Very intimately connected with the ornaments and devices upon sepulchral monuments are the figures and dresses of our early monarchs found on their great seals, and of the principal nobility of those times on their seals. King Henry the third was the first English sovereign who wore upon his helmet a crown, and he is also the first king who is depicted upon his great seal as wearing rowels in his spurs in the manner in which they are now used, all the former kings using spurs with a single point or spike from the heel. Sandford, in his Genealogical History of England, says, that the arms upon the seal of John, Earl of Morton, (afterwards king John,) namely, two lions passant, are the first which he had seen upon any seal of the royal family. This was in the reign of king Henry the second. MONUMENTS FOR ECCLESIASTICS. As to monuments for the several degrees of churchmen, as bishops, abbots, priors, monks, &c. or of religious women, they are easily to be distinguished from other persons, but equally difficult to assign to their true owners. Among these, as among the before-mentioned monuments, for the most part the stone effigies are the oldest, with the mitre, crosier, and other proper insignia, and very often wider at the head than feet, having, indeed, been the cover to the stone coffins in which the body was deposited. When brass plates came in fashion they were likewise much used by bishops, &c. many of whose grave stones remain at this day, very richly adorned, and in many, the indented marble shews that they have been so. In Salisbury cathedral, says Mr. Lethieullier, I found two very ancient stone figures of bishops, which were brought from Old Sarum, and are consequently older than the time of king Henry the third. In that church, likewise, the pompous marble which lies over Nicholas Longespee, bishop of that see, and son of the, Earl of Salisbury, who died in the year 1297, appears to have been richly plated, though the brass is now quite gone, and is one of the most early of that kind which has been met with. Frequently, where there are no effigies, crosiers or crosses denote an ecclesiastic. The latter have been met with, but with little difference in their form, for every order from a bishop to a parish priest. THE SKELETON MONUMENT.