The central subject of this discussion is a particular diplomatic form that lasted in England for at most some two hundred years, the writ-charter. When it first appeared is obscure for want of surviving examples, but the reign of King Edgar would be a plausible guess. Its extinction in the 1160s is less obscure, and we may even hazard why it came about at that time, when Henry II's government was changing both the role of local courts and the use of documents in the legal process. What is harder to explain is how the writ-charter came to survive so late, for it served as a vehicle of transition.