Note 154 — Chapter VI

The Seal was stolen from Lord Thurlow by burglars in 1784, and the offer of a reward of £200 failed to retrieve it. When Lord Chancellor Eldon's house at Encombe caught fire in 1812, he buried the Seal for safety's sake in the garden, and then forgot where he had buried it. His family spent most of the next day digging for it before it was finally recovered. Eldon seems to have taken the fire very easily. "It really was a very pretty sight," he wrote, "for all the maids turned out of their beds, and formed a line from the water to the fire-engine, handing the buckets; they looked very pretty, all in their shifts." Campbell's "Lives of the Chancellors," vol. vii. p. 300.