British Academy - Royal Historical Society

ANGLO-SAXON CHARTERS

The Electronic Sawyer
an online version of the revised edition of
Sawyer's Anglo-Saxon Charters

prepared under the auspices of the

British Academy / Royal Historical Society
Joint Committee on Anglo-Saxon Charters

 

SECTION TWO

Lost and Incomplete Texts

<under construction>

The second section of the Annotated List was described by Professor Sawyer in the following terms:

The second section lists charters which have been lost or are preserved only partially. It includes charters which have been mutilated, but otherwise it is limited to extracts from or notes of charters. Notes of benefactions are not listed, for land may have been granted without a charter. References to lost charters which may be found in surviving charters are also excluded. It cannot be claimed that the second section of this list is as complete as the first. Not only are there certainly many more references to lost charters in inventories and in the notes of scholars than are listed here, but there are at least two major omissions. The lost charters of Ely reported in the Liber Eliensis are not included, while of the lost charters of Ramsey used by the writer of the Ramsey Chronicle, only those published by Kemble and Birch are here noted. These important sources of references to lost charters are both available in good modern editions and the effort needed to list the lost charters used in their compilation would not have been justified.

It seemed desirable, for the purposes of the revised edition of the catalogue, to extend the treatment of 'lost and incomplete' charters by registering all of the information which has come to our attention, albeit in the certain knowledge that other references still await discovery and identification. <Only by collecting all references to title-deeds, records of settlement of disputes, and records of bequests, etc., can we judge the extent to which the use of the written word penetrated society at any period before the Norman Conquest.> <Misleading to include some, but not others.> <References within existing charters: no reason why they should be excluded? Covered to some extent in Finberg series.> <Lists of benefactions: only registered if there is specific reference to a charter.> A 'lost' or 'incomplete' charter can be of considerable historical interest, whether in its own right or as part of a larger picture, however pitiful it may be, and however difficult (not to say impossible) it is to judge the authenticity or otherwise of the charter in question. Moreover, it is important that all such references should be gathered together where they can be judged in relation to each other, and the information included in indexes of grantors, beneficiaries, and places.

In the original edition of this list (1968), the entries for 'lost and incomplete' charters were placed in a single numerical series following the last of the detached boundary clauses (S 1602), organised by the religious houses in whose archives the charters had formerly been preserved, and arranged chronologically within each religious house. A few fragments of unknown provenance (S 1861-3), and a series of references in Domesday Book (S 1864-75), were listed at the end. The same principles of organisation and arrangement are retained for the purposes of the revised edition, with certain differences. In the case of each religious house, a short explanation is given of the nature of the information on the 'lost and incomplete' charters from the house in question; and in the cases of Christ Church Canterbury, Glastonbury, and Worcester it has been considered necessary to provide tables intended to make it easier to judge aspects of the information on the archives of each house in relation to both parts of the list. It has proved necessary at the same time to dispense with the original numbering, and to devise a new system of numbering incorporating archival prefixes. This change introduces an immediately visible distinction between the 'lost and incomplete' documents, knowledge of which is transmitted in a form particular to the archive, and the main series of charters preserved in all or most of their glory; but, inevitably, it complicates the system of reference. It is suggested that a standard form of reference to a charter from this part of the list would be as follows: S Abbots 5; S Glast 50; S Wor 38. The number of any charter registered in the original edition is given in square brackets after the new form of reference.

Simon Keynes
April 1999

 

Religious houses from which the material is derived

Numbers in S (1968)

Abbots 1-8

Abbotsbury

Abing 1-8

Abingdon

1603-4

Ames 1

Amesbury

Athel 1

Athelney

1605

Buck 1-3

Buckfast

Burt 1

Burton

1606

Bury 1-2

Bury St Edmunds

1607-8

CaCC 1-40

Canterbury, Christ Church

1609-47

CaStA 1-10

Canterbury, St Augustine's

1648-58

Cran 1-2

Cranborne

Dur 1-3

Durham

1659-61

Ely 1-8

Ely

Eve 1-3

Evesham

1662-4

Glast 1-120

Glastonbury

1665-1781

GlouStO 1

Gloucester, St Oswald's

GlouStP 1

Gloucester, St Peter's

1782

LonStP 1-19

London, St Paul's

1783-96

Malm 1

Malmesbury

1797

Wen 1-5

Much Wenlock

1798-1802

Pet 1-4

Peterborough

1803-6

Plym 1

Plympton

Ram 1-8

Ramsey

1807-10

Roch 1

Rochester

StAlb 1-2

St Albans

Sel 1-6

Selsey

West 1

Westminster

Wilt 1

Wilton

1811

WinNM 1 (+)

Winchester, New Minster

WinOM 1-14

Winchester, Old Minster

1812-21

Wor 1-40

Worcester

1822-60

Frag 1-3

Fragments of unknown provenance

1861-3

DB 1-12 (+)

References in Domesday Book

1864-75

Misc 1-4 (+)

Other references to charters now lost

 


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