4 - Record-Keeping and the Codification of Customs

Summary

Royal inquiries into private franchises, and the refusal of the barons of the Exchequer to allow franchise holders amercements and the chattels of felons unless their right were specified in their charters, threatened the abbot of St Edmunds, like other franchise holders, with the loss of an important source of revenue. Before he could obtain formal recognition of his right, the abbot had simply taken (‘occupied’) these profits of justice. But this left the way open for dispute at the Exchequer; it was undoubtedly partly to make it easier to obtain formal recognition of St Edmunds’ rights that steps were taken to make the abbey’s archives more accessible. Sometime between 1254 and 1261 a list was made of the abbey’s archives – its papal bulls, royal and other charters, in all amounting to nearly 2,000 documents. The arrangement of the list suggests that it was intended as a finding-aid for use in the vestry where the archives were stored. A number of interlineal and marginal annotations in various hands datable from the second half of the thirteenth century until the early fifteenth testify to the list’s continued usefulness. Included among the charters in the list are some Anglo-Saxon ones. In fact, the list is the earliest known witness to the abbey’s possession of an impressive collection of the originals and/or copies of its Anglo-Saxon charters. The earliest copy of the list is in BL MS Harley 1005 (ff. 223–272v): copies of the charters themselves are in two of the abbey’s late thirteenth-century registers (CUL MS Ff. ii. 33, ff. 45–50, and BL MS Additional 14847, ff. 15–19v).

The monk ‘A’ who copied the large collection of customs into BL MS Harley 1005, was the earliest annotator of the list of charters. He wrote Anglice against each Anglo-Saxon charter included, and added a few explanatory notes. Moreover, BL MS Harley 1005 contains a list in ‘A’’s hand of Anglo-Saxon legal terms with their Latin equivalents (f. 96). Such lists are not uncommon. They were necessary aids to anyone needing to understand the meaning of pre-Conquest grants, whether justices, claimants or defendants in cases involving holdings originating before 1066.