ANGLO-SAXON CHARTERS (7th–11th CENTURIES)

The specimens of pre-Conquest diplomatic given in the following pages are necessarily limited to a few examples. Of these, one group represents the general form of the Old English Charter in several periods of its development. The other group contains specimens of special forms which are characteristic of this diplomatic era.

The Charters in question have been selected without any further design than to secure specimens which afford credible and accessible examples of their class. That is to say, care has only been taken that these should be either originals sufficiently legible to be collated by a non-expert editor, or copies entered in a cartulary of good repute.

A complete diplomatic description of the Charters being beyond the scope of this work, and the space allotted to the section being strictly limited, such portions of the texts (consisting chiefly of the usual conditions of enjoyment, boundaries and subscriptions) as appeared to be unnecessary for the mere indication of the characteristic formulas, have been omitted to permit of the inclusion of a greater number of examples.

It has appeared desirable, however, to identify these Charters with the several religious houses for which they were presumably composed and by which they were subsequently preserved. This identification in the case of original charters, which contain no internal evidence of ownership, and which have not been entered in any monastic register, is a matter of some difficulty. The Collections in which the Charters are now found have never been assigned to their original sources, and in some cases no identification whatever has been attempted by the editors of the several ‘Codices.’