Many thanks Roman, and to everyone else who has helped with the lead seal
question. Karla Brouwer was able to provide an interpretation of all the
symbols on the shield, which is an enormous help. I'll paste below the
information from Karla for anyone else interested.
Carol

I only have an answer to your first question:
The interpretation of the components of the Haarlem coat of arms was given in
a
poem by the 15th century poet Dirc Mathijszen called Lofdicht op Haarlem
(Panegyric on Haarlem) based on a legend from the time of the crusades.
When they tried to take in the town Damiate, crusaders from Haarlem succeeded
at
this by sailing through the chain that protected Damiate. To reward the
Haarlemmers for their strains the emperor Barbarossa donated Haarlem a banner
red
as blood, with a sword pointing towards heaven. The pope gave them their
cross,
and the patriarchs delivered the stars because they came so far.
There is a painting of this event hanging in the Haarlem city hall by Pieter
de
Grebber (1630) called the wapenvermeerdering (the increasing of arms).

For the answers on the other questions I have to refer to Mr. Wiard Krook
(e-mail
[log in to unmask])  who made a study of lead seals.