Royal Writs

The surviving corpus of the category of Anglo-Saxon vernacular documents known as 'writs' were brought together and edited, with translations and detailed commentaries, by F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), as the final element in the series which had been initiated by H. M. Chadwick, and of which the first volume to appear was Harmer's Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1914).

<Content to be developed. Surviving royal writs all of the eleventh century (most in the name of Edward the Confessor, and most preserved from the archives of Bury St Edmunds and Westminster abbey); but likely that they originated in the ninth century, and that texts of writs produced in the ninth and tenth centuries have not chanced to survive.>

<Varied purposes which they served.>

<A standard form of communication, also used by other persons.>

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October 2011