V

Magna Carta 1297 and the legal use of literacy

MAGNA CARTA 1297 has never attracted much attention.¹ The new demands and concessions which were made in the political conflicts of the year have—rightly—aroused much more interest than the mere reissue of charters that clearly, by then, did not cover all the forms of oppression that worried Edward I’s subjects. There is, however, at least one point about the charter itself which raises issues that deserve consideration. On 12 October 1297 the Great Charter and Forest Charter (though this article will not be concerned with the Forest Charter) were, as it is generally expressed, ‘reissued’ in almost exactly the same words as in 1225.² The text of the Great Charter followed that of 1225, to quote Rothwell word for word … except for a few verbal differences, interesting as suggesting access to a 1217 text also or to a somewhat purer 1225 text than that printed … but (with one exception) affecting neither the sense nor the translation. The exception is a deliberate change to 100 marks instead of 100 pounds as the relief for a barony in clause 2.³

But this deliberate change, as Rothwell calls it, is very odd—much odder than he or anyone else, except perhaps Bémont, seems to have realized.⁴ The document is, as Rothwell’s heading in English Historical Documents notes, an inspeximus. That is, it is a charter which says that the grantor confirms a previous charter which is quoted, supposedly word for word, within his own.⁵ The form gives no room for amendment except in the end, in the grantor’s own clauses of confirmation. You cannot retrospectively change the actual text which you are confirming by inspeximus. The change of the baronial relief in the text of clause 2 of the 1225 charter must, therefore, be either a deliberate falsification or a mistake. There would surely be no point for the government in deliberately making what Professor Holt calls ‘a sharp change in policy’,⁶ and would have been designed as a concession, in a furtive manner. If the government had intended to reduce baronial reliefs it would rather have done so in the document known—confusingly—as the Confirmation of the Charters, which had already been conceded by the king’s son a couple of days before.⁷ A deliberate reduction might perhaps have been inserted furtively on behalf of the barons, but, again, it is difficult to see the point or to envisage the means: far more likely, surely, that if the opposition had felt strongly about the matter they would have pressed for it openly now that they had brought the government to bay. Then they would be assured that the exchequer would know about it and there would be no need for subsequent wrangling on individual cases. That was the point of charters of liberties.

It is the contention of this article that the change in relief was a mistake, a mistake which may have been made first in a less well-known inspeximus issued in 1265 but, if so, was then probably forgotten and was made again in 1297. It will be argued that the mistake arose because the charter of 1225 was not enrolled and because a good many of the copies of it which were around in 1297, including perhaps copies in collections of statutes kept in the chancery, had the baronial relief wrong. What is more it seems likely that it was not until 1300, when the same figure, derived presumably from the enrolment of the 1297 charter on the Statute Roll,⁸ was repeated in another inspeximus, that what had happened became generally known and accepted. This remains a hypothesis rather than a conclusion, and one which will appeal chiefly to those who adhere to a muddle theory of history rather than a conspiracy theory, but the material is so bulky and complex and raises so many questions of a wider nature that it seems worth inviting their consideration by others. The argument will take the form of attempts to answer two questions. First, what reliefs were paid on baronies before and after 1297? Second, what can be discovered about texts of the 1225 charter which may have been available in 1297 to be used for the inspeximus?

First, the reliefs actually paid. Before 1215, as is well known, though £100 was occasionally accepted, they were sometimes much higher.⁹ As Professor Holt has pointed out, the repetitiousness of clause 2 in the 1215 charter suggests that the opposition bargained then for a lower baronial relief, which may have been a hundred marks.¹⁰ The fact that some heirs, at least in the reigns of Henry II and Richard I, had got away with reliefs at this level, adds force to his argument.¹¹ It may be that some people thought or hoped that the original charter of 1215 said 100 marks. If they did, we know they were wrong: £100 was what was laid down both in 1215 and in the three reissues of 1216, 1217 and 1225, while, whatever anyone thought had been agreed or ought to have been agreed, those who owed baronial reliefs seem to have accepted that £100 was what they had to pay. Although much larger sums were occasionally charged and holders of relatively poor baronies sometimes got away with smaller ones, that remained the norm until about 1265. From then on the actual sums charged are often omitted from fine, originalia and pipe rolls,¹² though sometimes the memoranda rolls contain records of the arguments that could be needed in order to establish that an heir owed a baronial relief. The primary reason for argument, even before the record became less complete, was that the exchequer had no list of baronies. Instead they worked from precedent. By the twelve-nineties, though heirs were sometimes asked to produce charters which might establish their title and service, the normal procedure was to search the rolls for the last relief and then to charge the same. This must have become all the harder when only the memoranda rolls, in all their bulk and complexity, were likely to provide an answer, but it cannot always have been straightforward to start with. Sometimes the date of the last succession may have been wrongly or vaguely remembered, and if the heir then had been a minor it would be necessary to go one generation further back.¹³ As some baronies were accumulated in a few hands and many were divided, it became necessary to sort out complex genealogies and the exchequer found itself arguing with heirs about quarters of half baronies, thirds of quarters, and so on. Although the rolls show that some accumulated and divided fiefs were indeed charged proportionately, some baronies may have got lost. On the other hand it is highly unlikely that the exchequer could have got away with charging relief at the baronial rate on an estate which had not paid it before. Estates owing either full baronial reliefs or fractions of them probably tended therefore to become less numerous as time passed.

This in itself may have made baronial reliefs less of a hot political issue as the century wore on. Inflation must have had the same effect, while the government outflanked the restriction on reliefs by imposing fines for seisin which must sometimes have made the reliefs themselves look paltry.¹⁴ Not that heirs to baronies or parts of baronies therefore paid up quickly or as a matter of course: what with failures to answer summonses to court, with respites for debts because of an heir’s service in the army, and then with delays needed to produce charters, find precedents and work out family histories, some cases dragged on for years. By the twelve-nineties the result was a rich combination of rigidity, uncertainty and delay. Given the imperfections of the record and the comparative rarity of baronial successions,¹⁵ it is obvious that any sudden change in the rules is likely to be difficult to trace.

Nonetheless, though a fuller search of the rolls might produce greater certainty, the evidence already found is suggestive. Just before the regular recording of the sums stopped, Painter found the record of three reliefs of £100 in 1263 and one of 100 marks in 1265. This, together with occasional records of £100 charges in Edward I’s reign, led him to hazard a guess that the barons may have forced Henry to make a concession in 1264, but that Edward repudiated it, until he in turn was forced to give way in 1297.¹⁶ If the lower rate was granted before 1297, however, it was probably in 126$, not 1264. What seems to be the first inspeximus of the 1225 charter was issued on 13 March 1265, at the end of Simon de Montfort’s last parliament. One copy exists in a statute collection and it gives the relief as 100 marks, though, as we shall see, that need not mean that the charter as issued said the same thing.¹⁷ Whatever the explanation of die 100 marks payment that Painter found in 1265 he seems to have been right in thinking that £100 was once again being charged in the first part of Edward I’s reign and as late as 1296.¹⁸ In Michaelmas term 1297—most of which fell after die inspeximus was granted— orders were issued to levy debts on reliefs which had earlier been assessed at the old rate.¹⁹ If anyone had the deliberate intention of putting a lower figure into the charter then the exchequer either ignored it or was genuinely unaware of it. Thereafter, as it so happened, no new cases which could test the issue were to come to the point of argument before 1299.

In the meantime, however, one slow payer was, in consideration of his services to the king, allowed in September 1298 to go on paying off his old debt on the terms originally agreed, in spite of his previous defaults.²⁰ In this case the total debt was not reduced, but two months later, just a year after the inspeximus, a member of the king’s household, William Russel, was granted terms of payment on two half- baronies at fifty marks for each. It looks as if he at least may have had an idea of what the charter had said and had used his influence to try to benefit from it, but if so he did not succeed: the grant was cancelled before it had been enrolled at the exchequer.²¹ By 1299, though the heirs to at least two estates continued to delay their settlements in 1299 in the normal way so that no discussion of their obligations arose,²² things were beginning to change. During the summer, a case had to be postponed because the barons of the exchequer did not have a sealed great charter of liberties by them and were therefore in doubt about the relief due from a barony.²³ Presumably the heirs concerned had claimed to pay at the marks rate and the exchequer had been nonplussed to find that the copy of the charter in their own collection of statutes agreed with the debtors’ claim although all the precedents were against it.²⁴ The following Michaelmas another case shows the court by now satisfied that the charter said marks, but unsure whether baronies should be charged accordingly or rather in pounds, ‘as they were accustomed to be charged before the confirmation of the same charter’. The case was postponed so that the barons of the exchequer could discuss the problem with the king.²⁵ A year later, in October 1300, over six months after another inspeximus of Magna Carta had been issued in March 1300, the king told the exchequer that his father’s great charter of liberties, which he himself had confirmed and renewed, was to be observed in all its articles.²⁶ In 1301 two cases for baronial relief came up, one of them being that of the William Russel who had made a bid for the reduced rate in 1299. Both he and the other baronial heir were now allowed to pay at that rate and a memorandum was made after the entry of Russel’s case that, because of the king’s order to keep the charter, and although the rate had hitherto been £100, baronies would in future pay only 100 marks, since this was what the charter said.²⁷

The rule seems now to have been established, though the conflict between the authority of Magna Carta and the authority of precedent continued to be recorded on occasion in a manner that does not imply that the reduction in reliefs was seen as new in principle. So far as the exchequer was concerned, precedents could be—and had to be—ignored on the authority of the charter, backed by the king’s explicit order that it was to be kept.²⁸ It was not apparently felt necessary to say which great charter was meant—1225, 1297 or 1300. Meanwhile the force of precedents could be used to bring defaulters to court: some were threatened that, if they did not come, they would be charged at the same rate as their predecessors. One whose case had hung on for years and who had actually been charged at the marks rate in 1302 had to argue the whole issue again in 1304 to avoid going back to pounds.²⁹ His argument suggests that he thought the old rate had been wrong even before 1297— just another example, presumably, of royal oppression and breach of the charters.³⁰ Perhaps heirs to baronies had for many years been accepting the old level less because they thought it right than because, whatever they thought the charter said, they had to settle with the exchequer as best they could. Perhaps as late as 1298 William Russel had been trying to defeat what he thought of as an exchequer abuse rather than trying to take advantage of a new concession. It was not until 1299 that arguments on the ground of the charter were recorded and not until after the inspeximus of 1300 and the king’s explicit order to obey ‘the great charter’ that they won.

The second question posed at the beginning of this article concerned the texts of the 1225 charter likely to have been available in 1297. The 1225 charter was not enrolled. In 1297, therefore, either someone must have produced an original issued from the chancery in 1225 or the chancery clerks would have used a copy. To take originals first—an original in this context meaning a sealed document issued from the chancery, whether or not in multiple copies. There seem to be three surviving chancery originals of the 1225 charter. The two which are generally known contain only small variants from each other. Another document, which is probably an original, has rather more, but, like the others, it gives the baronial relief as 100.³¹ In 1297 there must have been many more originals about:³² the city of London should have had one close at hand and so may the archbishop of Canterbury. On the whole, however, originals were probably kept too safe for easy access. By 1297 copies must have been both more readily available and more numerous.³³ Some copies were made on single membranes for publication and display. Although the charter of 1225 had been formally confirmed at least nine times in Henry Ill’s reign, a full text seems to have been issued in inspeximus only in 1265.³⁴ Copies may well have been made locally when confirmations were read to shire courts as well as on other occasions when sheriffs were ordered to have the charter read out publicly and preserved.³⁵ Matthew Paris put what may be a copy made in connection with the confirmation of 1253 or with the order of 1255 into his Liber Additamentorum.³⁶ It ranks high for accuracy, barring two small omissions of two or three words each, and has the baronial relief right. Another fairly accurate text, including the right £100 figure and followed by the Forest Charter on the same small single membrane, could have been made for a similar purpose.³⁷ There is also a very odd document which, after an imperfect preamble from the 1217 charter, continues with a roughish version of the 1225 text (including the baronial relief at 100 marks), a list of witnesses that looks garbled for any date, and the date 11 February 36 Henry III (1252).³⁸ All the mistakes in it could be paralleled from copies in books of statutes and the 1225 charter had also been issued on 11 February.³⁹ Maybe it was copied for publication from a statute book. In 1279 the archbishop of Canterbury ordered copies of the charter to be put up in cathedrals and collegiate churches and then recopied and replaced annually. Although the king soon put a stop to this, it suggests that texts were thought to be readily available and became still more plentiful in the course of the year.⁴⁰

Copies in books, however, and especially in books of statutes, were probably the most numerous and most likely to have been used in 1297. Of the thirteenth-century statute collections consulted,⁴¹ a large majority give the baronial relief as 100 marks. It is now probably impossible to say more about how the mistake arose than to guess that it could have arisen from the grievances and negotiations of 1215. The survival of what looks like an early draft of the Runnymede charter, entered in a statute book as the real thing, but with the wrong (100 marks) figure could be evidence for this.⁴² However it happened the mistake must be seen in the context of the wide variety of other errors that crop up in the book texts.⁴³ The variant readings range from small variations in word order right up to what look to us gross muddles—like conflations of 1217 and 1225 similar to that in the single membrane document supposedly issued in 1252.⁴⁴ Apart from the baronial relief, which is wrong even in one or two texts which seem to have been carefully copied in terms of word order and minor word changes,⁴⁵ and apart from the 1217/1225 muddle, there are several other variations which occur in more than one text Occasionally, for instance, clause 27 from the 1215 charter, which had protected the goods of intestates but was omitted from later issues, is inserted.⁴⁶ In clause I, where the king says that he has granted the freedom of the English church to God, three of the texts add St. Mary and all saints.⁴⁷ Quite a few refer to the writ precipe in clause 24 (i.e. clause 34 of 1215) as precipe in capite.⁴⁸ This was the form used by the time the texts were written and would have made better sense to scribes without any particular interest in historical niceties.⁴⁹ The same goes for some which gave the king’s tides in the form appropriate after the treaty of Paris, without Normandy and Anjou.⁵⁰ Again, it was a sensible sort of mistake in thirteenth-century terms.

All these errors, large or small, careless or sensible, comprehensible or inexplicable, come in various combinations in the sample used.⁵¹ Furthermore, no two texts have been found which share the same homoeleutons. The consequent failure so far to construct any families or stemmae of texts may be caused by the smallness of the sample. It may also be the result of carelessness. But despite these qualifications—or disqualifications—the survey suggests that there were a large number of exemplars of Magna Carta around for scribes to use, whether originals, single-membrane display copies or book copies, and that most scribes were not tremendously concerned to follow their exemplars exactly. The charter mattered, but what mattered to both compilers of statute books and writers of chronicles was its gist, not its exact words.⁵² Compilers of statute books seem to have been just as carefree and confused in their copying and miscopying as chroniclers. This seems to raise significant questions about the uses of literacy by the nascent legal profession, for whom some of the collections were presumably made, and about their ideas of law. An investigation of standards and practices in copying different sorts of books, including statute collections, could illuminate the history of both literacy and law. In the meantime it may be pointed out that Matthew Paris seems to have been rather unjustly criticized for his treatment of the charters. He was certainly opinionated and it was certainly odd to call his best copy of the 1225 charter ‘Magna Carta regis Johannis’,⁵³ but his other texts are no more confused than many in statute books, including some of those probably kept in the exchequer.⁵⁴

What mattered to most copiers of statutes and of Magna Carta was the law as it stood—or as they thought it stood—not how or when it had got there. At the moment of new legislation changes might be controversial, as parts of Magna Carta certainly were, and the exact terms might be important, as in the case, obviously, of the level of baronial reliefs early in the thirteenth century. The omissions of ‘weighty and doubtful’ matters from the 1216 charter, the changes made in 1225 to the regulations about the petty assizes and the arguments in Lincolnshire in 1226 about the holding of the county court all show that contemporaries sometimes worried about details. But some of the appeals to the charter suggest a scant knowledge of just what was in force. As the details of the crisis of 1215 faded from memory and ‘the charters’ became a general symbol of the rule of law, the distinctions between the different versions must have become blurred.⁵⁵ It is no joke to check the texts even with the help of Stubbs, Bémont and the Statutes of the Realm, and without them, and without any clear constitutional narrative into which one could fit any text or texts one might happen to have at hand, it would have been excessively hard.⁵⁶ Scribes simply wanted to get the text of what they thought of as ‘the Great Charter’ down and, before the issue of inspeximuses became a tradition, they had no standard method of coping with versions bearing different dates.

Later on a method was evolved and it was one which precisely illustrates the indifference to past change. By the end of the century scribes who copied out collections of statutes reckoned to keep them up to date when an inspeximus was issued by ‘topping and tailing’ the text of Magna Carta with the new preamble and new date, without apparently checking through the contents. That this was all they generally did is confirmed not only by the survival in later texts of the variants already mentioned, but also by the position in which most of them left the Great Charter. Even when they had topped and tailed it for 1297 or 1300, they left it at the beginning, before the Statute of Merton, in the position suitable for the original entry of the 1225 text.⁵⁷ It may be that the texts conflating 1217 and 1225 form some kind of early version of this method though they look as if they had been topped and tailed, as it were, in reverse. The only text that seems to survive of the 1265 inspeximus, and which, like many others, has the baronial relief wrong, may have been written twenty years or more later but is probably a topped and tailed version of 1225.⁵⁸

In October 1297 an acute political crisis made it necessary to issue an inspeximus at short notice. On 10 October, when a confirmation in general terms was issued, along with additional articles, the inspeximus which would come only two days later was not mentioned. Whether or not its issue was decided on only in those two days there was clearly little time for careful search of records. If none of the opposition happened to be waving an original 1225 charter which the chancery clerks were prepared to use and they therefore had to rely on a book copy and, presumably, find one quickly, the odds were strong that they would use one with the baronial relief wrong. What they did use is uncertain. The new charter was in most other respects remarkably accurate. Some of the small variations from the 1225 text could have come from the surviving text not used in Statutes of the Realm and others could have come from a lost chancery original. But, given the generally careful copying in the surviving originals of 1215, 1217 and 1225, it does not seem very likely that a lost one had the relief wrong.⁵⁹ All the variants, including the reduced relief, could have come from book versions. Disappointingly, they do not correspond exacdy with those in the only surviving manuscript now thought to derive from a collection of statutes held in the chancery at the time. That, however, may be because the book in its present form is much later (and has the charter topped and tailed for 1300), so that variants—including the relief in marks—could have crept in after 1297.⁶⁰ If the chancery clerks had borrowed a copy from the exchequer they would probably have still got the baronial relief wrong. The exchequer Red Book, it is true, had a very good text, with the right relief,⁶¹ but the book which Richardson and Sayles thought then served as the exchequer’s principal statute collection has a pretty bad one which confuses 1217 and 1225 as well as getting the relief wrong.⁶² There must have been exchequer officials around who had themselves dealt with baronial reliefs and could have put their colleagues in the chancery right but, even if it were likely that clerks in one department would have consulted those in another, it was the essence of the politics of 1297 that reference to exchequer practice would have been irrelevant. The government was being attacked for breaking the charters. If people thought, as well they might, that the charter of 1225 had put the baronial relief at 100 marks, then exchequer practice was one more example of governmental injustice.

If these arguments are convincing then the reduction of the baronial relief in 1297 may be seen as a good case of the force of muddle in human affairs and, consequently, also as a warning against deducing motives and policies from formal documents which merely record results in the way that so often has to be done in medieval history. It also raises questions about habits and uses of literacy that deserve further study. Study of early statute collections could help us understand more about the use of writing and the slow and patchy inculcation of new habits of verbal exactitude. This was a time when law was ceasing to be the property of all sorts and conditions of men and was becoming something much more exact and esoteric, so that, in the words of Maitland, by 1272 it was already threatening to ‘become a commentary, an evasive commentary, on antique writs and statutes’.⁶³ Statute books could help us understand how that was happening.

¹ An earlier draft of this article was read as a paper at the second Newcastle conference on 13th-century England in Sept. 1987. I am grateful to members of the conference for their comments and suggestions, and also to Professor J. C Holt for his comments on a draft version.

² The clearest accounts of the events and documents of the crisis are J. G. Edwards, ‘Confirmatio Cartarum and baronial grievances in 1297’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lviii (1943), 147–71, 273–300 and M. Prestwich, Edward I (1988), pp. 426–30

³ English Historical Documents, iii: 1189–1327, ed. H. Rothwell(1975), p. 487. The printed text referred to is Statutes of the Realm (11 vols, in 10, Record Comm., 1810–28), i, Charters, pp. 22–5

⁴ Chartes des libertés anglaises (1100–1305), ed. C. Bémont (Paris, 1892), p. 47 n. 6

⁵ See Statutes, i. 104–5

⁶ J. C. Holt, Magna Carta (Cambridge, 1965), p. 211, though he refers to it as made in ‘the Confirmation of the Charters’

⁷ Edwards, p. 16211

⁸ Statutes, i. 114

⁹ Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 107–8, 207–8

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 211; cf. V. H Galbraith, ‘A draft of Magna Carta (1215)’, Proc. British Acad., liii (1967), 345–60

¹¹ For 100 mark reliefs (e.g. Pipe Rolls 2-4 Henry II, ed. J. Hunter (1844), pp. 14, 73; P.R. 9 Hen. II (Pipe Roll Soc., vi, 1886), p: 31; P.R. 2 Ric. I (Pipe Roll Soc., xxxix, 1925), pp. 57, 58, 66, 116; P.R. 6 Ric. I (Pipe Roll Soc., new ser. v, 1928), p. 36 and cf. pp. 63, 193; for £100 reliefs, e.g. P.R. 18 Hen. II (Pipe Roll Soc., xviii, 1894) p. 73; PR. 32 Hen. II (Pipe Roll Soc., xxxvi, 1914), p. 18; P.R. 5 Ric. I (Pipe Roll Soc., new ser. iii, 1927), p. 90; P.R. 6 Ric. I, p. 193; P.R. 7 Ric. I (Pipe Roll Soc., new ser. vi, 1929), pp. 109, 111.,

¹² I. J. Sanders, English Baronies: a Study of their Origin and Descent, 1086–1327 (Oxford, i960), p. vi; S. Painter, Studies in the History of the English Feudal Barony (Baltimore, Md., 1943), pp. 61–3

¹³ See e.g. Public Record Office, E 368/77, mm. 61, 69, cited in T. Madox, History and Antiquities of the Exchequer (1711), p. 37on. (on pp. 372–4), where the rest of Madox’s note illustrates the difficulties

¹⁴ R. Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance under Henry III, 1216–45 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 217–19

¹⁵ With about 200 potential baronies (S. Painter, The Reign of King John (Baltimore, Md. 1949), P-Sanders, pp. ix-xi) and 25-year generations about 8 cases a year seem likely. In the 1290s there were many fewer.

¹⁶ Painter, Studies, pp. 21–3

¹⁷ British Library, Harley MS. 489 fos. 4–8; see below n. 34.

¹⁸ Painter, Studies, p. 63. I have not searched the memoranda rolls before 1292–3, but see e.g. Madox, Exchequer, p. 219; idem, Baronia Anglica (1736), pp. 47n., 48n; Sanders, pp. 14 n. 4, 37 nn. 1–2; references to earlier cases in P.R.O., E 368/72, m. 36; E 368/73, m. 2od. I may have missed some cases after 1292, but for 1292–6 see e.g. P.R.O., E 368/64, mm. 14, 22, 30d;E 368/66, m. 40; E 368/68, mm. 14d, 84d

¹⁹ P.R.O., E 368/69, m. 114 (Mucegros: cf. E. 368/64, m. 14; Mortein: cf E 368/66, m. 40).

²⁰ Ibid., E 368/70, m. 17 (Abadam: cf. E. 368/68, m. 14d).

²¹ Calendar of Fine Rolls, i. 407 (not found on P.R.O., E 368/70); M. Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance under Edward I (1972), p. 45

²² P.R.O., E 368/70, mm. 43, 44d (Mortein, Frevill: heirs of Philip Marmion).

²³ Ibid., E 368/70, mm. 43, 57, 65 (Fauconberg). The case was still undecided in 1302 (E 368/71, m. 24d;E 368/73, m. 20d).

²⁴ For exchequer book copies, see below nn. 61–2

²⁵ P.R.O., E 368/71, m. 20 (Grey), quoted, with insignificant inaccuracies, by Bémont, in Chartes, p. 47n, on p. 48. After enquiries into the heir’s other holdings (m. 38), he was respited because of war service (E 159/73, m. 19: not found in the corresponding part of E 368/71). I have not traced his case further.

²⁶ P.R.O., E 368/72, m. 12.

²⁷ Ibid., E 368/72, m. 36 (Zouche, Russel).

²⁸ E.g. ibid., E 368/73, mm. 14d (Frevill), 2od (Biset, Fauconberg, Tatesale, or more legibly in E 159/76, m. 54), 43d (Mortimer); E 368/74, mm. 27d, 29 (Botiller, Frevill: heirs of Philip Marmion), 29d (Meules); E 368/77, mm. 49d (Ratyndon), 61, 69 (Breouse).

²⁹ Eg. ibid., E 368/73, m. 2od (Fauconberg);E 368/74, m. 27d (Marmion heirs).

³⁰ ‘… Radulphus ad hoc dicit quod licet prefata Johanna se permisit aliter onerari quam decuit nolens quod pro se habuit allegandum vel ignorans, hoc ei preiudicare non debet Dicit enim quod tunc temporis relevia baroniarum onerabantur hie de C libris set dominus rex super magnam cartam de libertatibus Anglie, in qua continetur quod pro relevio integre baronie baronis C marce tantum exigantur, confirmavit et in omnibus suis puncds teneri precepit et iuxta hoc debetur de relevio… Et barones hoc fieri concordarunt’ (ibid., E 368/74, m. 27d, partially quoted in Chartes: cf. n. 25 above)

³¹ The author has seen the charter at Durham (D) only in the facsimile in Statutes, i, Charters, between pp. 22 and 23. The other original is Brit Libr., Additional MS. 46144, formerly at Lacock abbey (L). The texts seem to be very carefully collated in Statutes. The other probable original is Bodleian Library, MS. Middlesex Charters 1 (B). It has no seal but a repair at the foot is where the slit would have been. Though B has more variations of words or word order (excluding spellings or variant forms of words which could be explained by varying ways of extending abbreviations) some of its readings are shared by each of the others. It seems more like an original than a copy made later for display. L contains several corrections over erasures, one of which (‘eodem modo eam’ in c. 31) results in a different reading from D, which omits ‘eam’. Clause numbers hereafter are taken from Chartes but readings from Statutes because Bémont does not note all the variants noted in Statutes and introduces one or two minor errors of his own.

³² Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 165–8, 248–9, 313–15

³³ L was deposited at Lacock abbey by the knights of Wiltshire (Chartes, p. 45).

³⁴ Brit. Libr., Harl. MS. 489 fos. 4–8; Cotton MS. Claudius D ii fo. 128v; cf. Documents of the Period of Baronial Reform and Rebellion, ed. R. E. Treharne and I. J. Sanders (Oxford, 1973), p. 312. Brit. Libr., Cott MS. Vespasian B xi fo. 42 may refer to a confirmation (real or supposed) later in 1265 (or perhaps in 1266, connected with the Dictum of Kenilworth?). The list of ‘reissues’ and confirmations in F. Thompson, First Century of Magna Carta (Minneapolis, Minn., 1925), p. 116 refers only to confirmations in 1265, 1297 and 1300, not to ‘reissues’, i.e. inspeximuses. F. M Powicke, Thirteenth Century (2^nd edn., Oxford, 1962), index sub Charters of Liberties, does not distinguish ‘reissues’ and confirmations clearly. Contemporaries also confused them (Holt Magna Carta, pp. 288–9).

³⁵ Patent Rolls 1247–58, pp. 280, 281; Close Rolls 1254–6, pp. 194–5

³⁶ Brit. Libr., Cott. MS, Nero D i fo. 199V, which looks as if it was originally a loose membrane. Prof. Holt refers to it both as ‘an authentic chancery exemplification’ (J. C. Holt, ‘The St. Albans chroniclers and Magna Carta’, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., 5^th ser., xiv (1964), 67–88, at p. 81) and as ‘the sole known original of the confirmation of 1253’ (ibid., p. 82). An exemplification (i.e. surely a certified copy issued in a sealed charter, without the confirmatory clauses of an inspeximus) would, however, have needed a new preamble, witnesses and date even if it had been suitable for a royal charter. An ‘original’ issued in 125 3, if an inspeximus, would similarly need a top and tail. If the king had issued the charter anew, rather than confirming the 1225 text, it could not have been witnessed by ‘Stephen archbishop of Canterbury and many others’. Either way it would have needed a new date (though the sealing fold and slit could have been cut off). There is, however, no record of an inspeximus and the bishops did not apparendy include any text with their sentence of excommunication (Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard (5 vols., Rolls Ser., 1864–9), i-305–6). Brit. Libr., Cott. Nero D i fo. 199v also has rather more variants (including small omissions in cc. 8 and 28) than any of the three apparent 1225 originals.

³⁷ Society of Antiquaries, MS. 544. One oddity is the insertion of ‘P de Ripar” in the witness list; three other witnesses have wrong initials. The Forest Charter ends with Testibus supranominatis’ and no date at the foot of the membrane, but sewing holes show that there was once something more

³⁸ Brit. Libr., Cott. MS. Augustus ii, no. 51, printed in Statutes, Charters, pp. 28–30: the Table of Charters suggests that the editors felt some misgivings in deciding that this was a chancery original. For the text of 1217 see ibid., pp. 17–19. Only one original (now Bodl. Libr., MS. Glos. Charters 8) is referred to there but Bodl. Libr., MS. Oxon. Charters Oseney 142b and c still each had one of their two seals attached to them in 1913 and must be originals (R. L. Poole, The publication of the Great Charters by the English kings’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xxviii (1913), 444–53). The seals are now kept separately. Both end Testibus prenominatis et aliis multis’.

³⁹ Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 288–9. The date of Bodl. Libr., MS. Additional C188 (15 Feb. 49 Hen. Ill) could have been similarly affected by the 1265 inspeximus, though die three witnesses named come from the 1225 list Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32085 (15 Feb. xlxi (for 49?) Hen. Ill, with same witnesses) may be a still more garbled version.

⁴⁰ M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record (1979), p. 213

⁴¹ A small fraction of those that survive and only some of those kindly identified for me by Dr. Paul Brand

⁴² Galbraith, p. 348

⁴³ Statute collections apparently from before 1297 which have been consulted are Brit. Libr., Harl. MSS. 409, 489, 1033; ibid., Add. MSS. 38821, 32085; ibid., Stowe MS. 386; P.R.O., E 164/9 (Exchequer Liber X); Bodl. Libr., MSS. Add. C 188, Rawlinson C 820. All these have 100 marks, as does the Black Book of Christ Church Dublin, probably written before 1294 (Holt, Magna Carta, p. 212n.; A. Gwyn, ‘Some unpublished texts from the Black Book of Christ Church, Dublin’, Analecta Hibernica, xvi (1946), 296–301). Collections from after 1297, which have texts purportedly deriving from the 1297 or 1300 inspeximuses (all with 100 marks), are Brit. Libr., Cott. MS. Claud. D ii; ibid., Hargrave MSS. 422, 433, 434; Corporation of London Record Office, Liber Horn (on which see H. G. Richardson and G. Sayles, The early statutes’, Law Quart. Rev., 1 (1934), 201–23, 540–70, at p. 541; N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, i: London (Oxford, 1969), p. 27) and Liber Custumarum (on which see N. R. Ker, ‘Liber Custumarum, and other manuscripts formerly at the Guildhall’, Guildhall Miscellany, i (1952–9), 37–45). All of these except Hargrave 422 have variants which apparendy derive from pre-1297 copies and therefore may have first been entered before 1297. Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 11712, though after 1299, has a text conflating 1217 and 1225 without emendation to fit the later inspeximuses. Copies in chronicles etc. which have been checked are Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard (7 vols., Rolls Ser., 1872–83), ii. 589–98; Brit. Libr., Cott. MS. Vitellius A xx fos. 93V-97, 99–101; ibid., Cott MS. Nero D i fo. 199v (on all of which see Holt, ‘St. Albans chroniclers’); Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. H. Rothwell (Camden 3^rd ser., lxxxix, 1957), pp. 165–8; Brit. Libr., Cott. MS.’Vesp. B xi (Hagnaby chronicle) fos. 42–43v; ibid., Add. MS. 15668 (Newent cartulary) fos. 25V-26. Only the last says £100. The wording in Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Anglie, ii, ed. G. E. Woodbine and S. E. Thorne (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 244, suggests that the writer took his remarks about reliefs from a text of die charter giving 100 marks.

⁴⁴ H J. Lawlor, ‘An unnoticed charter of Henry III, 1217’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xxii (1907), 514–18; F. M. Powicke, The Chancery during the minority of Henry III’, ibid., xxiii (1908), 220–35; Richardson and Sayles, pp. 541–2. Apart from the texts they mention, Brit. Libr., Hargrave MS. 433 fos. 8–15V and Bodl. Libr., MS. Rawl. C 820 fos. 4–8 have the 1217 date but not the preamble, while Brit. Libr., Harl. MS. 1033 fos. 14–16V has the 1217 preamble (with the king’s title in its post-1259 form) and both the 1225 and 1217 dating clauses in that order. In both clauses the dates seem slighdy wrong: respectively 10 (for 11) Feb. and 2 (for 6) Nov. For Matthew Paris’s conflations see Holt, ‘St. Albans chroniclers’ and below n. 54.

⁴⁵ E.g. Brit. Libr., Cott. Vit A xx fos. 99–101 (which also has some careful corrections); ibid., Stowe MS. 386 fos. 2–3 v (though accuracy of detail is here combined with two homoeleutons and muddled correction of a third).

⁴⁶ Ibid., Stowe MS. 386 fo. 3; ibid., Add. MS. 32085 fo. 8; ibid., Hargrave MS. 433 fo. 12; Bodl. Libr., MS. Rawl. C 820 fo. 6; Corp. of London, Liber Horn fo. 22, in each case in the right place (between cc. 18 and 19). Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ii. 595 and Brit. Libr., Cott. MS. Vit. A xx fo. 95 both have the clause because at this point they are following 1215.

⁴⁷ ‘… concessimus Deo et beate Marie et omnibus sanctis’, Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 32085 fo. 7; ibid Harl. MS. 1033 fo. 14; Bodl. Libr., MS. Add. C 188 fo. 1.

⁴⁸ P.R.O., E 164/9 fo. 48v; Brit. Libr., Lansdowne MS. 467 fo. 5v; ibid., Add. MSS. 32085 fo. 8v, 11712 fo. 7v; ibid., Hargrave MSS. 422 fo. 23v, 433 fo. I3r-v; ibid., Cott. MSS. Vesp. B xi fo. 43, Claud. D ii fo. 141; Bodl. Libr., MSS. Add. C 188 fo. 2v, Rawl. C 820 fo. 6v, Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, p. 166.

⁴⁹ M. T. Clanchy, ‘Magna Carta, clause 34’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxxix (1964), 542–7.

⁵⁰ Brit Libr., Harl. MS. 1033 fo. 14; ibid., Lansd. MS. 467 fo. 4V; Bodl. Libr., MSS. Add. C188 fo. 1, Rawl. C 820 fo. 4.

⁵¹ Cf. the MSS. listed in nn. 43–8, 50, above

⁵² Cf. Richardson and Sayles, pp. 541–4, 548–55; Powicke, ‘Chancery’, p. 235.

⁵³ Brit. Libr., Cott. MS. Nero D i fo. 199v; Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, v. 375–7.

⁵⁴ The alterations made in the margin of Brit. libr., Cott. MS. Vit Axx fos. 93v-97 (= Holt’s VI) seem to this author an intelligent and careful attempt to produce a 1215 text from what had started as a not uncommon sort of conflation. For exchequer texts, see below nn. 61–2.

⁵⁵ Holt, Magna Carta, pp. 249, 271–92

⁵⁶ The London MS. Ker called MS. D seems exceptional in having included the 1215, 1217 and 1225 charters in straight chronological order. The scribe included the text of 1225 only from c. 37, saying—with substantial accuracy—that up to there its content was contained in 1217 (Corp. of London, Liber Custumarum fos. 27v-30; Ker, ‘Liber Custumarum’).

⁵⁷ For a different interpretation of the position of the charter see J. C. Holt, The origins of the constitutional tradition in England’, in idem, Magna Carta and Medieval Government (1985), pp. 1–22.

⁵⁸ Brit. Libr., Harl. MS. 489 fos. 4–8. It comes before the Statute of Merton etc. I owe the suggestion of the date to Dr. Paul Brand.

⁵⁹ For 1225 and 1225 see Statutes, i, Charters, pp. 9–13 (collating 3 of 4 chancery originals), pp. 22–5 (collating 2; see above n. 31).

⁶⁰ Brit. Libr, Cott. Claud. D ii fos. 139–142v, a relatively accurate copy but with marks; Richardson and Sayles, pp. 209–15.

⁶¹ Statutes, i, notes to Charters, pp. 22–5 has been used for the text of the Red Book of the Exchequer, c£ Brit. Libr., Hargrave MS. 313 (13^th-century copy of the Red Book, also with the relief right).

⁶² Richardson and Sayles, pp. 209, 541. If the argument about the random combination of variants is correct some of Richardson and Sayles’s arguments may be weakened, but there seems no reason to doubt that P.R.O., E 164 was an exchequer document and that the Dublin Black Book may also have come from a semi-official source (Gwyn, pp. 296–301)

⁶³ F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law (2nd edn., 2 vols., Cambridge, 1898), i. 220, 225