Anglo Saxon Charters in United Kingdom

This issue under the Ruling of the Anglo Saxons et seq

Anglo-Saxon dooms and custumals

Our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon law rests, so far as positive[3] evidence goes, on several classes of documents which supplement one another to some extent, but are still far from giving a complete view. We have in the first place the considerable series of laws and ordinances of Saxon and English princes, beginning with those of Æthelbert of Kent, well known to general history as Augustine’s convert, which are of about the end of the sixth century. The laws of Cnut may be said to close the list. Then from the century which follows the Norman Conquest we have various attempts to state the Old English law. These belong to the second class of documents, namely, compilations of customs and formulas which are not known ever to have had any positive authority, but appear to have been put together with a view to practical use, or at least to preserve the memory of things which had been in practice, and which the writer hoped to see in practice again. Perhaps our most important witness of this kind is the tract or custumal called Rectitudines singularum personarum.

Some of the so-called laws are merely semi-official or private compilations, but their formal profession of an authority they really had not makes no difference to their value as evidence of what the compilers understood the customary law to have been. To some extent we can check them by their repetition of matter that occurs in genuine Anglo-Saxon laws of earlier dates. Apocryphal documents of this kind are by no means confined to England, nor, in English history, to the period before the Conquest. Some examples from the thirteenth century have found their way into the worshipful company of the Statutes of the Realm among the “statutes of uncertain time.” It has been the work of more than one generation of scholars to detect their true character, nor indeed is the work yet wholly done. From the existence and apparent, sometimes real, importance of such writings and compilations as we have now mentioned there has arisen the established usage of[4] including them, together with genuine legislation, under the common heading of “Anglo-Saxon laws.” As for the deliberate fables of later apocryphal authorities, the “Mirror of Justices” being the chief and flagrant example, they belong not to the Anglo-Saxon but to a much later period of English law. For the more part they are not even false history; they are speculation or satire.

Source: Sir Frederick Pollock, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (1895)

Calendars and Registers of Charters

Anglo Saxon Charters and Medieval Law

Another kind of contemporary writings affords us most valuable evidence for the limited field of law and usage which those writings cover. The field, however, is even more limited than at first sight it appears to be. We mean the charters or “land-books” which record the munificence of princes to religious houses or to their followers, or in some cases the administration and disposition of domains thus acquired. Along with these we have to reckon the extant Anglo-Saxon wills, few in number as compared with charters properly so called, but of capital importance in fixing and illustrating some points. It was Kemble’s great achievement to make the way plain to the appreciation and use of this class of evidences by his Codex Diplomaticus. We have to express opinions more or less widely different from Kemble’s on several matters, and therefore think it well to say at once that no one who has felt the difference between genius and industrious good intentions can ever differ with Kemble lightly or without regret. Kemble’s work often requires correction; but if Kemble’s work had not been, there would be nothing to correct.

Source: Sir Frederick Pollock, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (1895)

Legal Materials

(Compiled by the University of South Caroline Gould School of Law) Ellis, Henry J., and Francis B. Bickley, comps. Index to the Charters and Rolls in the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum. 2 Vols. London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1965-1967.

Great Britain. Public Record Office. Calendar of Royal Charters Which Occur in Letters of Inspeximus, Exemplification, or Confirmation, and in Cartularies, in the Public Record Office. Pt.1, From Ethelbert to William II. Deputy Keeper’s Reports, 29. London: His/Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (now part of the Office of Public Sector Information), 1868.

Abstract: Contains an abstract of each charter.

Turner, William H., and Henry O. Coxe, eds. Calendar of Charters and Rolls Preserved in the Bodleian Library . Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1878.

Abstract: Charters formerly in the collections of Anthony Wood, Roger Dodsworth, Ralph Thoresby, Thomas Martin of Palgrave, Thomas Tanner, bishop of St. Asaph, Dr. Richard Rawlinson, Richard Firney, archdeacon of Surrey, and Richard Gough.

Bibliographies of English Law History

• Maxwell, William H. A Legal Bibliography of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Volume 1: English Law to 1800. London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1955-
• Beale, Joseph H. A Bibliography of Early English Law Books. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926.
• Winfield, Percy H. The Chief Sources of English Legal History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925.

Resources

See Also

• Negligence (in this legal Encyclopedia)
• Deceit (in this legal Encyclopedia)
• Tenure (in this legal Encyclopedia)
• Marriage (in this legal Encyclopedia)
• History Definition (in this legal Encyclopedia)