THE BURTON ABBEY AND CERNE ABBEY COPIES: REACTION TO THE REPOSITIONING OF THE SAVING CLAUSE.

 

The chronicle of Burton Abbey: London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian E II, printed in  Annales Monastici, ed. H.R. Luard, 5 vols. (Rolls Series, 1864-9), i,  with the 1225 Charter between pp. 225-32.

This is for the most part  a full and accurate text of the 1225 Charer without  the variations  found in  so many other copies. Thus the earl’s relief is ‘de baronia comitis integra’ not ‘de comitatu integro’,  and the baronial relief is £100 not 100 marks. Each chapter starts on a new line marked with paragraph mark, the latter coloured alternatively red and blue. Just when the text was transcribed we cannot know exactly. The chronicle is uniform in appearance  and is clearly a fair copy. Luard thought the hand was fourteenth century but the second half of the thirteenth century might be a better guess.1  The chief interest of the copy lies in its reaction to the 1225 changes in the position of the  Charter's saving clause as between the versions of 1217 and 1225. This is discussed below in connection with the second Burton abbey copy of the 1225 Charter.

 

A Cartulary of Burton Abbey: London, British Library, Loan 30, fos.152-4.

This is Burton Abbey's principal cartulary and I am grateful to Philip Morgan for drawing my attention to its copy of Magna Carta.  A large part of the cartulary dates to the period between 1230 and 1241, but there are then additions made into the fourteenth century.2 The copy of Magna Carta is followed by the 1225 Charter of the Forest, the 1253 sentence of excommunication against violators of the Charters, the confirmation of that sentence by Innocent IV in 1254, and the 1236 Statute of Merton. The latter breaks off abruptly in the first chapter, leaving the rest of the folio blank.3 All this material, from Magna Carta to the Statute of Merton, is not actually part of the cartulary. It is simply bound in at the end of the volume and is in a large book hand different from the small cursive hand of the cartulary itself.  Probably the material was written up before the end of the thirteenth century. There is no reason to doubt the Burton provenance of the Magna Carta texts.  The binding of the volume is late medieval, so it was presumably at Burton  that the cartulary and the Magna Carta material were  brought together.  Burton certainly possessed that material as well as a text of the statute of Merton since they are all found in the chronicle.4 At first sight, this might suggest that the copy of the 1225 Magna Carta in the cartulary volume was taken from the copy in the chronicle. But this seems unlikely since the divisions into chapters do not match up. Perhaps both copies came from a text possessed by Burton with the copyists making different decisions as to where the chapter divisions should go. If the text was an original engrossment such differences of choice  are perfectly understandable since the divisions in the 1225 engrossments were no longer marked by the large and emphatic capital letters  found in 1215.

 

One important change made to the version of Magna Carta issued by King Henry III in 1217 was the addition of a saving clause.  This came close to the end of the Charter and followed immediately on from the statement that the customs and liberties which the king had conceded to be held in the kingdom ‘as much as it pertains to us to our me’, all the men (‘omnes’) of the kingdom, both clerk and lay, were to observe towards their men. The new clause then continued:

 

'Saving to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, Templars, Hospitallers, earls, barons and all other persons, ecclesiastical and secular, the liberties and free customs which they had before.' 

‘Salvis archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, prioribus, Templariis, Hospitalariis, comitibus, baronibus et omnibus aliis tam ecclesiasticis personis quam secularibus, libertatibus et liberis consuetudinibus quas prius habuerunt.’

 

With the clause placed like this, the  implication was that it  qualified  the obligation of lords  to pass  the concessions  down  to their own men. Their doing so  was not to infringe  their existing ‘liberties and free customs’. This impression was enhanced by the ablative absolute construction of the clause (‘Salvis…libertatibus) which meant that it was not a sentence in its own right and needed to be linked on to what came before.5

 

If, however, the saving clause was intended to be read in this way, the same was not the case with the Charter of the Forest which was issued alongside Magna Carta in 1217.  There the clause did not make the same qualification because it appeared immediately before not immediately after the injunction to pass down the concessions. This set the pattern for the future. The final and definitive version of Magna Carta in 1225 fell into line with the Forest Charter of 1217 with  the  saving clause  now placed before not after the general obligation to observe the Charter. The start of the clause was also remodeled to show that it no longer had any connection with the preceding chapter (which was now that on scutage).  The ‘Salvis archiepiscopis…’ construction was thus replaced  by ‘Et salve sint archiepiscopis…’ making  the clause for the first time a free standing sentence.6

 

At Burton abbey, these changes were both observed and, it seems, deplored. They were not regarded as a mere tidying up of the drafting. In the copy of the 1225 Charter in the abbey's chronicle, the saving clause and the obligation to pass down liberties are in their correct 1225 place with the former (‘Et salve sint…’) preceding and thus not qualifying the latter. But a marginal note written against the chapter setting out the obligation registers something like a protest. The annotation reads as follows: ‘tam clerici quam layci salvis’, ‘both clerks and laymen saving’.7 In the text 'tam clerici et layci' are missing at this point. It reads ‘omnes de regno nostro observent…’ rather than ‘omnes de regno nostro tam clerici quam layci observent’.  But it is pretty clear  more is happening here than simply the correction of an omission.8  There is no indication that the annotation was meant to supply missing words in the text and in any case, with the ‘salvis’, the addition would have made no sense. Rather, it may be suggested, the author of the note has been prompted to think back to the ‘salvis’ clause in the 1217 Charter and the way it qualifies the general obligation to pass down the concessions.  It may well be he had the 1217 Charter by his side as he read through the text for the chapter there begins ‘salvis’ whereas in the 1225 Charter, as we have seen,  it begins ‘Et salve sint’.

 

This interpretation is strengthened when we look at the copy of the 1225 Charter in the cartulary volume. For the  copy returns the clause to its 1217 position where once again it qualifies the obligation to pass down the concessions! The decision to make this change was quite deliberate for the clause is not merely back in its 1217 position. It also starts ‘salvis’ as in 1217 rather than ‘Et salve sint’ as in 1225. Indeed, the scribe made the qualification even clearer than in 1217.  Whereas all four surviving  1217 engrossments  begin  a new sentence marked by a pronounced capital ‘S’ in the ‘Salvis’, the Burton scribe, runs straight on with a small ‘s’, ‘salvis’. 

 

The precise relationship between the treatment of the saving clause in Burton’s two copies of Magna Carta is hard to unravel.  Conceivably the view expressed in the marginal annotation inspired the doctoring of the cartulary copy.  Conceivably the cartulary copy inspired the annotation.   Why the issue was so important to Burton is  clear.  In the thirteenth century the monastery was involved in acrimonious disputes with the men of its manors. Two of these are described at length in the cartulary.9 The first in 1236-7 involved the men of the manor of Abbot’s Bromley in Staffordshire. The second in 1280  the men of Mickleover in Derbyshire.10 In both cases the men claimed that they should enjoy ancient demesne status, enjoy that is the special privileges which went with living on manors which had once been possessions of the crown.  When that plea failed, the men of Abbot’s Bromley  asserted they were anyway freemen not villeins. While the abbey was victorious in both cases, it must have looked askance at Magna Carta’s stipulation that lords pass the Charter’s  liberties down to their men. Burton Abbey was  not alone in disliking the alteration to the place of the saving clause between the Charters of 1217 and 1225. There was, as we will now see,  a similar protest at Cerne Abbey in Dorset.

 

A cartulary of Cerne Abbey: Cambridge, University Library, Ll, 1.10, fos. 9v-15.11 

One of the most remarkable copies of Magna Carta is that found in the Cartulary of Cerne Abbey in Dorset. It is unique in ingeniously combining the 1225 Magna Carta and Charter of the Forest into a single document. It is also unique in the wonderfully elaborate way in which the witnesses and date are written out.  The whole document indeed is written in a very beautiful hand with an illuminated capital letter at the start of each chapter. The appearance is only spoiled by another feature, one which gives  the copy an additional interest. After it had been completed, someone came along and added in at the bottom of a folio  missing passages from the Charter of 1217.

 

The  folios forming the Cerne cartulary are  bound up in a liturgical volume known as The Book of Cerne, now preserved in the Cambridge University Library. When the cartulary was printed in the proceedings of the splendidly named  Dorset Natural History and  Antiquarian Field Club, the editor omitted the   Great Charter and Charter of the Forest (he did not say which versions they were) on the grounds that the texts  had been ‘fully printed and translated elsewhere’.12 How often do such statements prove misleading! 

 

The copies of the Charters in the Cartulary were made in a hand which is  compatible with date in or soon after 1225.13 The same scribe goes on to transcribe other material from that year. His copy of Magna Carta itself is  accurate enough all the way down to the last chapter, which is that on scutage.  Then the scribe omitted the concluding clauses and the witness list  and went straight on to the Charter of the Forest. He could do this because he knew the concluding clauses and witness list appeared again at the end of the Forest Charter. To achieve a seamless join between the two Charters he omitted the preamble to the Forest Charter, anyway identical to that in Magna Carta he had already copied, and he  also  omitted  the ‘in primis’ at the start of the first chapter of the Forest Charter. It was, after all, no longer  ‘in primis’. Instead, he began with the next word ‘omnes’ -  ‘all the forests’ which had been afforested by Henry II.  Initially, the scribe made the painted ‘O’ in ‘omnes’ exactly the same size as the ‘O’ at the start of  his chapters in Magna Carta. The only clue that a new charter  was beginning came in the ‘omnes’ being in capital letters. Almost at once, however, the scribe had second thoughts. He rubbed out the ‘O’ and wrote a bigger one, which indented the line below so that the text had to be written around it. That it was written  around, with no sign of erasures, shows the change was made before the scribe continued with the chapter.14 Still, although the large ‘O’ indicated a  division, it did not really alter the fact that Magna Carta and the Forest Charter had now been rolled into one.

 

Why did the scribe act in this way?  Clearly he wished to avoid having to write out the same material twice, but why not simply say that the beginning and end of the Forest Charter were the same as Magna Carta?  Perhaps the answer is that he shied away from anything that might diminish the status of the Forest Charter. The forest was a major issue in Dorset. The very next document the scribe copied was  the forest perambulation in the county commissioned in 1225.15

 

Another way of shortening the work of copying the Charters, sometimes adopted, was to leave out the witnesses.  This the Cerne scribe absolutely refused to do.  We have already commented on then elaborate way he set out the witness list and the Charter’s dating clause (above p.2).

 

At Cerne this omnibus Charter did not remain long un-annotated.  At the bottom of the folio with the last chapter of the 1225 Charter (that on scutage)  and the join with the Charter of the Forest, a different but contemporary hand has inserted  the passages about passing down the concessions, saving everyone’s existing liberties,  and destroying  the castles built in the civil war,  which came at the end of the  Charter of 1217.  The new scribe also included 1217’s statement that the witnesses are as named before, although this referred not to any one named at the start of the 1225 Charter but to those who appear at the start of the Charter of 1217. There is no reference, however, to the sealing of the Charter by the legate and the regent. 

 

The added passages show of course that the detail of the 1217 Charter was well known at Cerne, but why add in these particular passages from its conclusion?  The answer resides in the same objection to the changes in the saving clause’s position we have already seen at Burton Abbey. What the addition at Cerne preserved was the order in the 1217 Charter where the obligation to pass down the liberties was qualified by the clause saving to everyone the liberties and free customs they already possessed. In the Cerne addition a hand draws attention to this passage, hovering over the word 'predictas' - 'omnes autem conseutudines predictas....'. Now when we get to the end of the Forest Charter, the scribe copies out again the obligation to pass down the concessions. This is in the correct place so it is no longer qualified by the saving clause. But in the margin, opposite the clause, the hand appears again along with the word 'predictas'.   This is surely an indication that one should look back to the earlier addition from the 1217 Charter where the qualification is in its ‘correct’ place. The other portions from the 1217 Charter, on the adulterine castles and the witnesses being as above were probably included simply to give context to the saving clause and make it appear more authorative. Small symbols indicate that the addition should go, as in 1217, into the Charter after the chapter on scutage.  

 

OTHER COPIES OF THE 1225 CHARTER

 

A cartulary of Abingdon Abbey: Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, Chatsworth House, 71E, fos.128v-130.16

This copy  has a full witness list.  For the cartulary's copy of the 1217 Charter see above  p.51.  

 

An early  fourteenth-century cartulary and statute book  belonging to St Augustine’s Canterbury: London, British Library, Arundel 310, fos.19-16v.17

The chapters are numbered 1 to 31. The baronial relief is 100 marks.

 

A cartulary of Canterbury cathedral priory: London, British Library, Cotton  Galba E IV, fos.55-7.18

The cartulary dates to the early fourteenth century. The heading is ‘Carta magna Regis Henrici tercii de libertatibus’. The earl owes his relief ‘de comitatu integro’. The baronial relief is 100 marks. There is a full witness list. The copy is  followed by Henry III’s 1237 confirmation of Magna Carta, the 1253 sentence of excommunication, Innocent IV’s confirmation of the sentence, and a summary of the letters of the deans of London and Lincoln commanding the publication of Innocent’s letter. The 1225 Forest Charter appears between fos.65v-66.

 

A cartulary of Chichester cathedral: Oxford, University College, 148 deposited at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, fos.219v-225.19

The cartulary dates from the second half of the thirteenth century. In the copy of Magna Carta the earl owes his relief 'de comitatu integro' and the baronial relief is 100 marks. The witness list goes down to the bishop of Salisbury after which the dating clause follows. The Forest Charter takes up fos.225-228 after which there is the comment 'pro nihilo habeatur'. Unusually the king's confirmation of the Charters in 1253 is copied next (fo.113v) rather than the pronouncement of the bishops.  

 

A miscellaneous volume with material associated with Coventry cathedral priory:  Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 104, fos.171v-173.

The copy of the Charter has the witness list down to the abbot of Peterborough followed by the dating clause. The Forest Charter follows.   

 

A Cartulary of Fountains Abbey: Oxford, University College 167, deposited at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, fos.11-13.20

The Charter here has the full witness list followed by the date. The baronial relief is 100 marks. The Forest Charter follows between folios 13-13v. The cartulary is late fifteenth century.

 

Glasgow cathedral’s ‘Registrum Vetus’: Aberdeen, University Library, JB 1/3, fos.34v-37v.

I am grateful to Joanna Tucker for bringing this copy to my attention. It has a full witness list,  ‘giving’ clause and date. Tucker believes that the section of the cartulary in which it appears was probably written between 1223 and 1230. The copy thus indicates that the 1225 Charter was very soon known in Scotland. The scribe who wrote Magna Carta was probably responsible for this entry alone.  The volume also has Henry I’s Coronation Charter and the Constitutions of Clarendon.21 

 

A cartulary of Glastonbury abbey: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Wood empt. 1 (SC 8589), fos.83-5.22

The copy has a full witness list followed by the date. There is then a numbered table of contents, with thirty-four chapters. The Forest Charter is between fos.78-78v. The cartulary dates from the reign of Edward III.   

 

The estate book of the Hotot family: London, British Library, Additional 54228, pp.19-22.

The copy here only has Archbishop Langton as a witness.  The Forest Charter is from 1217.23 The cartulary dates to the mid thirteenth century.

 

An early fourteenth-century  London volume with chronicle  and legal material:  Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 476, fos.139-48.

The 1225 Charter here has a full witness list. The earl owes his relief ‘de comitatu integro’. The baronial relief is 100 marks. 

 

The Registrum of Lincoln cathedral: Lincoln, Lincolnshire Archives, D&C/A/1/6.

For the Registrum, see above pp.8-9.  Its copy of the 1225 Charter is printed in  

The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. Foster, no.221. There is a full witness list.  There is no original at Lincoln of the 1225 Magna Carta so the source of the copy is unknown. I have not checked but presumably the copy of the 1225 Forest Charter which follows comes from the original engrossment preserved at Lincoln. The text of the engrossment is printed in  Registrum Antiquissimum, no.220. The original of the 1217 Forest Charter at Lincoln (Registrum Antiquissimum, no.219) does not seem to have been copied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A cartulary of Montacute priory:  Oxford, Trinity College 85, deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,  fos.xviii verso-xxii.24

The copy is in the same hand as the 1215 Charter (see above p.19). The heading states that this charter (like that of 1215) is also called Magna Carta and is a concession and confirmation of liberties to the English church and other men of the kingdom. Missing folios mean the text between the chapter on common pleas and the middle of the witness list is lost.

 

London  Liber Custumarum MS. D, fos.21-22: London, Metropolitan Archives COL/CS/01/006, fos. 29v-30.

This is a volume has already been described when detailing its copy of the 1215 Charter (see above p.18).  At the end of its copy of the 1217 Charter, the copyist continues 'Carta eiusdem Regis quam fecit baronibus suis et sigillo suo confirmat: Henricus dei gratia rex Anglie etc usque ad capitulum prescriptum'. The copyist then repeats the chapter on scutage (the same in both Charters) and continues from there with the Charter of 1225 down to the end, thus including the different position of the saving clause and the concession of the Charter in return for a tax. The witness list stops after the archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops of London and Bath. There is a dating clause. The 1225 Forest Charter follows (fos.30-31) and the 1253 sentence of excommunication.

 

A cartulary of Newent priory: London, British Library, Additional 15668, fos.25v-26.25

This has the start and the finish of the 1225 Charter with full witness list and date but thanks to lost folios the rest is missing. The Forest Charter follows between fos.26-27.

 

The Red Book of the Exchequer:  London, The National Archives, E 162/ 2, fos.clxxxiii-iv.

The copy here is collated with originals and other copies both in W. Blackstone, The Great Charter and Charter of the Forest (Oxford, 1759), 47-59 and in Statutes of the Realm, 22-5.

 

St Albans abbey, Matthew Paris’s Liber Additamentorum: London, British Library,  Cotton Nero D. I, f.199d. 

This is a single sheet copy of the Charter bound into Matthew Paris’s Liber Additamentorum.  Holt (‘The St Albans chroniclers’, pp.81-2, 87-8) considered it to be not a copy but an authentic chancery exemplification of the 1225 Charter as circulated in 1253. This seems unlikely. The copy omits the witnesses apart from Archbishop Langton.26

 

A St Albans volume given to Tynemouth priory: London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. XX,  fos. 99-101v.27

For this volume, see above p.39. 

 

A cartulary of the priory of St Neots: British Library, Cotton Faustina A. IV, fos.23v-25.28

The 1225 Charter is followed by the Charter of the Forest (fos.25v-26).

 

A cartulary of Torre abbey: Dublin, Trinity College 524 (E.5.15), fos.149-152.29

I am grateful to Dauvit Broun for sending me information  about this copy. It has a dating clause but only has the archbishop of Canterbury and bishop of London as witnesses. The Forest Charter follows between fos.152-153.

 

The book of Robert Carpenter: Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, 205, pp.202-14.

For this copy of Magna Carta 1225 and the Forest Charter, see N. Denholm-Young, ‘Robert Carpenter and the Provisions of Westminster’, Collected Papers of N. Denholm-Young (Cardiff, 1969), p.184. The book was written by Robert Carpenter in 1261-2 with some later additions. It has legislation from 1258-9 and other miscellaneous legal and adminsitrative material useful to the man of affairs Carpenter was. A late thirteenth-century a copy of the book (not by Carpenter) includes again the 1225 Charters: Cambridge University Library Mm. I. 27 (P), fos.69-72.

 

A late thirteenth-century, early fourteenth-century statue book: Cambridge, Trinity College, O 4. 14, fos.129-130v.

The Charter here is in Edward’s name and lacks both a preamble, witnesses and a ‘giving’ clause. However it is clearly Henry III’s Charter because the king refers to Henry II as his grandfather. The tax referred to at the end shows it is the Charter of 1225. The earl’s relief is ‘de comitatu integro’ and the baronial relief is 100 marks. 

 

A chronicle with legal material: London, British Library, Additional 25005, fos.57v-60v.  This is  fascinating volume, which has both a chronicle down to the reign of Richard I and an early Register of Writs. (It dates from before the 1236 Statute of Merton).30  There is a great deal of material from 1233-1234 relating to the outlawries of Hubert de Burgh, Richard Seward and the Bassets. There is also legislation from 1234. The copy of the 1225 Charter, therefore, seems to be early, yet it has the earl owing relief ‘de comitatu integro’ and places the baronial relief at 100 marks. The copy of the Charter lacks a witness list. The Charter of the Forest follows.

 

An early fourteenth-century statute book: London, British Library, Additional,  62534,  fos.6-9

For this statute book’s copy of the 1215 Magna Carta, see above p.31. The earl owes his relief ‘de comitatu integro’. The baronial relief is 100 marks. The volume was displayed in the British Library exhibition and the first page of the 1225 Charter is illustrated in Breay and Harrison, Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy, p.74.

 

A late thirteenth, early fourteenth-century statute book: London, British Library, Egerton 656, fos.66v-67.

Listed here, in a table of contents, are the chapters of Magna Carta 1225 with a description of their contents. The chapters are numbered between 1 and 53. This is an unusually large number, many copies having around 37 chapters as in the final printed versions. A table of contents of the 1225 Forest Charter follows with twenty chapters. The texts of the Charters themselves are missing.

 

A late thirteenth-century, early fourteenth-century statute book: London, British Library, Harley 409. fos.123-125v.  

The earl's relief is 'de comitatu integro'. The baronial relief is omitted.  There are no witnesses or date. The Charter of the Forest follows (fos.125v-127) and then the 1253 sentence of excommunication.  On fos.48v in this volume there is a reference to ‘la graunt Chartre des fraunchises le Roy H. pere le Roy ke ore est’. In the margin there is ‘Nota hic magna carta esse confirmatus’.

 

A late thirteenth, early fourteenth-century statute book: London, British Library, Harley 493A, fos.36-8.

A copy of the  1225 Charter of the Forest follows.

 

A late thirteenth, early fourteenth-century statute book: London, British Library, Harley 748, fos.114-6.

The baronial relief is 100 marks. There are 35 numbered chapters. The witness list is truncated but there is the final clause with the Charter being given at Westminster on 15 February 1225. The Charter of the Forest follows (fos.116v-117v). This volume also has a hybrid version of the 1217/1225 Charter, for which see above p.58.

 

A late thirteenth, early fourteenth-century statue book:  London, British Library, Harley 1807, fos.122-5.

The initial ‘H’ has an illuminated figure of King Henry.  The earl’s relief is  ‘de comitatu integro’. The baronial relief is 100 marks. The chapters are numbered 1 to 36.

 

A late thirteenth, early fourteenth century statute book: London, British Library Harley 5213, fos.254-254v

The statute book begins with the end of the Statute of Merton, the previous contents being lost. However, at the end of the book there is a table of contents with the chapters of both the 1225 Magna Carta and Forest Charter numbered and described. The former has thirty-seven chapters and the latter eighteen

 

A late thirteenth, early fourteenth century statute book: London, British Library, Lansdowne 467, fos.4v-6

The earl's relief is 'de comitatu integro' and the baronial relief is 100 marks. There are no witnesses but there is a dating clause. There are thirty-three numbered chapters with descriptions of their contents in red in  the text. The Forest Charter (unnumbered) follows between fos.6-7v.

 

A late thirteenth, early fourteenth century statute book: London, Lincoln’s Inn, Hale 140, fos.6-9v.

The copy of the 1215 Charter (see above p.34), is followed by the 1225 Magna Carta, with the heading ‘incipit carta de libertatibus Anglie’. The  Charter of the Forest follows. There is then the 1253 sentence of excommunication.

 

London, Society of Antiquaries, three membranes of a vellum roll.

This roll contains both the 1225 Magna Carta and (with some variant readings) the Charter of the Forest. It may well have been part of a roll with other statutes. For a description and a history, see Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Society of Antiquaries London, ed. P.J. Willetts (Woodbridge, 2000), no.544.

 

A late thirteenth-century, early fourteenth-century statue book: Spalding, Gentleman’s Society, M. J. 13, fos.68-70v.  I am grateful to Cristian Ispir for sending me images of this volume. There are no witnesses or ‘giving’ clause. The earl’s relief is ‘de comitatu integro’ and the baronial relief 100 marks. The chapters are numbered 1-35. The Forest Charter follows.

1	Annales Monastici, i, p.xxvii.  Davis, Breay, Harrison, Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.93 suggest that the scribe who wrote the chronicle was perhaps responsible for another Burton Abbey volume (one with a copy of Glanvill and related material). The bulk of this volume dates to between c.1240 and 1264.
2	For the cartulary see  ‘An abstract of the contents of the Burton Chartulary in possession of the Marquis of Anglesy at Beaudesert’ by Major-General Hon. G. Wrottesley, in Collections for the History of Staffordshire (William Salt Archeological Society, 5, part 1, 1884), pp.1-101 and Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith,  Medieval Cartularies,  no.91.
3	Probably the intention had been to create a full ‘statute book’ with legislation going down to the writer’s time and a register of writs.  The statute of Merton breaks off half way down the left hand column of f.157. In the empty right hand column, a much later hand has entered the 1100 Coronation Charter of Henry I.
4	Annales Monastici, i, pp.249-51,
5	The construction is pointed out in English Historical Documents 1189-1327, ed. H. Rothwell (London, 1974), p.337 note 4.
6	The Forest Charter,  however, as the slightly different phraseology permitted, retained ‘salvis’.
7	British Library Cotton Vespasian E III, f.18v (pencil). The ink of the comment is different from that of the main text.
8	In the printed edition (Annales Monastici, i, 231 and note) Luard referred to the ‘tam clerici quam layci’ part of this note but not the ‘salvis’. It is true that the ‘salvis’ appears below the ‘tam clerici quam layci’ but this is simply due to the exigencies of space. It is in the same hand and ink and is manifestly part of the same annotation. Thanks to the omission, however, Luard  was able to think that the annotator was doing no more than supplying ‘tam clerici quam layci’ to the text of the chapter.  So Luard’s text reads ‘…omnes de regno nostro [tam clerici quam laici] observent…’ with a footnote indicating that the ‘tam clerici quam laici’ (actually it is ‘layci’) were inserted in the margin in a later hand.
9	Wrottesley, ‘An Abstract of the  contents of the Burton Chartulary’, pp.65-6, 82-6.
10	For the Mickleover dispute see D. Crook, ‘Freedom, villeinage and legal process: the dispute between the abbot of Burton and his tenants of Mickleover, 1280’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 44 (2000).
11	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.218.
12	‘The Cartulary of Cerne Abbey’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, ed. H. Pentin, xxix (1908),  p.195.
13	I am grateful to Teresa Webber for commenting on the hand.
14	The clerk put in ‘post primam coronationem suam’ here and then rightly crossed it out as it appears not here but in chapter 3.
15	‘Cartulary of Cerne Cartulary’, ed. Pentin, 195-7.
16	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.6;  Two Cartularies of Abingdon Abbey, ed. C.F. Slade and G. Lambrick (Oxford Historical Society, new series 32-3, 1990-1), ii, no.C357. I am grateful to the Librarians at Chatsworth for sending me photocopies of this copy.
17	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.202.
18	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.182.
19	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.250.
20	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.420.
21	For the cartulary see  J. Tucker, Reading and Shaping Medieval Cartularies: Multi-Scribe Manuscripts and their Patterns of Growth. A Study of the Earliest Cartularies of Glasgow Cathedral and Lindores  Abbey  (Woodbridge, 2020).
22	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.435; The Great Cartulary of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. A Watkin, volume 1 (Somerset Record Society, 59, 1947), pp. 175, 189.
23	E. King, ‘Estate Records of the Hotot Family’, in A Northamptonshire Miscellany, ed. E. King (Northamptonshire Record Society, 32, 1983), p.32 no.21; Davis, Breay, Harrison, and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.1256.
24	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.679; The Two Cartularies of the Augustinian Priory of Bruton and the Cluniac Priory of Montacute, ed. H.C. Maxwell-Lyte and others, (Somerset Record Society, 8, 1894), p.130. For Montacute's copy of the 1215 Charter see above p.19.
25	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.688.
26	See D.A. Carpenter, ‘Magna Carta 1253: the ambitions of the church and the divisions within the realm’, Historical Research, 86 (2013), p.183 note 25 and Vincent, Magna Carta: Origins and Legacy, 268 no.38.
27	See Holt, ‘The St Albans chroniclers’, p.269-70.
28	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.859.
29	Davis, Breay, Harrison and Smith, Medieval Cartularies, no.978. The date is after 1251.
30	Early Registers of Writs, ed. E. de Haas and G.D.G. Hall (Selden Society, 87, 1970), pp.cxix-xxi.