“The ancient Town Seal of Great Grimsby is engraven on a circular piece of brass not very thick; and on the back, which is rather arched, is a small projecting piece of brass, placed as a substitute for a handle, in order when taking an impression the more easily to detach the matrix from the Wax. This seal is in an excellent state of preservation, and is inscribed in Saxon characters ‘Sigillvm Comunitatis Grimebye’ and represents thereon Gryme (‘Gryem’) who by tradition is reported to have been a native of Souldburg in Denmark, where he gained a precarious livelihood by fishing and piracy; but having, as is supposed, during the reign of Ethelbert,[20] been accidentally driven into the Humber by a furious storm, he landed on the Lincolnshire Coast near Grimsby, he being at this time miserably poor and almost destitute of the common necessaries of life; for Leland represents this ‘poor fisschar’ as being so very needy that he was not ‘able to kepe his sunne Cuaran for poverty.’ Gryme, finding a capacious haven adapted to his pursuits, built himself a house and commenced and soon succeeded in establishing a very lucrative Trade with Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Other Merchants having in process of time settled near him, attracted by the commercial advantages offered by this excellent Harbour, they jointly constructed convenient appendages for extensive Trade, and the colony soon rose into considerable importance, and became known at an early period by the name of Grimsby. For not only was Grimsby constituted a borough so early as the seventh century, but Peter of Langtoft speaks of it as a frontier Town and the boundary of a Kingdom erected by the conquests of Egbert in the year 827, which he states included all that portion of the Island which lay between ‘the maritime Towns of Grymsby and Dover.’ So that even at that period, Grimsby must have been a place of peculiar strength and importance. Gryme is represented on the seal as a man of gigantic stature with comparatively short hair, a shaven chin, and a moustache, holding in his right hand a drawn sword and bearing on his left arm a circular shield with an ornate boss and rim. The sleeveless tunic above his under vest is most probably the panzar or panzara of the Danes. Between his feet is a Conic object, possibly intended for a helmet, as it resembles the chapelle-de-fer worn by William Rufus on his Great Seal, and which in the laws of Gula is distinguished as the Steel hufe. On the right hand of Gryme stands his protégé Haveloc (‘Habloc’), whom, during one of his mercantile excursions soon after his arrival in Lincolnshire, Gryme had the good fortune to save from imminent danger of Shipwreck, and who proved to be the Son of Gunter, King of Denmark, and who was therefore conveyed to the British Court, where he subsequently received in marriage Goldburgh, the Daughter of the British Sovereign.