Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/169

 THE MUNIMENTS OF THE ABBEY OF WESTMINSTER. 13U usually distinguished by their inagniloqucnce. And when the monastery was troubled and impleaded by the Normau justiciar, or the soke invaded by the Norman baron, the Abbot and his brethren would have recourse to the artifice of inventing a charter for the purpose of protecting property, which, however lawfully acquired and honestly enjo3'ed, was like to be wrested from them by the captious niceties of Norman jurisprudence or the greedy tyranny of the Norman sword." Westminster shares the stigma, such as it is, of such forgeries with many another great religious establishment, with Peterborough, Worcester, Croyland, &c., and they may be traced to the man}' disputes as to the rights of the Abbc}'-, chiefly in regard to the question of jurisdiction, and the great fair granted to the Abbey in opposition to the City of London. The ])rincii»les of determining what really are such forgeries are not yet, however, quite settled ; and Kemble, the editor of the great collection of Saxon charters, the " Codex Dil)lomaticus J^vi Saxonici," a work of the highest character, often finds himself at issue with the great Saxon scholar of the seventeenth century, Dr. Hickes, and, with the modesty of talent, owns that he may not be always right. He continues (writing in 1840), " So many and various are the difficulties, which stand in the way of a decisive judgment, that I do not entertain the hope of having rarely fallen into error when investigating the authenticity of my elocuments. ^ly leaning is generally rather against tlian for any charter respecting which a doubt has suggested itself to ni}- mind ; and it must, therefore, be borne in mind that many have been marked with an asterisk, not to express my belief that they were absolute forgeries, but merely to denote that there were circumstances of suspicion about them.'' Of the Westminster charters before Edward the Confessor, eight in number, Kemble prints four, two being marked as doubtful ; and Thorpe prints two, one being from the " Niger Quaternus," which seems to confirm a charter of King Edgar's, marked as doubtful. I may be permitted, I trust, to direct special attention to the charter of Bishop Dunstan. I need not touch upon its import- — it has prominently stamped upon it the characteristics of forgery ; no one who liad seen a ^IS. of the tenth century would receive such characterless writing as of the year )'o[) ; it has a seal pen- VOL. xxix. u