Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/390

 382 ERRORS IN ITINERARY OF ANTONINUS July one below another opposite to the names.^ In such circumstances, a careless scribe would be liable to repeat an x either from the same line or from the line above it. As misfortunes do not happen singly, the same mistake might well occur in two, or more, successive lines. G. H. Wheeler. Royal Charters to Winchester The Norman charters here printed are taken from the Additional MSS. 15350 and 29436 in the British Museum. These are cartu- laries of St. Swithun's priory at Winchester, the one of the twelfth, the other of the thirteenth century. The documents form an unbroken series from the reign of Edward the Confessor to that of Henry II, and their interest, it will be seen, is varied. Charters already printed in the Calendar of the Charter Rolls have been omitted, but with this exception the list is complete for the period down to 1154. A few charters of Henry II are included for the sake of continuity. The copies of Stephen's charters in Add. MS. 15350 must be nearly contemporary. 1. A large proportion of Winchester lands, such as the great manor of Taunton, were ancient possessions, and their history may be traced in Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus. We learn there that they were acquired piecemeal, many of them in times immemorial ,2 and that forgery had been common.^ Of any comprehensive grant of privileges there is no trace be^.ore the reign of Cnut (1035). To him is attributed a grant — not the less interesting because spurious — which may be considered the original of all those charters of liberties so often confirmed by the Norman kings. The charter recites the ancient liberty by which the bishop had held his lands free from all secular service save the trinoda necessitas, and grants in addition * certain ' scelera que dicuntur Anglice hamsocne and forstealles and myndbricas omnisque correctio sive magni sive parvi super universos quibus obedire debent '. Apparently the necessity of showing title- deeds for rights they were actually exercising arose in Edward's reign. It is certain at any rate that such rights were confirmed p. 142. of Glastonbury {Cod. dipt. no. xix). The next supplies the first certain evidence of the existence of the convent — a charter of Cuthred (749) granting land at Clere (Hampshire) {Cod. dipl. no. mvi). all the remainder are above suspicion, e. g. no. mxxxv, a charter of Egbert, refers to the ' vetus monasterium ', a title otherwise unknown until some time after the founda- tion of Newminster (901).
 * See Cuntz in Jahreshefie dea Oesterreich. Archdol. Institutes, v. (1902), Beiblatt,
 * The earliest genuine charter is a grant of Bishop Headdi (a. d. 680) to the abbot
 * The proportion of ' doubtful ' charters (as shown by Kemble) is high, and not
 * ' augmentum quod huic Ubertati adiicere caravi ' {Cod. dipL no. dccliii).