¹ The text of the Libellus (abbreviated Lib Æ in references) is transmitted in Cambridge, Trinity College O. 2. 41 (hereafter designated C), pp. 1–64, and London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A. xix (hereafter designated A), 2r–27v. Quotations from Lib Æ are taken from C. Reference is also given to corresponding passages in Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, E. O., Camden 3rd ser. 92 (London, 1962)Google Scholar, abbreviated LE. The following abbreviations are used in this article: S = Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, R. Hist. Soc. Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968)Google Scholar, with number of document; EHD = English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D., 2nd ed. (London, 1979)Google Scholar. Anglo-Saxon law codes are cited from Liebermann, F., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols. (Halle, 1903–1916).Google Scholar

² For the Vita, see Wulfstan of Winchester: the Life of St Æthelwold, ed. Lapidge, M. and Winterbottom, M. (Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar On connections between the vita and LibÆ, see ibid. p. clix.

³ Ibid. pp. 81–6 (Appendix B).

⁴ Historiae Britannicae, Saxonicae, Anglo-Danicae, Scriptores XV, ed. Gale, T. (Oxford, 1691), pp. 463–88 (from C).Google Scholar

⁵ Stewart, D. J., Liber Eliensis, ad Fidem Codicum Variorum I (London, 1848).Google Scholar

⁶ LE, p. xxxiv, n. 7.

⁷ Keynes, S. and Kennedy, A., Anglo-Saxon Ely: Records of Ely Abbey and its Benefactors in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Woodbridge, forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁸ The Libellus is called Liber sancti Æthelwoldi in LE III, ch. 119, and in LE III, ch. 120, where the title is given to a supposed Old English work now translated into Latin.

⁹ The proem to LE II states that Bishop Hervey gave the name Liber de terris sancti Æthelwoldi to LibÆ, but, being a restatement of the account in LibÆ, Prol., the account of its composition here has little independent value.

¹⁰ LE II, chs. 15 and 40, contain short notices concerning acquisitions at Sutton (Cambs.) and Dereham (Norfolk) which are not in LibÆ. These no doubt represent vernacular memoranda of the same sort.

¹¹ See the obits in Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia, ed. Hart, W. H. and Lyons, P. A., 3 vols., RS (London, 1884–1893) iii, 165–7, at 166.Google Scholar

¹² Keynes, S., The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016: a Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 253–4 (Appendix I).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Hart, C. R., The Early Charters of Eastern England (Leicester, 1966) [hereafter ECEE], pp. 176–7Google Scholar, posited the existence of an Old English composite record of Æthelwold's acquisitions for all his fenland foundations, which also left traces in Peterborough and Thorney memorials, and which may lie behind the Libellus accounts. More recently, Hart has argued that Æthelwold may have been directly responsible for the compilation of such records: see Hart, C., The Danelaw (London, 1992), pp. 149–50.Google Scholar It is quite probable that Æthelwold may have encouraged the practice of keeping informal records of land transactions at some of his foundations, but it is not likely that he was responsible for these records in an authorial sense. Among other reasons, each of his fenland houses seems to have something like a house format for documents of this sort. In any event, the practice continued at Ely after Æthelwold's death, and similar practices developed at other centres with which he was not closely associated. For the principal evidence concerning Peterborough and Thorney, see the texts printed as ‘The Gifts of Bishop Æthelwold to Peterborough’ and ‘List of Sureties for Peterborough Estates’ in Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, A. J., 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 72–5 (no. 39) and 74–83 (no. 40)Google Scholar, and the materials embedded in the spurious Thorney foundation charter (S 792), printed in ECEE, pp. 165–86.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Adams, H. et al. , Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (Boston, 1876), p. 380, n. 1.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Lib Æ, chs. 53–7 and 60 (LE II, chs. 42–6 and 49a-b): the complaint that the church now lacks both the land and the money with which it was bought is typical.

¹⁶ See Wormald, P., ‘A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits’, ASE 17 (1988), 247–81.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See Wormald, P., ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England’, The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Davies, W. and Fouracre, P. (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 149–68, esp. 149–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ See Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (Oxford, 1904; repr. 1959), pp. 92–5 (ch. 106)Google Scholar; for translation and commentary, see Keynes, S. and Lapidge, M., Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred and other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 109–10 and 275.Google Scholar

¹⁹ LibÆ, ch. 10 (LE II, ch. 11): Æthelwold formally recovered some Peterborough properties in a suit brought before a ‘great meeting’ in London, where leading men had gathered ‘from every region’. The London judgement was repeated and publicized at a shire meeting at Northampton. It is implicit that the Ely properties of Downham and Clayhithe in Cambridgeshire were also involved.

²⁰ LibÆ, ch. 5 (LE II, ch. 7). See Williams, A., ‘Princeps Merciorum Gentis: the Family, Career and Connections of Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia 956–83’, ASE 10 (1982), 143–72, at 165Google Scholar; Wormald, ‘Handlist’, no. 108; and, most recently, Hart, , Danelaw, p. 463.Google Scholar

²¹ Apparent discrepancies between information in LibÆ, ch. 5 (LE II, ch. 7), and information in S 798, the supposed Ramsey foundation charter dated 974 (Blake, , LE, pp. 419–20)Google Scholar, do not pose a real problem, for the charter is a twelfth-century forgery and is unlikely to reflect accurate knowledge about what estates had in fact been acquired by that date. More difficult to understand is the nature of the claim by Æthelwine and his brothers. The account seems to say that Ealdorman Æthelstan had exchanged (presumably with Edgar) Hatfield for patrimony in Devon, but that Edgar had repudiated the agreement and kept both properties. It is hard to see how Edgar could have done this before 959, when he became king in Wessex, but by which time Æthelstan seems to have become a monk at Glastonbury (and, one imagines, had disposed of his landed wealth). LibÆ, ch. 5, asserts further that Edgar had acquired Hatfield as a bequest from a certain Ordmær and his wife Ealde. According to S 1484, Edgar acquired an estate at Hatfield (most likely the place in Hertfordshire) from one Ælfgifu, but the bequest cannot have been completed before 966: see Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Whitelock, D. (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 20–3 and 118–21 (no. 8)Google Scholar. For discussion of some of these matters, see Hart, C., ‘Athelstan “Half-King” and his Family’, ASE 2 (1973), 115–44, at 129–30Google Scholar, repr. with revisions in his Danelaw, pp. 569–604Google Scholar, and also ibid. pp. 455–65.

²² Some support comes from another version of dealings between Æthelwold and Æthelwine at Slaughter in the Ramsey Liber benefactorum, which describes the Hatfield transaction as made ‘in publicam et legitimam … permutationem’: Chronicon Abbatiæ Rameseiensis [hereafter Chron. Rams.], ed. Macray, W. D., RS (London, 1886), pp. 54–5 (ch. 28).Google Scholar

²³ See also LibÆ, ch: 27 (LE II, ch. 18). The judgement at London (LibÆ, ch. 10) seems consonant with the prescription in III Edgar, ch. 2.2, that no fine in an offence for which compensation could be paid should be more than the amount of the wergeld of the offender. This did not in the end matter much for the unfortunate Leofsige.

²⁴ On Wulfstan of Dalham, see Hart, C. R., The Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands (Leicester, 1975) [hereafter ECNE], p. 379.Google Scholar The Wulfstan of LibÆ, ch. 42 (LE II, ch. 32), is almost certainly Wulfstan of Dalham, for it is most unlikely that there were two local figures of such power and influence bearing the same name who seem to have died around the same time. It is also likely that the Wulfstan said to be acting as reeve in LibÆ, ch. 45 (LE II, ch. 34), and mentioned later in LibÆ, ch. 50 (LE II, ch. 38), was the same man. It is less certain that Wulfstan of Dalham is the Wulfstan associated with Queen Eadgifu in LibÆ, ch. 54 (LE II, ch. 43), but there is nothing against the identification.

²⁵ See Keynes, , Diplomas, pp. 269–73 (Appendix 2)Google Scholar, and Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1971), map on p. 350.Google Scholar

²⁶ No judicial activity is attributed to Edward the Martyr. Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 76–8 (ch. 47), reports what seems to have been a suit between the king and Ramsey abbey, but judgement in favour of the king was apparently made by a shire court at Northampton. As far as Æthelred is concerned, the only clear instance seems to be the solitary forfeiture mentioned in a diploma of 982 (S 842).Google Scholar

²⁷ Charters, ed. Robertson, , pp. 76–7 and 80–1 (no. 40).Google Scholar

²⁸ Wansford does not appear in Domesday Book. Oundle, on the other hand, was probably an administrative and commercial centre, as well as a minor religious centre, as it is difficult to see how otherwise it could have taken its name from the surrounding district: see Campbell, J., ‘Bede's Words for Places’, in his Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), pp. 99–119, at 113.Google Scholar Ælfric cild was present at the meeting of the eight hundreds mentioned in the Peterborough memorandum; shortly after the meeting mentioned in LibÆ, ch. 11, he was at Ely with Æthelwold and ‘many of the leading men of England’ (LibÆ, ch. 12; LE, ch. 11). The meeting mentioned in the Peterborough memorandum cannot have occurred later than 983, when, Ælfric cild became ealdorman of Mercia, but that it was sometime earlier is indicated by material embedded in S 792, which suggests that Ælfric fell out with Æthelwold while he was still a thegn. On the basis of the very imperfect evidence of abbots’ subscriptions to royal diplomas, it is argued in ECNE, p. 326Google Scholar, that Abbot Ealdwulf, who was present at the meeting mentioned in the Peterborough memorandum, was not appointed to Peterborough until the 980s. It would seem, however, that Ealdwulf was appointed much earlier, for it must be he who is mentioned in connection with the purchase of land at Farcet in another Peterborough memorandum (Charters, ed. Robertson, , pp. 72–5 (no. 39))Google Scholar, although he is described erroneously as bishop. Farcet must have been acquired early for Peterborough, and it is implied in that memorandum that it was bought before Oundle and Kettering. It might also be wondered whether Æthelsige, Ealdorman Æthelwine's maternal uncle, who is involved with Ealdwulf in this and another purchase for Peterborough (Charters, ed. Robertson, , pp. 78–9Google Scholar (no. 40)) is likely to have survived into the 980s.

²⁹ See Williams, , ‘Princeps Merciorum Gentis’, pp. 164–6.Google Scholar

³⁰ See LibÆ, chs. 14, 46, 50 and 59 (LE II, chs. 11a, 35, 38 and 48), where conveyances are said to be witnessed by the local hundred.

³¹ LibÆ, ch. 27 (LE II, ch. 18): the account says simply that ‘there came people from all parts to Cambridge’.

³² LibÆ, ch. 34 (LE II, ch. 24): it was composed of the ‘citizens and the hundred-men’.

³³ LibÆ, ch. 37 (LE II, ch. 18): as ‘an assembly of the citizens’, this was probably a borough court.

³⁴ LibÆ, ch. 6 (LE II, ch. 8), reports an attempt to repudiate a transaction completed at Cambridge which was frustrated by ‘lawmen’ who had been witnesses to the conveyance. Meetings at other unidentified venues are reported in LibÆ, chs. 5, 38 and 39 (LE II, chs. 7, 27 and 30); Ealdorman Æthelwine was involved in all of them.

³⁵ For a general survey of groups of hundreds as single administrative units, see Cam, H. M., ‘Early Groups of Hundreds’, in her Liberties and Communities in Medieval England. Collected Studies in Local Administration and Topography (London, 1963), pp. 91–105.Google Scholar

³⁶ This was among the rationalizations offered by the Leges Henrici Primi early in the twelfth century: see Leges Henrici Primi, ed. Downer, L. J. (Oxford, 1972), chs. 7.5 and 31.1.Google Scholar

³⁷ According to LibÆ, ch. 14 (LE II, ch. 11a), three hundreds heard Ulf assert his ownership to some of the land at Chippenham six months before Byrhtnoth tried to buy it from Ælfwold's wife: these were probably the same hundreds as met later at Hinton.

³⁸ The combined evidence of LibÆ, chs. 27 and 34 (LE II, chs. 18 and 24), is that the meeting of the Ely hundreds at which Wulfstan of Dalham presided was held nearly fifteen years before the refoundation of the monastery.

³⁹ See Miller, E., The Abbey and Bishopric of Ely (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 14 and 31–2Google Scholar; and for the view that the Isle of Ely constituted a territorial unit from as early as St Æthelthryth's marriage to Tonbert, see Warner, P., ‘Pre-Conquest Territorial and Administrative Organisation in East Suffolk’, Anglo-Saxon Settlements, ed. Hooke, D. (Oxford, 1988), pp. 9–34, at 17–20.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ As well as the meeting in LibÆ, ch. 15 (LE II, ch. 12), at which Æthelwine presided, other single-hundred meetings (most likely before 975) are reported in LibÆ, chs. 15, 20, 23, 26 and 59 (LE II, chs. 12, 16, 17 and 48). It is difficult to suppose that attendance at these meetings was determined by the hundredal divisions as they existed in 1086.

⁴¹ LibÆ, ch. 45 (LE II, ch. 34). Such a grouping may also be implied in LibÆ, ch. 13 (LE II, ch. 11), in the reference to the completion of a conveyance ‘close by Cambridge in the southern part, in the presence of the whole populace of that region’.

⁴² See Warner, , ‘Pre-Conquest Territorial and Administrative Organisation’, pp. 21–34.Google Scholar

⁴³ LibÆ, ch. 22 (LE II, ch. 16). References to the presence of witnesses from ‘binnan burgan 7 butan’, recorded in eleventh-century Canterbury documents (S 1400 and 1471), suggest that joint meetings may have been common there as well.

⁴⁴ Whitelock, (LE, p. xiii)Google Scholar considered that this meeting was a private court on Byrhtnoth's estate. In some sense the court must have been private, but it is not easy to see what could have been the basis of a formal jurisdiction. Leofsige was a priest dealing with Byrhtnoth on apparently equal terms, and it would seem that the land in issue was at Horningsea some miles away. Lawmen too were involved, and they seem to have been ‘public’ officials in the region. Certainly what occurred at Fen Ditton was locked into the ‘public’ system, for it was afterwards rehearsed at Cambridge.

⁴⁵ See, for instance, LibÆ, chs. 14, 27, 28, 39 and 45 (LE II, chs. 11a, 18, 30 and 34). For evidence from Kent (earlier) and Worcestershire (later), see S 1447 and 1460.

⁴⁶ LibÆ, ch. 14 (LE II, ch. 11a). Some prominent local figures were present, but the primary suitors seem to have been ‘almost all the leading men who were in that village’.

⁴⁷ LibÆ, ch. 8 (LE II, ch. 10), and LE, p. xv.

⁴⁸ Mardleybury in Hertfordshire is much the same short distance from Hertford as Hatfield, and Ælfwold presumably had his family with him there at the time of the suit.

⁴⁹ LibÆ, chs. 27 and 28 (LE II, ch. 18). LibÆ, ch. 34 (LE II, ch. 24), does reflect the course envisaged in the laws, and indeed reproduces very closely the procedure set out in II Cnut, chs. 19–19.2, in that authority to seize the property of the defendants followed repeated summonses to the hundred court, and subsequent removal of the suit to the shire court. Wormald, P., ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, Ethelred the Unready, ed. Hill, D., BAR Brit. ser. 59 (Oxford, 1978), 47–80, at 59Google Scholar, and Stafford, P., ‘The Laws of Cnut and the History of Anglo-Saxon Royal Promises’, ASE 10 (1982), 173–90, suggest that much of the content of II Cnut, and in particular chs. 69–83, may derive from lost legislation produced during the reign of Æthelred. It is clear from LibÆ that the procedure set out in these provisions was far from novel.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 78–80 (ch. 49)Google Scholar, and ECEE, pp. 42 and 51–2Google Scholar, for a contemporary suit involving Ramsey abbey decided here. A writ of Edward the Confessor (S 1123) refers to a meeting of nine shires at Wandlebury, at an uncertain date, but possibly in the tenth century: Harmer, F. E., Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952), pp. 315–16, is inclined to doubt the authenticity of the writ, but not that the meeting occurred. See also LE III, ch. 48, for a report on how Bishop Nigel recovered Ely properties at a suit heard there in 1133–5.Google Scholar

⁵¹ The Leofsige of LibÆ, chs. 10 and 11 (LE II, ch. 11), is most probably the nameless usurper of Peterborough property whose murder at the instigation of Ælfwold is mentioned in Byrhtferth's Vita S. Oswaldi: see Whitelock, , in LE, pp. xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar, and The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. Raine, J., 3 vols., RS (London, 1879–1894) I, 399–475, at 466Google Scholar. Byrhtferth says that after the killing Ælfwold went as a penitent to Winchester, where Æthelwold greeted him as a leader and defender of the church. Æthelwold may in some sense and at some time have been lord of Peterborough, but it may be doubted that Ælfwold went to Winchester for this reason. Abbot Ealdwulf seems to have exercised temporal powers in fact at Peterborough (see Charters, ed. Robertson, , pp. 74–85, at 78–81 (no. 40))Google Scholar, and he might have been a better choice from this point of view.

⁵² It may even have been that Æthelwine was simply on his way home from business on his estates further east. According to Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 52–5 (ch. 28)Google Scholar, Æthelwine had his hall and court at Upwood, near Ramsey, in Huntingdonshire. It is a direct route from Freckenham through Hinton (Hinton Hall in modern Haddenham) to Upwood, and one which would have involved minimal crossing of waterways and marshes.

⁵³ Æthelstan's will survives in what seems to be a truncated form in Latin translation in Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 59–60 (ch. 33)Google Scholar. It does appear nevertheless from what survives that he took care to inform Æthelwine of his dispositions.

⁵⁴ See the account in S 1462 (EHD, no. 135), from the reign of Cnut: there an oral testament was formally validated by the thegns of the Herefordshire shire court. At an earlier time (804) one Æthelric seems to have been obliged to appear twice before King Cenwulf and his council in order to complete his testament: see S 1187 (EHD, no. 81). Many wills seek royal consent to their dispositions, and it may be that this was in the normal course implied at least whenever heriot was due to the king. Stafford, P., Unification and Conquest: a Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989), pp. 159–61Google Scholar, suggests that the aristocratic will of the tenth century can be seen as ‘a dialogue between nobles and royal power’. See Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 169–70 (ch. 103)Google Scholar, for an account of a dispute during the reign of Edward the Confessor, in which it was specifically claimed that a bequest similar in terms to that of Siferth of Downham required royal consent as well as that of the testator's heir.

⁵⁵ It may be worth noting that the manner of his intervention in the Ramsey dispute heard at Wandlebury (Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 78–80 (ch. 49))Google Scholar effectively undermined the procedures which had been set up to resolve it.

⁵⁶ See Lib Æ, ch. 46 (LE II, ch. 35), where it is said that land at Brandon was recovered for Æthelwold against Æthelwine's wishes.

⁵⁷ IV Edgar, chs. 15 and 15.1, prescribe the distribution of the text to Oslac, Ælfhere and Æhelwine, ealdormen in Northumbria, Mercia an East Anglia respectively. Chadwick, H. M., Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, 1905), p. 178, n. 1, suggested that these provisions may indicate an early division of the kingdom into four great regions, each ruled by a senior ealdorman, with obvious implications for a hierarchy of government at the highest levels.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Lib Æ, chs. 13,14,47 and 49 (LE II, chs. 11, 11a, 36 and 37). Hereric was no doubt dead when his sons dealt with Æthelwold. Scule is usually identified with the dux who attests early-tenth-century diplomas, and on this basis may be assumed to have died around 949 (the year of his last attestation): see Blake, , LE, p. 111, n. 2.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Whitelock, , LE, p. xiv, suggested that Scule and Hereric may have exercised local jurisdiction subordinate to the great ealdormen, in a manner similar to that which seems to have occurred in Northumbria, and that Scule may have been connected with the six hundreds attached to Sudbourne, because LibÆ, ch. 49 (LE II, 37), shows that he once held an estate there.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Lib Æ, ch. 42 (LE II, ch. 32). This Oslac seems to have been the earl of Northumbria who was banished in 975. His son Thorth may have succeeded him. See Whitelock, D., ‘The Dealings of the Kings of England with Northumbria in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, The Anglo-Saxons. Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Clemoes, P. (London, 1959), pp. 70–88, at 78–81.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 63–4 (ch. 35). The item in question is a translation of the will of his widow Ælfhild. Given the fact that Æthelwine is described in the will as ‘ealdorman’, it might be considered unlikely that comes in this context renders ‘ealdorman’ in the Old English original.Google Scholar

⁶² Vita S. Oswaldi, ed. Raine, , p. 429Google Scholar. John, E., Orbis Britanniae (Leicester, 1966), p. 222Google Scholar, seems to rely on this statement in calling Ælfwold an ealdorman, but what Byrhtferth appears to be doing is offering an excuse for his not holding this office.

⁶³ For details, see Hart, , ‘Athelstan “Half-King” and his Family’, pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Lib Æ, ch. 27 (LE II, ch. 18). The evidence of the Libellus is that this meeting occurred ‘many years’ after 955, but this might not necessarily mean after 962 when it would seem that Æthelwine became ealdorman of East Anglia.

⁶⁵ He is best known as the doomed hero of the battle at Maldon in 991, commemorated in the Old English poem. See The Battle of Maldon, ed. Scragg, D. G. (Manchester, 1981), pp. 14–20Google Scholar, and Locherbie-Cameron, M., ‘Byrhtnoth and his Family’, The Rattle of Maldon AD 991, ed. Scragg, D. (Oxford, 1991), pp. 253–62.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Byrhtnoth made substantial grants to Ely, and his body was buried there after his death at Maldon. Although the tales of Byrthnoth's visits to Ely and Ramsey (LE II, ch. 62; Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 116–17 (ch. 68))Google Scholar are scarcely credible as they stand, they may well reflect romanticized reminiscences of his conducting business at Ely, and perhaps also at Ramsey, which Ealdorman Æthelwine endowed with numerous estates and over which he exercised proprietorial patronage.

⁶⁷ Chadwick long ago clearly found relations between Æthelwine and Bynhnoth something of a puzzle, for he left the matter as a series of questions: see Studies, p. 177Google Scholar, n. 1. Arguments raised by Hart, C. R., ‘The Ealdordom of Essex’, An Essex Tribute. Essays presented to Frederick G. Emmison, ed. Neale, K. (London, 1987), pp. 57–83, at 71–3Google Scholar, to support the proposition that Huntingdonshire may have been within Byrhtnoth's jurisdiction in some formal sense, seem misplaced. It is difficult to believe that Æthelwine would have relinquished jurisdiction in the heartland of his personal authority, and the notion that Byrhtnoth and Æthelwine may have exchanged jurisdictions with a view to avoiding being judges in their own causes is anachronistic, for there is nothing in what we know of the behaviour of ealdormen in this time to indicate that they would have been moved by niceties of this kind. In a revised form of this paper in Danelaw, pp. 115–40, at 138–40Google Scholar, Hart suggests further that Byrhtnoth may have included Northamptonshire in his ealdordom, and revives the suggestion of John, E., ‘War and Society and the Tenth Century: the Maldon Campaign’, TRHS 5th ser. 27 (1977), 173–95Google Scholar, that Byrhtnoth may have exercised power also in southern Northumbria during his later years. This latter would explain his title as ‘Northanimabrorum dux’, and some aspects of the account of his final campaign in LE II, ch. 62, but Lib Æ lends no support.

⁶⁸ John, , Orbis Britanniae, pp. 219–25Google Scholar, goes some way along these lines, saying that ‘the relationship between the scir of Æthelwine and those of his subordinate ealdormen cannot have been denned on a strictly territorial basis’ (p. 225); but his discussion centres on shifting blocs of jurisdiction rather than on the essentially informal arrangements which it is argued here seem at least in part to explain the relations among the ealdormen.

⁶⁹ There are indications of a lost hundred in Domesday Book: see Stenton, F. M., in Victoria History of the County of Huntingdon, 3 vols., ed. Page, W. et al. (London, 1926–1974) i, 318–19Google Scholar. The text known as the County Hidage – generally thought to derive from the eleventh century – may indicate that at some time before the Conquest the shire contained at least eight hundreds. See Maitland, F. W., Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897), pp. 524–6Google Scholar, for a first collation of the figures, and Hart, , Danelaw, pp. 298–301Google Scholar for references to editions of the various versions and for a new dating of the assessment to 918 × 926.

⁷⁰ Lib Æ, ch. 14 (LE II, ch. 11a). Æfstan came from Fulbourn, and the priest Æthelstan no doubt came from Horningsea, both places being in Fiendish hundred.

⁷¹ LibÆ, ch. 43 (LE II, ch. 33). Wulfnoth came from Stowe, and Wacher from Swaffham, both in Staine hundred. Oswy came from Beach in Northstow hundred. It is unlikely that Ælfnoth came from a place in Fiendish hundred.

⁷² In neighbouring Northamptonshire, for instance, men from Huntingdonshire and from Northamptonshire, outside the Oundle eight hundreds, attended meetings of these hundreds, and there must have been other supernumeraries who cannot be so identified: Charters, ed. Robertson, , p. 80–3 (no. 40). In the eleventh century, lay worthies from Gloucestershire and possibly Northamptonshire attended a shire court at Worcester (S 1460), while men from Somerset and perhaps Dorset were suitors to a shire court at Exeter in Devon (S 1474).Google Scholar

⁷³ John, , Orbis Britanniae, p. 149Google Scholar. On the Fonthill letter itself (S 1445), see Keynes, S., ‘The Fonthill Letter’, Words, Texts and Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture presented to Helmut Gneuss on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Korhammer, M. et al. (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 53–97Google Scholar, and Gretsch, M., ‘The Language of the Fonthill Letter’, ASE 23 (1994), 57–102.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ See Kennedy, A. G., ‘Disputes about “Bocland”: the Forum for their Adjudication’, ASE 14 (1985), 175–95. To the disputes listed therein should probably be added that in which Ealdorman Æthelwine and his brothers claimed the Ely estate at Hatfield: LibÆ, ch. 5 (LE II, ch. 7).Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Lib Æ, ch. 28 (LE II, ch. 18). The account says no more than that he ‘took counsel with the two hundreds and Oswy and Oskytel of Beach’.

⁷⁶ The charter is cited as printed in LE II, ch. 5.

⁷⁷ Lib Æ, ch. 34 (LE II, ch. 24).

⁷⁸ Fleming, R., ‘Monastic Lands and England's Defence in the Viking Age’, EHR 100 (1985), 247–65, at 249–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, considers that S 779 is spurious, but accepts as genuine the tradition current c. 1000 that the place was deserted in 970. Dumville, D. N., Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992), p. 34, n. 20, is somewhat less so persuaded.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Lib Æ, ch. 1 (LE, Appendix A).

⁸⁰ Lib Æ, chs. 27 and 8 (LE II, ch. 18) and Lib Æ, ch. 34 (LE II, ch. 24).

⁸¹ Miller, , Ely, pp. 15 and 25–6Google Scholar: see also Victoria History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, ed. Salzmann, L. F. et al. (London, 1938-) IV, 4–5.Google Scholar

⁸² LE, pp. 414–15.Google Scholar

⁸³ See John, , Orbis Britanniae, pp. 210–33Google Scholar; Hart, , ECEE, pp. 42–3Google Scholar; and Pope, J., ‘Ælfric and the Old English Version of the Ely Privilege’, England before the Conquest. Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Clemoes, P. and Hughes, K. (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 85–113, at 96–7Google Scholar. John was perhaps too dismissive of the echoes of phrases from the charter in Wulfstan Cantor's Vita S. Æthelwoldi, but any likelihood that one text borrowed from the other helps little for there is no way of knowing which way the borrowing went. It is now well established (Wulfstan of Winchester, ed. Lapidge, and Winterbottom, , pp. cxliii–clxvii)Google Scholar that Ælfric based on his own short Vita S. Æthelwoldi on the one composed by Wulfstan, and that Wulfstan's vita enjoyed a wide circulation. The latter was known at Ely, and could well have been available there any time after its composition in 996: ibid. p. xvi. On the other hand, the charter too was widely circulated, and Pope, , ‘Ely Privilege’, pp. 110–13, considered that by the time it reached Abbot Ælfric at Eynsham, c. 1006, it was already corrupted and perhaps accompanied by a vernacular translation for which Ælfric substituted his own.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Ely, pp. 24–30Google Scholar, and Victoria County History (Cambridge), pp. 4–8.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ For what may be taken as orthodox wisdom, see Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 492–502Google Scholar. Goebel, J., Felony and Misdemeanor: a Study of the History of English Criminal Procedure (New York, 1937), pp. 336–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, objected to the existence of broad private jurisdictions in the century before the Conquest. Responses to his arguments were unsympathetic: see Cam, H., in AHR (1938), 583–7Google Scholar, and Plucknett, T.F.T., in Law Quarterly Rev. 54 (1938), 295–8Google Scholar. See also the comments of Hurnard, N., ‘The Anglo-Norman Franchises’, EHR 64 (1949), 289–327 and 433–60, at 292CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In later writings Cam was more ambivalent about what was entailed in private hundreds: see ‘The “Private” Hundred in England before the Norman Conquest’, Studies presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. Davies, J. C. (Oxford, 1957), pp. 50–60Google Scholar, repr. in Cam, H., Law-Finders and Law-Makers in Medieval England (London, 1962), pp. 59–70Google Scholar, and ‘The Evolution of the Mediaeval English Franchise’, Speculum 32 (1957), 427–42, at 428–33.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ One might compare the very broad immunities claimed for Peterborough in the spurious S 787, and those in the passage interpolated into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 963E: Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Plummer, C., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892–1899) I, 115–17Google Scholar. The purported confirmation charter of King Edward the Confessor for Ely (S 1051) is similarly explicit, but is unlikely to be authentic as it stands. The formula in a diploma of King Æthelred for St Albans (S 912), setting out rights and immunities, may well be an interpolation (see Keynes, , Diplomas, p. 109Google Scholar, n. 75, where the formula is connected with that in several forged charters), but, expansive as it is, it goes no further than to prohibit the payment of fines and the like to royal and episcopal authorities. For Goebel, , Felony and Misdemeanor, p. 355Google Scholar, n. 62, the exclusion of public authorities had not reached ‘a formulary stage’ during the reign of the Confessor. Harmer, , Writs, pp. 125–31Google Scholar, cites but two Anglo-Saxon documents which she considered to be authentic and which incorporate exclusionary clauses; the relevant passage in S 986, a writ of Cnut for Christ Church, does not quite amount to an exclusionary clause, while that in S 1153, a writ of the Confessor for the Old Minster, does but perhaps only just.

⁸⁷ On the history of these hundreds after 970, and for the suggestion that they came into Suffolk only after Æthelwine acquired rights over them, see John, , Orbis Britanniae, pp. 219–29.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ S 671 states that Bishop Ælfstan paid Wulfstan prefectus, as well as King Edgar, for an estate at Bromley in Kent. The diploma is spurious, and probably concocted during the reign of Æthelred in connection with continuing Rochester claims to the estate. But S 1457 asserts that Wulfstan was about to seize this property for the king when the bishop bought it, and it does not stretch the imagination too far to see in S 671 a genuine reminiscence of Wulfstan turning his office to profitable advantage.

⁸⁹ In the Fonthill case, it seems clear enough that Helmstan bribed Ealdorman Ordlaf to support his case (Keynes, , ‘Fonthill Letter’, p. 75)Google Scholar, and Ordlaf's assertion that he would not help Helmstan in a unjust cause seems (at least to the modern mind) transparently disingenuous. See also again Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 169–70 (ch. 103), where the abbot of Ramsey bribed King Edward and Queen Edith to allow the will of Æthelwine the Black to stand, and so ensure that a bequest of lands to Ramsey would be fulfilled.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Cf. Keynes, S., ‘Crime and Punishment in the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, People and Places in Northern Europe 500–1600: Essays in Honour of Peter Hajes Saayer, ed. Wood, I. and Lund, N. (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 67–81, at 69–70.Google Scholar

⁹¹ In a valiant attempt to absolve Wulfstan Cantor, precentor of the Old Minster, Winchester, from a complacent attitude to bribery, Whitelock found reasons to suggest that a reeve criticized in Wulfstan's Narratio metrica de Sancto Swithuno (c. 992–4) for refusing to accept a bribe might have been acting within the proprieties of his position: D. Whitelock, , ‘Wulfstan Cantor and Anglo-Saxon Law’, Nordica et Anglica: Studies in Honor of Stefan Einarsson, ed. Orrick, A. M. (The Hague, 1968), pp. 83–92, at 87–92Google Scholar. The argument rests somewhat precariously on some fine interpretations of provisions in the law-codes; and besides, it is the case that Wulfstan borrowed most of the facts for the story (although oddly not the names of the reeve, or of the regia villula which he controlled), and his attitude to the participants, from Lantfred's Translatio et miracula S. Swithuni, written c. 975. On the implications of the tale, see also Hyams, P. R., ‘Trial by Ordeal: the Key to Proof in the Early Common Law’, On the ‘Laws and Customs of England: Essays in Honour of Samuel E. Thorne, ed. Arnold, M. S. et al. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), pp. 90–126, at 93–5.Google Scholar

⁹² See Lib Æ, ch. 60 (LE II, ch. 49a) where Bishop Æthelwold bought land from one of his own men who died before final payment was made, and whose heriot (due to the bishop) went unpaid when he died.

⁹³ See LE II, ch. 84.

⁹⁴ For recent discussion of the value of the concept of‘ownership’ in early medieval contexts, see Reynolds, S., ‘Bookland, Folkland and Fiefs’, Anglo-Norman Stud. 14 (1992), 211–27, at 212–15.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ These are almost all eleventh-century documents, but see S 1225, 1465, 1468, 1474 and 1661; and for what leaseholders might be obliged to return with the estate on reversion, see S 1423 and 1422.

⁹⁶ See Campbell, J., ‘The Sale of Land and the Economics of Power in Early England’, Haskins Soc. Jnl 1 (1989), 3–27Google Scholar. Campbell was concerned primarily with the early Anglo-Saxon evidence, and, although he does refer to Ely material, it is perhaps worth emphasizing that the impression which Lib Æ gives of a flourishing land-market is somewhat at odds with the distinctions between land and chattels as commercial property advanced by Charles-Edwards, T. M., ‘The Distinction between Land and Moveable Wealth in Anglo-Saxon England’, English Medieval Settlement, ed. Sawyer, P. H. (London, 1979), pp. 97–104.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Lib Æ, chs. 11, 14 and 36(LE II, chs. 11, 11a and 26). One might compare here the provisions of the text printed by Liebermann, Gesetze I, 224–7, as Appendix zu II Æthelred, and dated by him c. 950–1000, which Wormald, , ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, pp. 60–1Google Scholar, suggests comes from the reign of Edgar. The text has no connection with the treaty with the Danes, but is a statement about the vouching to warranty procedure. It is prescribed in ch. 8.3 that a period of one week be allowed to the defendant for every shire from which he must assemble his warrantors.

⁹⁸ Lib Æ, ch. 45 (LE II, ch. 34): the land in dispute was now in the fourth hand, but it is said that the position would have been the same if it were in the third or second hand. Laughlin, J. L., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Legal Procedure’, Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, pp. 183–305, at 252, took particular exception to this proposition because he considered that a claimant could always trace the land back to an original malfeasance, and accordingly it was for him good evidence that the accounts in Lib Æ were fabrications.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ S 1460 records the history of an estate at Inkberrow in Worcestershire, and a suit concerning the land during the reign of Cnut. Although the land was adjudged to have passed into ecclesiastical hands, there remained a dispute between another putative purchaser and his vendor which was settled. For discussion of this aspect of the suit from a somewhat different viewpoint, see Laughlin, , ‘The Anglo-Saxon Legal Procedure’, pp. 253–4. See also S 1240, a writ of Queen Edith from the period 1061–6 which confirms the bishop of Wells in the possession of land at Milverton (Somerset) and directs any dispossessed man to seek redress from the man who sold the land to him.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Lib Æ, ch. 13 (LE II, ch. 11): Ælfric, the son of Earl Hereric, is represented as granting land to Abbot Byrhtnoth ‘… in omnibus rebus, in terris, in silvis, in paludibus, sicuti pater suus unquam illam terram melius sive liberius habuit…’ These words are to some small extent reminiscent of one of the formulas contained in the short Old English collection of oaths and declarations edited by Liebermann as Hit Becwæð: Antworten auf Klage um Land (Gesetze I, 400), in that title is expressed by reference to ancestral right, but the language also seems to reflect the practice in royal diplomas.

¹⁰¹ The dispositive words in vernacular charters and memoranda are similarly opaque, and it would seem unlikely that the occasional use of the term ‘libero’ (Lib Æ, chs. 13, 14, 32, 35 and 40; LE II, chs. 11, 11a, 21, 25 and 31) necessarily indicates a tenth-century ceremony like livery of seisin. It most probably reflects what the twelfth-century translator thought from time to time was the proper technical term to employ.

¹⁰² E.g. S 15, 33, 51, 65, 130, 156, 1164/1256 and 1258.

¹⁰³ See Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , pp. 74–5 (ch. 44)Google Scholar. The description here leaves it open to doubt whether the ceremony was connected more with invoking the blessing of the saint than with the formalities of the conveyance. The land had already been obtained by Abbot Eadnoth in a completed transaction with a third party, and the placing of four sods on the altar in the Ramsey crypt recalls (as noted by Goebel, , Felony and Misdemeanor, p. 363, n. 93)Google Scholar the spell for hexed land in one of the Old English charms (Anglo-Saxon Charms, ed. Grendon, F. (New York, 1931), pp. 172–6 (no. A13)).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ See Pollock, F., The Land Laws (London, 1887), pp. 198–200Google Scholar, and Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law, 2nd ed.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reissued with introduction and bibliography by Milsom, S.F.C. (Cambridge, 1968) II, 80–7Google Scholar. In similar vein, see Lodge, H. C., ‘The Anglo- Saxon Land-Law’, Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, pp. 55–119, at 101–2Google Scholar, and Vinogradoff, P., ‘Transfer of Land in Old English Law’, Harvard Law Rev. 20 (1906–1907), 532–48, at 533–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other discussion of the importance or relevance of livery to Anglo-Saxon conveyances, see Turner, G. J., ‘Brookland and Folkland’, Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, ed. Edwards, J. G. et al. (Manchester, 1933), pp. 357–86, at 358–65Google Scholar, and Thorne, S. E., ‘Livery of Seisin’, Law Quarterly Rev. 52 (1936), 345–64.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Lib Æ, chs. 5 and 29 (LE II, chs. 7 and 19). Cf. also one of the Peterborough memoranda (Charters, ed. Robertson, , pp. 75–83, at 82 (no. 40)), which asserts that the eight hundreds of Oundle were both witnesses and sureties to a particular transaction.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ The Peterborough memoranda (ibid.) list persons identified for the most part as sureties (festermenn and borhhanda), and on one occasion a whole army acting as surety (borhhand), although the hundreds are regularly said to witness the transactions.

¹⁰⁷ The requirements both for sureties and witnesses appear in their bluntest form in I Æthelwold, ch. 3, in the injunction that no man shall ‘either buy or exchange anything unless he have a surety and witness’ (‘… bycgge ne ne hwirfe, buton he borh haebbe 7 gewitnesse’). The provision may be directed in particular to chattel purchase, but it is hardly likely that the same was not intended for purchases of land.

¹⁰⁸ Named legates viri witnessed a conveyance at Cambridge, and afterwards were involved in defending its validity (Lib Æ, ch. 6; LE II, ch. 8). Many legates viri appear at the court at Fen Ditton which Ealdorman Byrthnoth convened (Lib Æ ch. 44; LE II, ch. 33). Twenty-four indices gave testimonium at a conveyance ‘close by Cambridge in the southern part’ (Lib Æ, ch. 13; LE II, ch. 11), and a similar number heard a dispute at Cambridge (Lib Æ, ch. 34; LE II, ch. 24).

¹⁰⁹ It is true that iudices as well as legates testes witnessed a conveyance in Lib Æ, ch. 13 (LE II, ch. 11), but it does not seem likely that in legates testes we are dealing with yet another law-worthy group of reputable citizens. One of these men is Ælfhelm Polga, who was a surety in Lib Æ, ch. 8 (LE II, ch. 10).

¹¹⁰ See Steenstrup, J.C.H.R., Normanmrne, 4 vols. (Copenhagen, 1876–1882)Google Scholar IV [Danelag], 195–208Google Scholar, for what can be argued along these lines; and for summaries of his views, see Liebermann, , Die Gesetze II, Glossar, s.v. lagamen, 565–6.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ The heriot prescribed for ‘lawmen’ in the Cambridge Domesday customs (Great Domesday Book, fol. 189a) does not correspond very well with any of those set out in II Cnut, chs. 71a– 71.5; but a money payment of £8 suggests a status equivalent to that of a king's thegn, which is the kind of rank one would expect Ælfhelm Polga to have held.

¹¹² For the analogous history of another official graced with a Scandinavian name, see Kaye, J. M., ‘The Sacrabar’, EHR 88 (1968), 744–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, whose conclusion is that the word represents the full extent of the borrowing. See also the comments of Fenger, O., ‘The Danelaw and the Danish Law: Anglo-Scandinavian Relations during the Viking Period’, Scandinavian Stud. in Law 16 (1972), 83–96, at 88 and 94Google Scholar, and Lund, N., ‘King Edgar and the Danelaw’, MScand 9 (1976), 181–95, at 193Google Scholar. Vollrath, H., ‘Gesetzgebung und Schriftlichkeit. Das Beispiel der angelsachsischen Gesetze’, Historisches Jahrbuch 99 (1979), 28–54, at 46–7Google Scholar, attributed the written dissemination of IV Edgar to the specific requirements that the code be publicized among the Danes by the ealdormen named in chs. 15 and 15.1. It might perhaps be wondered what groups Æthelwine was expected to inform, in East Anglia, of their local autonomy. As far as it goes, Lib Æ gives the impression of a culture in which Scandinavian elements had been incorporated into a larger English world. Minor aristocrats bear Scandinavian names, and there is no indication at this level of separate social structures. On this point, see the suggestion of Williams, , ‘Princeps Merciorum Gentis’, pp. 164–6Google Scholar, that the borders of the southern Danelaw in the eleventh century may have had more to do with power struggles among ealdormen in the tenth than any ‘Danishness’ in its constituent shires. One might note also Reynolds, S., ‘Do We Mean by “Anglo-Saxon” and “Anglo-Saxons”?’, Jnl of Brit. Hist. 24 (1985), 395–414, at 406–13, for some sceptical remarks about enduring ‘Danishness’ in the north and east of England during the later tenth and eleventh centuries.Google Scholar

¹¹³ III Æthelred, ch. 3.1. For a survey of opinion from the viewpoint of the origin of the English jury, see Turner, R. V., ‘The Origins of the Medieval English Jury: Frankish, English, or Scandinavian?’, Jnl of Brit. Stud. 7 (1968), 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹⁴ IV Edgar, chs. 3.4 and 3.5. It is clear that panels are involved here, for IV Edgar, ch. 6.2, provides that two or three of the thus sworn witnesses are to witness every transaction.

¹¹⁵ The account states that Byrhtnoth was completing an agreement which Æthelwold made while Edgar was alive, and it is possible that Byrhtnoth had not long been abbot at the time. According to Lib Æ, ch. 14 (LE II, ch. 11a), the abbot was apparently unaware of a meeting of three hundreds which occurred six months before he tried to buy the land at Chippenham: this might again have been in the early days of his tenure.

¹¹⁶ These others are Lincoln, Stamford and York. See Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 532–3Google Scholar, and Liebermann, Die Gesetze II, Glossar, s.v. lagamen. The Chester Domesday customs (Great Domesday Book, fol. 262d) record the existence of twelve iudices to compare with those at Cambridge.

¹¹⁷ For the thesis that in the later tenth and eleventh centuries bocland amounted to a dependent tenure held directly of the king, developed to define and maintain aristocratic military obligations, see Abels, R. P., ‘Bookland and Fyrd Service in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Norman Stud. 8 (1985), 1–25Google Scholar, and Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley, CA, 1988), pp. 97–131.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ John, E., Land Tenure in Early England (Leicester, 1960), pp. 168–77. What John stresses is the intimate connection between the boc and the land whose status depended upon it. This is not in doubt; but given both the form of the royal diploma and the varying sources of its production it can only be described as ‘dispositive’ in a rather restricted sense.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ Lib Æ does raise questions about the alienability or otherwise of land which was not bocland. One might for instance wonder about the status of the ‘many acres’ which, according to Lib Æ, ch. 21 (LE II, ch. 16), Æthelwold bought from the ‘poorer villagers’ at Hill and Haddenham.

¹²⁰ Lib Æ, chs. 5 and 49 (LE II, chs. 7 and 37). Hart, , Danelaw, p. 463, seems to assume that the document in question in Lib Æ, ch. 5, was a vernacular narrative memorandum produced in triplicate (a chirograph in the technical sense), but there is no good reason for this assumption: the word chirographum is the usual term in Lib Æ for documents of any kind, and the nature of any articular document must be inferred as best it can be from the immediate context.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Lib Æ, ch. 38 (LE II, ch. 27). Similar kinds of problems are recorded in S 1447, where one brother had possession of an estate while another held the charter.

¹²² See Lib Æ, chs. 42, 43, 56 and 60 (LE II, chs. 32, 33, 45 and 49).

¹²³ For reconstruction of the history of these hides and the three others at Horningsea, see LE, pp. 420–1.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ The Fonthill letter presents the curious spectacle of King Alfred sending arbitrators to examine a charter to which his own purported signature is subscribed, but which mentions neither of the parties to the dispute at hand. On the face of it the charter which Queen Eadgifu gave to Canterbury, with an estate at Cooling, in the later tenth century, seems to have been a ninth-century diploma which her father Sigehelm acquired through inheritance: see S 1211 and 1212. Dumville, , Wessex and England, pp. 151–2Google Scholar, suggests that the circulation of existing diplomas and the ‘presumptive title’ which simple possession bestowed may explain the paucity of surviving charters issued by Kings Alfred and Edward the Elder, and the complete absence of authentic survivals for the years 910–24. It might be noted nevertheless that the tenurial situation after the submission of Huntingdonshire, as recollected by the Bluntisham elders (Lib Æ, ch. 35; LE 11, ch. 25), would seem to have offered considerable opportunities for new grants in that shire.

¹²⁵ Lib Æ, ch. 6 (LE II, ch. 8). The charter for Linden is S 780, which represents the transaction as a gift from the king. The copy in Cambridge, Trinity College O. 2. 41, records what seems to have been an attempt by an archivist to reconcile the conflicting descriptions of the transactions available to him: an Old English headnote represents the land as granted by Leofric to King Edgar, before it was given to Ely. The property exchanged was at Bishampton in Worcestershire, and the charter for this land was also in the form of a royal gift, although it appears that Æthelwold bought it: see S 1844. At some later time Bishampton was transferred to the church of Worcester, and the charter went into the Worcester archives.

¹²⁶ The Fonthill letter does suggest that in late-ninth-century Wessex the delivery of the charter alone could constitute a valid conveyance, but it also indicates that the transaction between Helmstan and Ordlaf may have been a somewhat surreptitious one. According to S 1211, when Queen Edith gave Cooling and Osterland to Christ Church, Canterbury, she placed the bec on the altar of the church; but this act was preceded by a public ceremony of some sort which involved the consent of King Edgar ‘and all his bishops’ to the gift.

¹²⁷ Lib Æ, ch. 35 (LE II, ch. 25). This account may bear some comparison with S 1460, where it is stated that the bishop of Worcester bought land from one Leofric at a national council. Afterwards a diploma was produced for the bishop at the command of King Æthelred.

¹²⁸ Lib Æ, ch. 38 (LE II, ch. 27). The position in which Æthelwold and Byrhtnoth found themselves seems to have been much the same as that of their opponents: the dispute was settled partly on the basis that the various documents went to those who held the lands they concerned.

¹²⁹ This was how Vinogradoff construed the Peterborough memoranda: see ‘Transfer of Land’, pp. 532–4Google Scholar. Hart, , Danelaw, pp. 6 and 97, seems to draw the same conclusion from such records for eastern England in general.Google Scholar

¹³⁰ Sheehan, M. M., The Will in Medieval England (Toronto, 1963), p. 32Google Scholar, says as much, but partially discounts the implications on the grounds that there is good evidence in the monastic chronicles for bequests made by testators at the very ends of their lives.

¹³¹ Ibid. pp. 34–5.

¹³² See Hazeltine, H. D. in Wills, ed. Whitelock, , pp. x–xviiiGoogle Scholar; Sheehan, , The Will, pp. 47–54Google Scholar; and Keynes, S., ‘Royal Government and the Written Word in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe, ed. McKitterick, R. (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 226–57, at 251–5Google Scholar. This position is not necessarily inconsistent with the view that technical language developed in Old English for use in written wills, as Campbell, A., ‘An Old English Will’, JEGP 37 (1938), 133–52, at 134–6Google Scholar, seems to argue. It would be anachronistic to suppose that out of deference to the primacy of the oral declaration the scribes who drew up the wills attempted to record the actual words of the testators. Hazeltine, , in Wills, ed. Whitelock, , pp. x–xiiGoogle Scholar, also maintained that a testamentary bequest was quasi-contractual, and so irrevocable, but this position cannot be sustained as a general principle: see John, , Land Tenure, pp. 176–7. On the other hand, antecedent agreements are sometimes embedded in wills, and it may well be that dispositions flowing from such agreements could have been considered irrevocable.Google Scholar

¹³³ In Lib Æ, ch. 27 (LE II, ch. 18), Ogga is made to declare ‘Karissimi, uolo ut sciatis quod ego do sancte Æðeldtyðae post diem meum unam hydam terre in Grantebrucge’, and in Lib Æ, ch. 12(LE II, ch. 11), Siferth similarly declares that’… o karissimi mei, uolo ut conuentio mea coram uobis renouetur, uidelicet quomodo … post diem meum Deo sancteque Æðeldryðe dedi. ii.^as hydas …’ For variants on the wording ‘I grant … after my day’ in the wills preserved in the Bury St Edmunds archives, see Wills, ed. Whitelock, , nos. 1, 2, 14, 15, 31 and 37.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ See Lib Æ, ch. 58 (LE II, ch. 47), and S 1484 (Wills, ed. Whitelock, , no. 8)Google Scholar; see also Hart, , Danelaw, pp. 455–65.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ LE II, chs. 59 and 61.

¹³⁶ LE II, ch. 73, and S 1487 (Wills, ed. Whitelock, , no. 13)Google Scholar; see also Keynes, S., ‘The “Dunstan B” Charters’, ASE 23 (1994), 165–93, at 169–70.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ LE II, chs. 81 and 83.

¹³⁸ LE II, ch. 60.

¹³⁹ In the Latin version of the will of Brihtric and his wife Ælfswith there appears the gratuitous insertion that the will was made when they were dying. There is nothing in the vernacular will to indicate this. See S 1511: Wills, ed. Whitelock, , no. 11Google Scholar, and Charters of Rochester, ed. Campbell, A., AS Charters 1 (London, 1973), nos. 35 and 35b.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ It is difficult to believe that Ealdorman Byrhtnoth was so convinced that he would die at Maldon, and so grateful for a night's lodging, that he made the substantial grants to Ely on the night before and the morning on which he set out to battle, as claimed by LE, ch. 62. The Ramsey claim (Chron. Rams., ed. Macray, , ch. 68) that he made bequests to that house as he lay dying on the battlefield is equally fantastic.Google Scholar

¹⁴¹ So in S 1458, in which the apparently dying Ælfheah arranges to travel some thirty miles across Kent from his home at Eynsford to meet Archbishop Dunstan at Shelve, where his will was produced in triplicate. Even Siferth of Downham took some time to die after the first declaration of his testamentary intentions.

¹⁴² This of course is not a new supposition: see Wills, ed. Whitelock, , p. xliGoogle Scholar, and Sheehan, , Will, pp. 22–3Google Scholar, on the fortuitous provenance and preservation of surviving wills. Recent confirmation has come from the discovery of the vernacular texts of several wills originally preserved in the St Albans archives: see Keynes, S., ‘A Lost Cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, ASE 22 (1993), 253–79Google Scholar, and ‘The Will of Wulf’, OEN 26 (1993), 16–21Google Scholar. It is implicit in S 1458 and II Cnut, ch. 70, that intestacies were rare, or should have been rare among the property-owning classes; but it is quite unclear to what extent the word cwideleas might have scribal implications in these contexts.

¹⁴³ The will of Thurstan (S 1531) prescribes that one counterpart is to go to Ely, but it does not seem to have been available to the compiler of LE.

¹⁴⁴ There is no sign in Lib Æ of the presentation of written evidence – title documents apart – to the court. The Fonthill letter is the only such evidence to survive, but the swutelunga sent to the shire court in S 1454 indicate that the practice may not have been exceptional. S 1447 and 1467 are other documents which seem to have been produced in the context of current litigation.

¹⁴⁵ S 1457 (Charters, ed. Robertson, , no. 59).Google Scholar

¹⁴⁶ As noted by Fisher, D.J.V., ‘The Anti-Monastic Reaction in the Reign of Edward the Martyr’, Cambridge Hist. Jnl 10 (1952), 254–70, at 263–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴⁷ Assertions approaching this are sometimes found in other sources: see, e.g. S 1408, and again the Ramsey suit in Cbron. Rams., ed. Macray, , ch. 103.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁸ On what might properly be called ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’, see Colman, R. V., ‘Reason and Unreason in Early Medieval Law’, Jnl of Interdisciplinary Hist. 4 (1973), 571–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Colman stresses the importance of local knowledge behind the adversarial formalities, and indeed there are numerous references to ventilation of the issues at hand in the Anglo-Saxon records which cannot be discounted as mere commonplaces. In Lib Æ, see ch. 10 (LE II, ch. 11), where it is said that the matter was ‘thoroughly and properly and openly discussed’, and ch. 27 (LE II, ch. 18), where the court ‘discussed the suit from different points of view’

¹⁴⁹ Vivid illustration comes from an early Kentish suit, in 844, between Archbishop Ceolnoth (with various minsters in Kent) and one Æthelwulf, son of Æthelheah, which was heard at Canterbury before a ‘multitudino spiritalium saeculariumque personum’ (S 1439). Æthel-wulf challenged a bequest to the churches: the thrust of the account is that the issues in the dispute had been resolved some thirty years before, but because Æthelwulf refused to accept the earlier judgement or the pronouncements of the bishop, or anyone else, the court decided that the matter should be concluded by the oaths of thirty members familiae of the various churches. These were delivered, and the matter was deemed to be settled forever.

¹⁵⁰ See again S 1458, for a similar rejection of the oath by the defendant.

¹⁵¹ It is prescribed in IV Edgar, ch. 6, that witnesses to transactions must swear that they will declare only what they have themselves seen or heard; for similar sentiments, see II Cnut, ch. 23.1. It is unlikely that any buta few of the thousand men willing to assist Wulfnoth as oath helpers would as individuals or as members of groups have known anything at all about the legal history of the Bluntisham estate. According to S 1458, a similar number of supporters assisted Archbishop Dunstan in the oath. It could well be the case that by a thousand men is simply meant a lot of them, but one cannot doubt that many who swore these oaths knew nothing of the facts of the suit, and were swearing only as to the credibility of the party whom they were supporting. For a distinction between the oaths of compurgators, on the one hand, as promissory, and those of witnesses, on the other hand, as assertatory, see Laughlin, , ‘Anglo-Saxon Legal Procedure’, pp. 186–7.Google Scholar

¹⁵² On the argument that the judicial oath might properly be considered a kind of ordeal, see Hyams, , ‘Trial by Ordeal’, pp. 92–3Google Scholar, and Bartlett, R., Trial by Fire and Water: the Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford, 1986), pp. 24–33.Google Scholar The judicial ordeal in the commonly understood sense does not appear in Lib Æ, because it would seem that (in contrast to the position on the Continent) it was not used in ‘civil’ cases in Anglo-Saxon England, and rarely after the Conquest (ibid. pp. 62–5).

¹⁵³ See S 1454. This is a record of a dispute in the years 990–2, where the witan at a shire court advised the parties to dispense with the oath because there would thereafter be enmity between them and other consequences for the defendant. See also S 1460, where the parties are represented as compounding a dispute to avoid a continuing quarrel between them. In the Fonthill letter, Ordlaf describes composition and the oath as alternative means of resolving disputes, and this is no doubt what is meant in III Æthelred, ch. 13.3, by the proposition that ‘loversquo; and ‘law’ are equally binding choices. For a similar outcome in a dispute shortly after the conquest, but one which clearly reflects Anglo-Saxon practice, see Bigelow, M. M., Placita Anglo-Normannica: Law Cases from William I to Richard I (London, 1879), pp. 16–19Google Scholar: Abbot Walter took a suit against Bishop Wulfstan to the brink, but faced with the prospect of a successful compurgation, abandoned his laim and was reconciled to the bishop.

¹⁵⁴ Reynolds, S., Communities and Kingdoms in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford, 1984), p. 25Google Scholar, n. 44, cites three Anglo-Saxon cases where the courts dispensed ith the oath on the basis of consideration of the other forms of evidence. It is quite unknown on what basis Æthelhelm Higa withdrew a second time from the suit in the Fonthill letter. The claimant in S 1454 was persuaded to withdraw from forcing his opponent to the oath, and the suit was settled. It is clear enough that the judges in the Ramsey suit at Wandlebury (Chron Rams., ed. Macray, , ch. 49)Google Scholar did find for Abbot Eadnoth against the determination of the claimant to compel the abbot to the oath; this, however, seems not to have been because of the quality of the earlier evidence, but because the proceedings were subverted by Ealdorman Æthelwine. No doubt there were others, especially where the ira et malevolentia of the king were involved; but there is little evidence that in the ordinary course courts thought that judgement through the judicial oath could be wholly replaced by judgement based on other evidence, unless the parties in some way acquiesced in it.

¹⁵⁵ Keynes, , ‘Fonthill Letter’, p. 70.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁶ S 1433.

¹⁵⁷ Wormald, , ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon England», p. 157.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁸ Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, J., 2 vols., RS (London, 1858), I, 457–9 and 475.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁹ See S 1456 and 1442, for disputes in which the losing party apparently acknowledged the primacy of the documents held by the other, and surrendered his own in return for concessions which left him in possession of the disputed property for his own lifetime. For other disputes in which it would seem that compromises were made possible by acceptance of written evidence (though no doubt also through the urging of Ealdorman Æthelred), see the Mercian suits reported in S 1441 and 1446.

¹⁶⁰ It might be wondered what value the charter to Hatfield in the end had for the Ely monks when Æthelwine and his brothers decided that the land belonged to Lib Æ, ch. 5 (LE II, ch. 7).

¹⁶¹ In the suit between Abingdon and Brihtwine, the procedural problem was resolved when Earl Harold took the relevant charter from Brihtwine, as seems also to have been the case in S 1457. For an early instance, see S 1258 (EHD, no. 79); see also Kelly, S., ‘Anglo-Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word”, Uses of Literacy, ed. McKitterick, , pp. 36–62, at 45–6. Given what the Libellus reveals of how Æthelwold acquired land for Ely, it may well be wondered whether the allegation in S 1242 that he and Queen Æfthryth took a charter from one Leofric by force may not have had some substance to it.Google Scholar

¹⁶² There must for instance have been repudiated charters at large in some numbers after Æthelred changed his attitude to several monasteries in 993 (Keynes, , Diplomas, pp. 176–208). At least two such documents survived the Anglo-Saxon period: S 864 is still extant in its original form, and S 861 survived to be copied into the cartulary of the Old Minster, Winchester. These diplomas must have been very difficult to recover, and for the most part kings must have been content with dire threats against those who would assert their worth. S 884 might perhaps suggest something more than that, and the curious S 395 (a charter of King Æthelstan for 925) seems at least to contemplate the possibility that ‘expired’ or ‘annulled’ diplomas might be recovered.Google Scholar

¹⁶³ In some circumstances it would seem that there were formal inducements to reach unanimous decisions: see III Æthelred, ch. 13.2, for penalties imposed on dissenting thegns at meetings of wapentakes. On the importance of collective judgement throughout western Europe in the early Middle Ages, see Reynolds, , Kingdoms and Communities, pp. 23–38.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁴ For discussion of this point as it concerns what Asset said about King Alfred and his judges, see Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, , pp. 342–3Google Scholar, and D. Whitelock, ‘Recent Work on Asser's Life of Alfred’, ibid. pp. cxxxii–cliii, at cxlv–cxlvi; see also Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, p. 275. The activities of Wulfstan of Dalham in Lib Æ, chs. 42 and 45 (LE II, chs. 32 and 34), and of Ealdorman Æthelwine in Lib Æ, ch. 34 (LE II, ch. 34), no doubt fell within the range of what Anglo-Saxons would have called domas.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁵ See again S 1442. It seems that the suit concerning Wullaf was somehow just one aspect of a wide-ranging dispute between Winchcombe and Worcester. The account is obscure at important points, but it does seem clear that Ealdorman Æthelwulf as courtholdet assessed the evidence and made the crucial decisions. It appears little more than formal that the whole court joined the ealdorman in the adjudication.

¹⁶⁶ See Lib Æ, chs. 14 and 35 (LE II, chs. 11 and 25). It would be interesting to know more about the context in which Siferth gave Brandon and Livermere to Ely, ‘against the wishes of Ealdorman Æthelwine and many others’ (Lib Æ, ch. 46; LE II, ch. 35).

¹⁶⁷ See Liebermann, , Gesetze III, 155, 226–7, 228–9, 230 and 233.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁸ Perhaps the most startling witness to this is the assertion in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, chs. 34.1b and 34.3, that Edward revived and confirmed the leges of Edgar which had been abandoned since his death.

¹⁶⁹ See Whitelock, D., ‘Wulfstan and the Laws of Cnut’, EHR 63 (1948), 433–52, at 442–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷⁰ Stafford, , Unification and Conquest, p. 50.Google Scholar

¹⁷¹ In his Translatio et miracula S. Swithuni0, Lantfred credits Edgar with instituting the lex talionis in the ‘province’ of the English. This apparently amounted to laws imposing ferocious mutilations on thieves and robbers. The relevant passage is printed by Sauvage, E. P., AB 4 (1885), 367–410, at 409.Google Scholar For evidence that these laws found written form, see Whitelock, , ‘Wulfstan Cantor and Anglo-Saxon Law’, pp. 83–7, who argued from the corresponding passage in Wulfstan Cantor's Narratio metrica de sancto Swithuno that they were later used in II Cnut.Google Scholar

¹⁷² For a comprehensive survey of the later codes as written texts, see Keynes, , ‘Royal Government and the Written Word’, pp. 227–45.Google Scholar

¹⁷³ See Wormald, P., ‘The Uses of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and its Neighbours’, TRHS 5th ser. 27 (1977), 95–114, at 111–13Google Scholar; Wormald, , ‘Lex Scripta and Verbum Keys: Legislation and Germanic Kingship, from Euric to Cnut’, Early Medieval Kingship, ed. Sawyer, P. H. and Wood, I. N. (Leeds, 1977), pp. 105–38, esp. 122–4Google Scholar; and Wormald, , ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, esp. pp. 48–9Google Scholar. See also Vollrath, H., ‘Gesetzgebung und Schriftlichkeit’, pp. 28–54, for a sustained attack on the notion of a close connection between law-giving and its written form.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁴ For an implicit acceptance of the primacy of oral promulgation in Francia during the reign of Charlemagne, in an essay which stresses the value of written documents, see Ganshof, F. L., ‘The Use of the Written Word in Charlemagne's Administration’, in his The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy. Studies in Carolingian History, trans. Sondheimer, J. (New York, 1971), pp. 125–42Google Scholar. But for some different views about later Carolingian capitularies, see Schneider, R., ‘Zur rechtlichen Bedeutung der Kapitularientexte’, DAEM 23 (1967), 273–94Google Scholar. See also Schott, C., ‘Der Stand der Leges-Forschung’, FS 13 (1979), 29–55, at 48–9, for more recent work on the practical relevance of written law in early medieval Europe.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁵ Lawson, M. K., ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the Homiletic Element in the Laws of Æthelred and Cnut’, EHR 107 (1992), 565–86, sees the later Æthelredian codes, and I-II Cnut, as grounded firmly in preaching and the admonition of kings.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷⁶ Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., Early Germanic Kingship (Oxford, 1971), pp. 32–44Google Scholar, described the written laws of King Æthelberht in Kent as recording ‘just that fraction of custom that seemed enough to satisfy royal pride in legislation’, and which thereby might enhance royal authority, but which otherwise had little practical value. In some contrast, Simpson, A.W.B., ‘The Laws of Ethelbert’, On the Laws and Customs of England, ed. Arnold, et al. pp. 3–17Google Scholar, and Lehman, W. W., ‘The First English Law’, Jnl of Legal Hist. 6 (1985), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, both argue in different ways that these laws represent genuine attempts to intervene in Kentish customary practice. For renewed conviction that written law in Carolingian Francia was put to practical use, see McKitterick, R., ‘Some Carolingian Law-Books, and their Functions’, Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government presented to Walter Ullmann on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Tierney, B. and Linehan, P. (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 13–27Google Scholar; McKitterick, , The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians 751–987 (London, 1983), pp. 100–3Google Scholar; and McKitterick, , The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), esp. pp. 23–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; but see also Nelson, J. L., ‘Literacy in Carolingian Government’, Uses of Literacy, ed. McKitterick, , pp. 258–96.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁷ Wormald, , ‘Lex Scripta and Verbum Regis’, p. 113Google Scholar, and Pollock, and Maitland, , History of English Law I, 53–4Google Scholar, on Alfred, ch. 36. The rules about damage done with a spear and stolen goods in II Cnut, chs. 75–6, seem somewhat out of place among provisions which may well have had an independent origin in promises of reform during the reign of Æthelred.

¹⁷⁸ Mcllwain, C. H., The High Court of Parliament and its Supremacy: an Historical Essay on the Boundaries between Legislation and Adjudication in England (New Haven, CT, 1910), pp. 42–108, esp. 46–53.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁹ Kern, F., ‘Recht und Verfassung im Mittelalter’, HZ 3rd ser. 24 (1919), 1–79Google Scholar, translated in abbreviated form as ‘Law and Constitution in the Middle Ages’ by Chrimes, S. B., Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1939), pp. 147–205.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁰ For one reassessment, see Krause, H., ‘Dauer und Vergänglichkeit im mittelalterlichen Recht’, Zeitung für Kechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abteilung 75 (1958), 206–51Google Scholar. See also Schott, , ‘Der Stand der Leges-Forschung’, pp. 43–8, for recent assessments of the relevance of conceptualization of this sort to early medieval law in western Europe.Google Scholar

¹⁸¹ See for instance Clanchy, M. T., ‘Remembering the Past and the Good Old Law’, History 55 (1970), 165–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar and, more generally, Reynolds, , Kingdoms and Communities, pp. 15–21.Google Scholar

¹⁸² Kern, , ‘Recht und Verfassung im Mittelalter’, pp. 5–6Google Scholar; Chrimes, , ‘Law and Constitution in the Middle Ages’, p. 151.Google Scholar

¹⁸³ S 1507 (EHD, no. 96); see also Keynes, and Lapidge, , Alfred the Great, pp. 173–8 and 313–26.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁴ Kroeschell, K., ‘“Rechtsfindung.” Die mittelalterlichen Grundlagen einer modernen Vorstellung’, Festschrift für Hermann Heimpelzum 70. Geburtstag, 3 vols. (Gottingen, 1971–1972) iii, 498–517, at 512Google Scholar: ‘Was die Urteilsfinder auf Befragen wissen, das war die lex. Es entsprach nicht nur der lex, sondern als war die lex.’

¹⁸⁵ See, for instance, Maine, H., Ancient Law (London, 1861), p. 5Google Scholar, where Maine identifies a stage in the supposed historical development of law in which ‘the only authoritative statement of right and wrong is a judicial sentence after the facts, not one presupposing a law which has been violated, but one which is breathed for the first time by a higher power into the judge's mind at the moment of adjudication’.

¹⁸⁶ See, yet again, S 1456, for a successful claim against a holding in at least the third hand, and S 1460, for an unsuccessful one against a holding in the second hand.

¹⁸⁷ In the Fonthill letter, Ealdorman Ordlaf expresses his impatience with the continuing dispute but, although the land had passed from Helmstan to him, and then to the bishop of Winchester, he does not assert simply that Æthelsige's claim is too late.

¹⁸⁸ III Æthelred, ch. 14; V Ætbelred, ch. 32.3; II Cnut, ch. 72.

¹⁸⁹ V Æthelred, ch. 32.3, belongs to a series of provisions apparently interpolated into one V Æthelred manuscript, but although the context is unknown it clearly reflects putative royal purpose: see Liebermann, , Gesetze III, 171 and 174.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁰ This cannot of course be quite what the vernacular meant: the Latin probably mistranslates an elliptical Old English construction to the effect that Ogga both held the land and was unchallenged concerning it while he lived.

¹⁹¹ Wormald, , ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes’, pp. 154–60Google Scholar, points out that in S 1433 the suit was declared finita and proscripta before the oath was taken. If we can assume that the Latin accurately reproduces the Old English in Lib Æ, ch. 35 (LE II, ch. 25), the Huntingdon court seems similarly to have anticipated the result. Compare also the assumptions of the court in S 1454, that the defendant will be able to produce the oath, with unpleasant consequences for the claimant.

¹⁹² Appendix to II Æthelred, ch. 9.4: ‘forðam agnung bið net ðam ðe hæfð ðonne ðam ðe æfter-sprecð’.

¹⁹³ See, for instance, S 1211 and 1212.

¹⁹⁴ Charters, ed. Robertson, , no. 69: ‘onriht … be ontale 7 be oftale.’Google Scholar

¹⁹⁵ Ibid. no. 66:‘… Wynflæde 7 Leofwine swa rihtlice geseman swa him aefre rihtlicost þuhte’.

¹⁹⁶ S 1507: ‘7 hy þa ealle to rihte gerehton 7 cwædon þæt hy nan rihtre riht gepencan ne mihtan ne on pam yrfegewrite gehyran’.

¹⁹⁷ See, for example, S 937 (EHD, no. 123), where King Æthelred is made to imply that he at least does not know whether actions taken by his magnates were right or not; see also S 1296 (EHD, no. 229), in which Archbishop Dunstan expresses in tentative manner his view that the bishop of Cornwall ought to hold certain Cornish estates.

¹⁹⁸ Nelson, J. L., ‘On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance’, Stud. in Church Hist. 14 (1977), 51–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in her Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), pp. 49–67, at 62.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁹ I should like to express my gratitude to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, for providing accommodation in the spring of 1992, when the basic research for this paper was undertaken. I should also like to thank Dr S. D. Keynes for reading the paper in draft, and for suggesting various improvements.