Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/87

ST. ODO may be considered as interesting as the celebrated Book of Kells, or the Lindisfarne Gospels. Athelstan also presented to Christ Church another Gospel Book, now the Cotton MS. Tiberius A 2, which is said by a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine and also by J. O. Westwood in the Palæographia Sacra Pictoria (1843) to have been the book appointed by him to be used by all succeeding Kings of England at the time of their taking the Coronation Oath. It is supposed to have been written in the scriptorium in Lobbes Abbey in the diocese of Liège. On the twenty-third folio is the inscription:

This book was a present from Otto I of Germany, who had married Athelstan's sister; and from Mathilda, the Empress of Henry, and mother of Otto. On the verso of the twelfth folio is the beginning of the Apograph of a Charter of King Athelstan, dated A.D. 927; whereby he grants to the Church of Christ in Canterbury the land of Folcestan super mare where was formerly a monastery and nunnery, and where St. Eanswith was buried. It is witnessed by King Athelstan; Wulfhelm, Archbishop of Canterbury; Theodredus, Bishop of London; Alphage, Bishop of Winchester; and Odo, Bishop of Sherborne.

The oath of King Edgar (A.D. 958), reprinted from the Reliquæ Antiquæ, where it is given from a contemporary document, is as follows:

"The writing is copied letter by letter after the writing which Dunstan, the Abbot, delivered to our Lord at Kingston, on the day on which they consecrated him King, he forbade him to give any pledge except this pledge, which he laid on Christ's Altar as the Archbishop appointed for him—

"In the name of The Holy Trinity I promise three things to Christian people, and bind myself to them: first, that I will to God's Church and to all Christian people of my realm hold true peace; the second is, that I will forbid rapine and all injustice to all classes of society; the third, that I vow and promise in all my judgments justice and mildheartedness (mercy) that the gracious and mildhearted God, through his everlasting mercy, may forgive us all, who shall live and reign." The oath was taken by the King, his hand at the time being placed 53