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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
The Fonthill letter has recently been described as ‘one of the most interesting of the corpus of documents which illustrate the working of the Anglo-Saxon law’. It tells a story that is too complicated to summarize here, but the text is now readily accessible alongside a translation and wide-ranging commentary. For present purposes it may be sufficient to say that the letter was written to King Edward the Elder of Wessex (899–924) by the godfather of a troublesome character called Helmstan. The first and longest section of the letter begins with an allusion to Helmstan's theft of a belt and ends with his surrender to his godfather of five hides of land at Fonthill (Wiltshire). Helmstan gave up this land in return for his godfather's support in an oath that Helmstan had to take to defend his title to it against a third party. His godfather promised that Helmstan could continue to occupy the property for his lifetime, provided that he behaved himself. He thus held it under what was in effect a life-læn or lease. All this happened in the reign of King Alfred, some years before the letter was written. The story was told to Alfred's son and successor after the author had exchanged the Fonthill land with the bishop of Winchester and wanted the king to confirm the arrangement. The account is written in the first person but the godfather's name is not given. J. M. Kemble, however, took it that the author of the letter was a man called Ordlaf who is mentioned, in the third person, in the second section of the letter.
1 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. (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 53–97, at 53.Google Scholar
2 Ibid. pp. 58–95. A translation is also available in English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D., 2nd ed. (London, 1979), no. 102.Google Scholar
3 We use the word ‘godfather’ as the simplest to express the relation created when the author ‘received [Helmstan] from the bishop's hand’, which Keynes renders as ‘stood sponsor to him at his confirmation’: Keynes, ‘Fonthill Letter’, pp. 66–7, and references there.
4 The Saxons in England, 2 vols. (London, 1849) I, 314Google Scholar. The possibility was rejected by Laughlin, J. L., though without argument: ‘The Anglo-Saxon Legal Procedure’, in Adams, H. et al. , Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (Boston, 1876), pp. 183–305, at 251.Google Scholar
5 Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968), no. 1284.Google Scholar
6 Keynes, , ‘Fontliill Letter’, pp. 55 and 87.Google Scholar
7 Ibid. pp. 80, 85 and 88–9, where the Old English text is also printed.
8 Gretsch, M., ‘The Language of the “Fonthill Letter”’, ASE 23 (1994), 57–102, at 79.Google Scholar
9 Keynes, , ‘Fonthill Letter’, p. 87.Google Scholar
10 Laughlin, , ‘Anglo-Saxon Legal Procedure’, p. 251, apparently had rather the same idea, though he did not develop it.Google Scholar
11 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 1284.
12 Keynes, , ‘Fonthill Letter’, p. 90Google Scholar; see also Keynes, S., ‘The West Saxon Charters of King Aethelwulf and his Sons’, EHR 109 (1994), 1109–49, at 1141–2 and n. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 901; Keynes, , ‘Fonthill Letter’, pp. 55–8.Google Scholar
14 This note originated from discussions at a class of the London program of Wake Forest University Law School in 1995. The interpretation we propose, together with its implications, was entirely the idea of Mark Boynton. Susan Reynolds drafted our note about it, and the final text, which has profited greatly from suggestions by Professor Pauline Stafford, was agreed between us.