Aspects of Charters

This section of the Kemble website focusses on the documents themselves. Content will soon be added and developed under each of the headings in the section sub-menu.

The corpus comprises about 1500 texts, of which about 300 are preserved in single-sheet form (including originals, later copies, and forgeries), and of which the remainder are preserved as copies entered in medieval cartularies, or as transcripts made by early modern antiquaries.

• Folkland and Bookland. The four texts in which the word 'folkland' appears, and its meaning in relation to or in contrast with 'bookland'. Aspects of 'bookland', as they emerge from the corpus of royal diplomas.
• Royal diplomas. The term 'Anglo-Saxon charter' covers a multitude of documents ranging in kind from the royal diplomas issued in the names of Anglo-Saxon kings from the seventh century onwards to the Norman Conquest, which are almost invariably in Latin, to the wills of prominent churchmen, laymen, and women, which are almost invariably in the vernacular (Old English). A large proportion of the surviving corpus of charters is made up of records of grants of land or privileges by a king to a religious house, or to a lay beneficiary. The corpus also includes records of settlements of disputes over land or privileges, leases of episcopal property, and records of bequests of land and other property.
• Interactive Charter.
• Naming of Parts.
• 'Private' Charters.
• Royal writs.
• Vernacular charters.
• Boundary clauses.
• Manuscripts.
• Editions of charters.
• Citing charters.
• Translations of charters.
• Atlas of Attestations.

For a listing of all charters, see the Electronic Sawyer.