Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/223

 1920 THE EARLY USE OF ' TESTE ME IPSO ' 215 during the reign of Henry II, and one of them actually comes from the chancery of that king. This is a mandate, evidently of the years before 1172, since there is no Dei gratia in the royal title, and the phrase varies from the later form, being here teste rege ipso} There are no other witnesses. A second example is an act of Hugh Cyfeiliog, earl of Chester, in -which the witness- ing clause runs as follows : Teste me ipso. Kic[ardo] de Luvetot. Gil[ber]to fiI[io] Picot. Rad[ulf]o vic[e]comite de Valle Vire. Rog[er]o de Luvetot. Frembalt de Ridefort. Seer de Stoke. Henrico Mansel. Rad[ulfo] Barbe de Averil capell[an]o meo et Will[elm]o filio suo et pl[ur]ib[us] aliis.^ A third comes from the chancery of Richard I before his accession. Here the phrase is ' T. Hugone de Diva apud Rotomagum et me ipso '.^ To these instances we may add some others which are pre- served only in transcripts. The earliest of these are two charters of Roger count of Calabria to the monastery of Patti, dated 1094. In one the formula is Teste me dante et concedente et coniuge mea Adalayde Comitissa, loffrido infante filio meo, Episcopo Messanensi in cuius est diocesi, Roberto Borello, Rogerio de Tuschet, Rogerio de Barnavilla.-I-Episcopi Traginensis. + Comitissae Adalaydis. + Goffridi infantis. +et ego Ausgerius Episcopus feci hanc crucem. In the second it runs : ' Teste eodem comite Rogerio et Goffrido infante filio suo. . . etc.'* Then there is a charter of a duke of Normandy whom M. Delisle considered, from a pencilled ' G ' in the space left vacant for the duke's name, to have been Geoffrey, father of Henry II. Here the formula appears as ' Teste ipso comite apud Baiocas '.^ Four more instances of the use of the phrase are found in acts of Richard I, as duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitou, before his accession to the throne. In the first of these the witnessing clause runs : ' Teste me ipso et Mang: de Mello et ' Original, Canterbury Charters C 8, printed in Bibl. de VEcole des Ctiarles, 1908 p. 565, n. 7. I am much indebted to the Rev. H. E. Salter for allowing me to make use of his photograph of this charter. William I to Richard I, vol. i, pi. xxxiii, no. 51, dated by the editors between 1162 and 1167. I am indebted to Mr. James Tait for the knowledge of this charter. ' DeUsle, Recueil, Intr., p. 226 (original in Archives des Hospices de Rouen, fonds de la Madeleine, serie A). example occurs in a charter of Henry I to the church of Seez, c. 1 108, where the formula is followed by a number of signa of which the king's is the first : Gallia Christiana, xi, instrum., col. 156 ^. This charter, however, only exists in a fourteenth-century cartulary. I'Hist. de Normandie), i. 25.
 * Stowe Charters 155, printed in Facsimiles of Charters in the British Miiseum,
 * Rocco Pirri, Sicilia Sacra, ed. Mongitore, Palermo, 1733, ii. 770-1. Another
 * Delisle, Recueil, intr., p. 226 n. ; also in Livre Noir de VEglise de Bayeux (Soc. de