The document below is a single-sheet royal diploma of King Æthelstan, written in 931 by the royal scribe known as ‘Æthelstan A’: a grant of nine hides at Ham, Wiltshire, to the king’s thegn Wulfgar, issued at Lifton (Devon) on 12 November 931 (S 416; BL Cotton Charter viii. 16A; CL 091 in the Single Sheet Database).

Move your cursor over the charter (or tap a region on a touch screen) to explore its component parts and physical features — the explanation appears beneath the image.

Proem Pictorial invocation Royal style & grant Boundary clause (Old English) Sanction Dating clause Witness list Library stamp Colour & scale target A second document: Wulfgar’s will

Nothing selected yet — run your cursor over the parchment above to light up each part of the diploma.

Pictorial invocation

The scribe begins with a cross, invoking God before the first word is written. Nearly every solemn Anglo-Saxon diploma opens with this pictorial invocation, followed by a verbal one: the grant is framed from its first stroke as a religious act, not mere conveyancing.

Proem

Flebilia fortiter detestanda… — ‘The lamentable sins of this tottering age are bravely to be detested…’. Before any business is done, the diploma meditates: an elaborate Latin preamble on sin, mortality and the transience of worldly things, which justifies the pious act recorded below. The scribe ‘Æthelstan A’ is celebrated (and notorious) for proems in this flamboyant, learned ‘hermeneutic’ style.

Royal style & dispositive section

Ego Æðelstanus rex Anglorum… — the king subscribes himself in majestic terms as ‘king of the English, raised by the right hand of the Almighty to the throne of the whole of Britain’. Then come the operative words of the grant: nine hides at Ham (Wiltshire) given to his faithful thegn (minister) Wulfgar, with meadows, pastures and appurtenances, to hold freely with power to leave it to whomever he chooses — the customary public burdens excepted.

Boundary clause — in Old English

Here the charter switches from Latin to Old English and walks the estate’s perimeter landmark by landmark: ðonne… andlang… ðonon to… (‘then… along… thence to…’) — dykes, fords, stones, tracks and trees that neighbours would know. The vernacular was used precisely so that local people could understand, remember and if necessary walk the bounds. Clauses like this one make charters a principal source for the landscape and place-names of early England.

Sanction

Marked by the enlarged initial S: Si autem, quod absit… — ‘But if — which God forbid — anyone puffed up with diabolical presumption should try to infringe this grant…’. The penalty is spiritual, not legal: exclusion from Christ’s fellowship and the flames of hell with Judas, unless the violator makes amends. Anglo-Saxon diplomas enforce themselves by anathema rather than by courts.

Dating clause

Anno dominicae incarnationis DCCCCXXXI… — the year of the Incarnation 931, buttressed with further reckonings (the indiction among them), in the precise manner characteristic of ‘Æthelstan A’, who also tells us this diploma was issued at Lifton in Devon on 12 November 931. Such full dating clauses let historians track the king and his court on their travels around the kingdom.

Witness list

Columns of subscriptions record who stood witness: the king first, then archbishops, bishops (episcopus… consensi et subscripsi), abbots, ealdormen (duces) and thegns (ministri), each name preceded by a cross. Though set out like autograph signatures, the whole list was entered by the one scribe — with a telling exception here: the last two witnesses were added by a different hand, a clue to how and when the document was completed. Witness lists like this are a roll-call of the political nation, and the reason charters underpin studies such as the Atlas of Attestations.

Library stamp

A modern intruder: the red ownership stamp of the British Museum (whose library became the British Library). This sheet survived the Middle Ages at the Old Minster, Winchester, passed through the collection of Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631) — hence the shelfmark ‘Cotton Charter’ — and narrowly escaped the Cotton library fire of 1731.

Colour & scale target

Not part of the charter at all: the photographer’s colour-calibration and measuring strip, included in the digital image so that the parchment’s true colours and dimensions can be verified. The dark discs at the corners of the photograph are weights holding the parchment flat.

A second document: the will of Wulfgar

Photographed beneath the diploma is a smaller strip of parchment (Cotton Charter viii. 16B): the will of the same thegn Wulfgar (S 1533), in Old English, disposing of his estates — Ham among them — with a note recording his gift to the Old Minster, Winchester (Her swutelað…, ‘Here it is declared…’). Diploma and will have travelled together for a millennium because they concern the same land — a rare surviving pair showing a charter in use.

The boundary-clause and witness-list offer special possibilities for further mark-up, and this page will in due course be extended with images of other forms of document (writs, leases, agreements, wills, etc.).