Purse Bearer
official in the UK Royal Household
The Purse bearer is an official in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom, and based in the Ministry of Justice.
The use of a special purse or burse to hold the Great Seal of the Realm, the Lord Chancellor's symbol of Office, can be traced as far back as the end of the 13th Century. The purse is solemnly carried before the Lord Chancellor in procession on State occasions.
It no longer contains the Great Seal which now reposes at the Palace of Westminster; it is however used by the Lord Chancellor to convey the signed copy of the King's Speech printed on vellum, from the King's Robing Room to the steps of the Throne in the Chamber of the House of Lords, at every State Opening of Parliament.
The Purse presently in use is made from crimson velvet and lavishly embellished with the Royal Arms and Emblems.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Purse Bearer” as official in the UK Royal Household. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as official in the UK Royal Household. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7261549. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Purse Bearer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.