Add Ch 75577

LETTERS PATENT of Charles II appointing George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Captain-General of the King's forces in the south-east counties of England; Breda, 20 May 1650. The present charter was among papers of Sir Edward Nicholas, the Secretary of State, sold at Sotheby's on 10 June 1909 (lot 443). It afterwards formed part of a collection of seals and charters made by Capt. A. W. F. Fuller, of Tulse Hill, London, and his father, Rev. A. Fuller, which is now in the Palaeography Room of the University of London Library. Presented by Mrs Estelle W. Fuller.

First Great Seal and sign manual of the king. On this seal, see further P. D. A. Harvey, 'The First Great Seal of Charles II', Journal of the Society of Archivists, iii, 1966-1969, pp. 138-9. In addition to the impressions of this seal listed by Harvey, one is illustrated in the frontispiece of Antonia Fraser, Charles II, 1979, credited to the Société Jersiaise, and another was discovered in 1990 by N. Tostevin attached to a letter patent of Charles II dated 5 February 1650 in a private collection in Guernsey: for photographs, see MS. Facs. *2012.