Among the voluminous papers associated with the Hospital of St. John in Oxford and the associated Carpenter family of the 1200s, are various quitclaims of properties to the charitable organization. Many are of interest. One I would briefly like to discuss here. This quitclaim concerns the daughter Emma of Geoffrey Carpenter. Her husband is named a William de Suantone. Suantone seems to be Staunton, the location of the descendants of this Carpenter group in the early 1300s. It would seem that the Carpenters had already abandoned the city of Oxford itself and removed themselves to the more convivial countryside. Country gentlelmen and gentleladies? Husband William is discribed as ‘Willemus de Suantone clericus’. The daughter of Geoffrey naturally married a man of education, a clerk, indicating the direction in which the family in Oxford was moving. In half a century they would produce a Sir John Carpenter, knight. At the bottom of the quitclaim is an interesting seal of daughter Emma. I don’t wish to speculate too much over this curious object. However it may contain an interesting family history clue. The seal bears Emma’s name and relationship to her father as, “S’EMME FIL’ GALFRIDI”. Many of these seals seem to have armorial symbols upon them and Emma’s has a crescent. Those of you familiar with the armorial bearings of the Dutch, Flemish and French branches of the Carpenter family all utilize the crescent as their main armorial symbol. Emma’s seal would certainly be an extremely old use of any armorial symbolism. The document is dated 1248, about the time armorial symbols of seals were translating themselves to what we know as coats-of-arms. BC