Sir Richard Lane was the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England to both King Charles I and II. The Great Seal he carried for King Charles I was ultimately surrendered to the parliamentary forces as one of the terms for the surrender of Oxford. The Great Seal, along with several other important seals of state were left (along with the Sword of State) in a chest in the library in Oxford by Sir Richard Lane. It is entirely probable that was the famous Bodley’s Chest, which can be seen at today’s Bodleian Library in Oxford.

The first Great Seal of King Charles II is also known as his “exile seal”, and it is among the rarest of all the royals seals of the English monarchy. The only Lord Keeper to carry this seal was Sir Richard Lane. After Lane’s death in 1650, the king kept the seal himself, and is rumored to have flung it into the river Severn in 1651 while fleeing the Parliamentary army on horseback as he escaped the disastrous Battle of Worcester.

The Great Seal was carried in an elaborate “burse”, and was an important symbol of the authority of the crown. In most historic portraits of Lord Keepers, the subject is wearing the elaborate robes of the office. But interestingly, in Lord Keeper Richard Lane’s portrait (painted in wartime Oxford in 1645 by the royalist painter Daniel Mytens), he is wearing the collar and simple black robe of a judge, while holding the ornate purse in front of him.

• Origins of the Lost Lord Keeper Project
• Sir Richard Lane’s Early Life and Career
• Sir Richard Lane and the Civil War
• Sir Richard Lane’s Exile And Lost Grave
• The Great Seal of England
• The 1657 “Lane’s Reports” Book
• A Man Without a Face: The Lost Portrait of Sir Richard Lane
• Sir Richard Lane’s Family and Lineage
• The Trial of Strafford: Harbinger of the coming Civil War
• The Uxbridge Treaty House