Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/224

 216 THE EARLY USE OF 'TESTE ME IPSO' April Will: de Chimilliaco et T. tunc priore illius domus. Anno ab incam: D(omini), mclxxix apud Metulum.' ^ In the second example, which is dated 1181, likewise the count's witness is followed by the names of other witnesses.^ Of the remaining two, which are undated, one ^ contains the phrase teste me followed by one other witness ; the other has teste me ipso standing entirely alone.* These examples illustrate the use of teste me ipso and kindred phrases before the formula became stereotyped as one which was never used in royal charters and never found in association with another witness. Of the specimens existing in original that of Richard duke of Aquitaine is a charter.* Hugh of Chester's document is a permission to his mother to make a grant of land. That of Henry II is in the form of a mandate — later it would have been called letters patent. The two documents of Roger of Calabria, and the four of Richard duke of Aquitaine, are all, in spite of some irregularities, in charter form. We may also notice a number of examples which, without using the phrase teste me ipso, introduce the donor as a witness. Instances of this are to be found in several ecclesiastical charters of the latter half of the twelfth century. Thus in a charter of the abbot and convent of Kirkstall we find Teste conventu,^ and in a confirmation of a gift of Roger de Mowbray by the same abbey the final clause runs ' Huiusmodi autem donationis appropria- tionis et confirmationis testes sumus'.' Nor was the custom confined to ecclesiastical charters. In a charter of Walter Giffard to the church of St. Ouen at Rouen we read : Ex mea parte huius rei sunt testes : Ego Walterus comes ; Robertus de Novilla dapifer meus. . . etc. Ex parte ecclesie : ipse domnus abbas Fraternus ; Rogerus prior de Longavilla.* • Archives hisloriques de la Saintonge, vL 11, from a cartulary of the fifteenth cen- tury which Dom Fonteneau characterized as ' full of mistakes '. 1359 by Edward III of an inspeximus by the Black Prince The same charter ia printed ibid, xxvii. 58, from the cartulary of Sainte-Croix at Bordeaux. ' Archives hist, de la Saintonge, xii, 158 (from a vidimus of Philip IV through other confirmations, Bibl. Nat. J.J. 53, no. 144, fo. 64"). (from the Livre d'Or de Bayonne, p. 17 d, a cartulary of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). terms. • Farrer, Early Yorkshire Charters (Edinburgh, 1916), iiL 202, no. 1512 (dated by the editor between 1177 and 1188). ' Ibid. p. 447, no. 1835, from the cartulary of Byland, Dodsworth MS. 63, fo. 29 d (dated 1177-81). Other examples may be found iii Mr. Farrer's collection: see L 136, from Reg. Mag. Album, of York, pt. ii, fo. 39 ; ii. 39 ,no. 684, from Reg. Mag. Alb., pt. ii, fo. 60; i. 219, no. 282, and 222, no. 285, from the cartulary of St. Leonard's, York, Cotton MS., Nero D. iii, fa 179 d, and fo. 9. • Round, Calendar of Documents preserved in France, i. 29, no. 102 ; original in
 * Archives historiques de la Oironde, iv. 120, from a confirmation dated I March
 * Balfisque, Etudes historiques sur la Ville de Bayonne (Bayonne, 1862), L 409
 * This document ia quoted by M. Delisle as a charter, though he does not give ita