In dealing with Ethelwulf’s charters, it is essentially necessary to state Mr. Kemble’s six canons of tests by which the Saxon charter may not only be distinguished from a will or the record of a synodal decree, but whether it is spurious.
These canons are (1) The Invocation; (2) The Proem; (3) The Grant; (4) The Sanction; (5) The Date; (6) The Teste.
(1) The Invocation is a short ejaculation which usually forms the first member of the document. (2) The Proem is a general observation on the virtue of charity to the Church, the nothingness of earthly possessions, and the advantage of purchasing with them heavenly treasures. (3) The Grant, which is the important part of every charter. (4) The Sanction, by which is meant the punishment attached to the violation of the premises. It is called the “Si quis” clause. (5) The Date. (6) The Teste or Subscriptions. In almost all ecclesiastical documents the witnesses subscribed with their own hands.[99]
Ethelwulf’s Charters.
In Ethelwulf’s Charters we have all these points. I shall omit 1, 2, and 4, and give here 3, 5, and 6.
(3) Charter A.—“Wherefore I Ethelwulf, king of the West-Saxons, with the consent of my bishops and princes, have resolved on a salutary council and uniform remedy and have determined to make a gift of a certain hereditary portion of land to all ranks already in possession of it, whether monks or nuns serving God, or laypeople, always the tenth hide, where it may be the least yet the tenth part perpetually enfranchised so as to be free and protected from all secular services, royal dues, tributes, greater and lesser taxes, which we call ‘Witereden’ and that it be free from all things for the deliverance of our souls and sins, for serving God only, without military expedition and bridge-building and castle fortification, so that they may more diligently without ceasing pour forth their prayers to God for us, for which we in some degree lighten their secular services,” etc.
(5) “Now this Charter of donation was written in the year of the incarnation of our Lord 844, in the seventh Indiction, on the day of the nones of November, in the city of Winchester, in the church of St. Peter, before the high altar.”
(6) It was signed by King Ethelwulf, by bishops Elmstan and Aelstan, 6 dukes, 3 abbots, and 16 thanes.
(3) Charter A.—“Quamobrem ego Ethelwulfus, rex Occidentalium Saxonum cum consilio episcoporum ac principum meorum, consilium salubre atque uniforme remedium affirmavi, ut aliquam porcionem terrarum hereditarium antea possidentibus gradibus omnibus, sive famulis et famulabus Dei Deo servientibus, sive laicis, semper decimam mansionem ubi minimum sit tum decimam partem in libertatem perpetuam perdonare dijudicavi ut sit tutus atque munitus ab omnibus secularibus servitutis, fiscis, regalibus tributis majoribus et minoribus, sive taxationibus quod nos dicimus Witereden; sitque liber omnium rerum pro remissione animarum et peccatorum nostrorum Deo soli ad serviendum, sine expeditione, et pontis instructione, et arcis municione, ut eo diligencius pro nobis ad Deum preces sine cessacione fundant, quo eorum servitutem secularem in aliqua parte levigamus pro honore Sancti Michaelis Archangeli et Sancte Marie Regine gloriose Dei genetricis.”