catalogue 1940, on page 173, pl.XXXVIII, fig.2, no.A2487. This heraldry of the lion rampant within a bordure sable besanty (black border with bezants, the 'bordure Cornwall') is attributed to Richard, the younger brother of Henry III, and the first Earl of Cornwall, from 1225 to 1257 when he was elected King of the Romans and started to use the device of a double-headed eagle instead, but was also used by his son Edmund, the second Earl, from 1272 until his death in 1300. These Class I types of steelyard weight invariably have the arms of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, which may be explained by the fact that Henry III gave Richard the control of the Mint from 1244 and he would have had some additional authority over weights and measures to assess these coins (Ward Perkins, 1993, 172-3).

See also SWYOR-DBC057 for a steelyard weight fragment with very similar heraldic detail.