Mr. Freeman somewhat carelessly confused the two clauses:
The charter (sic) is said to have been granted at the Christmas feast of 1068 (evidently meaning 1067), and to have been confirmed at the coronation of the queen at the following Pentecost (iv. 726).
Mr. Stevenson follows him in this confusion, but carries it much further. Speaking of “supplementary confirmations,” as used in William’s chancery, he writes:
We have one in this very charter, which was executed (peracta) on Christmas Day, 1068 (i.e. 1067), but was afterwards confirmed on the occasion of Matilda’s coronation at Whitsuntide, 1068. If we had the original charter, we should probably find that the clause relating to the Whitsuntide confirmation had been added, as in similar continental instances, on a blank space in the charter. Ingelric was, as we know from this grant, one of William’s clerks, and he must have been a man of considerable influence to have obtained a diploma from a king who was so chary in the granting of diplomata, and to have, moreover, obtained the execution of it at so important a ceremony as the king’s coronation, and a confirmation of it at the queen’s coronation.[55]
In the elaborate footnotes appended to this passage there are three points to be dealt with.
The first is “the king’s coronation” as the time when the charter was executed. Mr. Stevenson writes:
Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 724, says that the date of the charter, Christmas 1068, evidently means 1067, the date of William’s coronation; etc.... There are good grounds, therefore, for holding that the witnesses were spectators of William’s coronation, which gives the charter its greatest historical importance.[56]
But, as we have seen, it is not the fact that Mr. Freeman spoke of Christmas 1067 as “the date of William’s coronation.” That event took place, as all the world knows, at Christmas, 1066, and so was long previous to this gift and charter. Mr. Stevenson’s error is a strange one.
The second point is that of the “supplementary confirmation.” Mr. Stevenson, referring us to the best parallel, writes:
In the case of the council (or rather placitum) of 1072 concerning the subjection of York to Canterbury, which, like the charter under consideration, received a supplementary ratification, a second text was drawn up for the later action.