An Early Seventeenth-Century Gold Seal of the Winthrop Family of Groton, Suffolk

This gold seal is of early seventeenth-century date and bears the arms of the Winthrop family of Grown, Suffolk. The arms are differenced by a label of three points, indicating that it belonged W an eldest son. Since the seal has a British provenance and the arms were only granted in 1592, there are only two contenders for its ownership – John Winthrop II (1588–1649), who emigrated to America in 1630 and became the first governor of Massachusetts, and his son, John Winthrop III (1606–76), who joined his father in America in 1631 and governed Connecticut from 1660 to 1676. Even though it is not possible to say which of these two John Winthrops owned the seal, it is nevertheless important both as a rare example of a gold seal of the period and because of its connection to the early history of colonial America

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