Pierre Chaplais

Pierre Chaplais (1920-2006) was the son of the postmaster at Chateaubriant, in Brittany. He studied Classics and Law at Rennes University. Soon after the beginning of the war he became involved in the resistance movement known as ‘Défense de la France’; but in December 1943 he and his colleagues were arrested by the Gestapo, and were sent to Buchenwald, where he remained until the liberation. In 1946 Chaplais moved to London, and soon found employment at the Public Record Office. With the support of Professor V. H. Galbraith he became a Lecturer in the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Wadham College, where he served as Keeper of the Gardens. He lived for some years at Eynsham, near Oxford, and latterly near Bampton. In 984 King Æthelred II granted land at (Aston) Bampton, Oxon, to Ælfwine, his scriptor.

In the 1960s Chaplais published a series of seminal papers on Anglo-Saxon charters, focussing on charters preserved in single-sheet form. The four published in the Journal of the Society of Archivists, in 1965-6 and 1968-9, are available online to those whose institutions have the requisite subscription (www.tandfonline.com).

For further information, see Richard Sharpe, 'Pierre Chaplais (1920-2006)', Biographical Memoirs of the British Academy 11  (2012), 115-50, at 135-7.

Select bibliography

• Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to A.D. 1100, ed. T.A.M. Bishop and P. Chaplais (Oxford, 1957)  - includes facsimiles of all Anglo-Saxon writs which survive in their original form
• 'The Original Charters of Herbert and Gervase, Abbots of Westminster (1121-1157)', A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton, ed. P. M. Barnes and C. F. Slade, Pipe Roll Society, New Series 36 (1962), reptd in his Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration (1981), ch. XVIII, pp. 89–110 + Add
• ‘The Origin and Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diploma’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 3.2 (1965), 48-61, reptd in Prisca Munimenta, ed. F. Ranger (1973), pp. 28–42
• ‘The Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diplomas of Exeter’ (1966), reptd in his Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration (1981), pp. XV 1–34 and Addendum
• ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chancery: from the Diploma to the Writ’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 3.4 (1966), 160-76 [pdf online is incomplete], reptd in Prisca Munimenta, ed. F. Ranger (1973), pp. 43–62
• ‘Some Early Anglo-Saxon Diplomas on Single Sheets: Originals or Copies?’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 3.7 (1968), 315-36, reptd in Prisca Munimenta, ed. F. Ranger (1973), pp. 63–87
• ‘Who Introduced Charters into England? The Case for Augustine’, Journal of the Society of Archivists 3.10 (1969), 526-42, Prisca Munimenta, ed. F. Ranger (1973), pp. 88–107
• ‘The Letter from Bishop Wealdhere of London to Archbishop Brihtwold of Canterbury: the Earliest Original “Letter Close” Extant in the West’, in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries: Essays presented to N. R. Ker, ed. M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson (London, 1978), 3-23, reptd in his Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration (1981), ch. XIV, pp. 3–23 + Add.
• ‘The Royal Anglo-Saxon “Chancery” of the Tenth Century Revisited’, Studies in Medieval History presented to R.H.C. Davis, ed. H. Mayr-Harting and R.I. Moore (1985), pp. 41–51
• English Diplomatic Practice in the Middle Ages (2003), incl. marriage alliances (pp. 1–3, 32–5), tokens of credence (pp. 5, 30–1), oral messages (pp. 21–2, 27, 30), written messages (pp. 21–3, 27, 28–9), foreign relations (pp. 28–9), treaties (pp. 31–2, 36–40), bishops as envoys (pp. 35–6), chirographs (pp. 40–1), etc.

See also England and her Neighbours, 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. M. Jones and M. Vale (1989).