"Sign manual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... recognised as the head of the kingdom, and new appointments made to judicial, fiscal, and military offices. The Archbishop of Rouen, who attended the council, seeing the turn affairs had taken, no longer hesitated to produce the letters under the king's sign manual appointing a new commission for the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... resolute, too, about that slight matter of the Jersey bull. He had the bull in Bevisham, and would not give him up without the sign manual of Lord Romfrey to an agreement to resign him over to the American Quaker gentleman, after a certain term. Moreover, not once had he, by exclamation or innuendo, during the period of his recent grief for the loss of his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... just balance of power among European states, and for the immunities of all Protestant countries. On the twenty-eighth of February the Commons listened with uncovered heads to the last message that bore William's sign manual. An unhappy accident, he told them, had forced him to make to them in writing a communication which he would gladly have made from the throne. He had, in the first year of his reign, expressed his desire ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons—but they were exclusively of her own sex—affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at all. You see a little Pinturicchio. Note the gay bands of variegated patterns, the arabesques and fruits. Their hues have vanished, but their forms and certain mannerisms of the master are unmistakable. These dainty decorations were the sign manual of such quattrocento painters as Gozzoli and Pinturicchio; and to these men he, for whom these works of art were created, assigned the painting and adornment of the Vatican. We will come to him directly. It was for Michelangelo to make the creations ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... are to observe and follow such orders and directions from time to time as you shall receive from us, or any other your superior officer according to the rules and discipline of war, and likewise such orders and directions as we shall send you under our signet or sign manual, or by our High Treasurer or Commissioners of our Treasury for the time being, or one of our principal Secretaries of State, in pursuance of the trust ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... hand to Brazier, and shook his solemnly as if in sign manual of the compact, and then repeated the performance with Rob, whose hand he retained, and, taking ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... his position as prime minister entails upon Jung is almost incredible; the simplest bargain cannot be struck, nor a cooly engaged, nor can a departure or an arrival take place, without his sign manual. In fact he comprises within himself the whole of the ministry, besides doing the entire duty of the several departments, and the office of premier in Nepaul can be no more a sinecure than it is in England. One can only wonder that a position ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant |
