Acrostics were known to the Greeks; but the monks used those of a hieroglyphical kind, which could seldom be divined unless by aid of the inventor himself. In the hollow stonework over the kitchen chimney of Kingswood Abbey in Wilts--already noticed in this work--are a _T_iger, _h_art, _o_strich, _m_ermaid, _a_ss, and _s_wan; the initial letters of which make the name of the founder, T h o m a s.[161] <g>Abbey Seals.</g>--That of Tinterne Abbey, as already noticed in this volume, page 75, is imperfect.[162] Of ecclesiastical and monastic seals, those of a _round_ form generally denoted, according to Lewis and Blomfield, something of royalty in the possessor, or a more than ordinary extent of jurisdiction. Monasteries of royal foundation had commonly round seals; bishops and superiors of houses had usually oval seals; the former held the pastoral staff in their left hands, abbots in their right. The earliest conventual seals commonly bore mere rude representations of their patron saints; the more recent were highly finished, the most common device being the superior of the house praying to the patron saint, who was represented as looking down upon him. Previously to the reign of Edward the Third, the conventual seals represented their patron saints and abbots seated upon thrones; but after this period, they as constantly exhibited these figures sitting or standing beneath canopies and arches. The <g>Patron saint</g> subduing and treading upon the dragon, was symbolical of his overcoming sin. A star, the symbol of the Epiphany, and a crescent of the increase of the Gospel, are frequently introduced into the seals.[163] In the Cistercian and Premonstratensian orders, the custody of the seal, though in general ill observed, was committed to the prior, and four others of the establishment elected for that trust. Abbeys had not only different seals for different purposes, but these were often altered and changed; though, from the seal of Hyde Abbey being worth fifteen marks, the expense of having them engraved must have been extremely high. But so careless were the monks in the custody of it, that Matthew Paris mentions that it was thrown aside among a chest of papers. The abbot’s _Bajulus_, or domestic monk, was also the bearer of this seal. A silver seal and chain--‘sigillum argenti cum cathena’--is mentioned as that of a plain monk.[164]