"As an example of new lights which the study of early English seals has thus cast upon our history (elucidations, as it were, of facts which have escaped the keen research of every one of our illustrious band of historians and chroniclers for upwards of seven hundred years), an examination into the history of the seal of Mathildis or Maud, the daughter and heiress of King Henry I. (generally known as the Empress Maud, or _Mathildis Imperatrix_, from the fact of her marriage with the Emperor Henry V. of Germany), has resulted in my being fortunately enabled to demonstrate that royal lady's undisputed right to a place in all tables or schemes of sovereigns of England; nevertheless it is, I believe, a very remarkable fact that her position with regard to the throne of England should have been so long, so universally, and so persistently ignored, by all those whose fancy has led them to accept facts at second hand, or from perfunctory inquiries into the sources of our national history rather than from careful step-by-step pursuit of truth through historical tracks which, like indistinct paths in the primæval forest, often lead the wanderer into situations which at the outset could not have been foreseen. In a paper on this subject which I prepared last year, and which is now published in the _Journal of the British Archæological Association_, I have fully explained my views of the propriety of inserting the name of Mathildis or Maud as Queen of England into the History Tables under the date of 1141-1143; and as this position has never as yet been impugned, we may take it that it is right in the main; and I have shown that until the liberation of King Stephen from his imprisonment at Bristol, as a sequel to the battle at Winchester in 1143 (so disastrous to the prospects of Mathildis), she held her position as queen, most probably at London.... "Now, I have introduced this apparent digression in this place to point to the importance of the study of historical seals, for my claim to the restoration of this queen's name is not due so much to my own researches as it is to the unaccountable oversight of others."[232]