The Origin and Context of the Salisbury Magna Carta
Elaine Treharne (Stanford University) and Andrew Prescott (University of Glasgow)
Argument
This short article, to be expanded for journal publication
later this year, presents a discussion of all four surviving versions of the
1215 Magna Carta. It argues that the Salisbury Magna Carta (S) was written not by a centralised
administration, but, rather, by a
Salisbury scribe working in and for the institution. By analysing the hands in
other certain Salisbury (or Old Sarum) manuscripts and documents, particularly The Register of St Osmund (c. 1220), we suggest that similarities
between hands in that book and the hand of S
show such distinctive shared characteristics as to intimate the Salisbury
origin of the Magna Carta. This calls into question scholarly understanding of
the methods of dissemination of major administrative texts in the High Middle
Ages.
The 1215 Engrossments of
Magna Carta
Among the highlights of the 800th anniversary celebrations of
King John’s grant of Magna Carta was an event at the British Library from 2-4
February 2015 at which the four surviving 1215 engrossments of Magna Carta were
brought together for the first time since 1215 (and perhaps the first time
ever). This facilitated a detailed comparison of the documents as part of the
major
Magna Carta project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council
and directed by Professor Nicholas Vincent of the University of East Anglia and
Professor David Carpenter of King’s College, London. The photographs of this
‘unification event’ illustrate how each of the 1215 engrossments differ in size
and shape. One of the benefits of the ‘unification event’ is that
good quality digital images of each of the 1215 engrossments have been placed in the public domain on the British Library website, facilitating closer study. They remind us how each engrossment
has its own distinctive features.
 |
| From top left: BL,
Cotton Augustus ii.106; Salisbury Magna Carta; BL, Cotton Charter xiii.31a;
Lincoln Magna Carta |
London, British Library, Cotton Charter xiii.31a (Ci), which Professor Carpenter has
recently shown was in the archives of Canterbury Cathedral in the 1290s, is the
only engrossment with a Great Seal of King John attached, although the document
is badly damaged as a result of incompetent nineteenth-century restoration work
following fire damage in 1731.
 |
| BL, Cotton Charter xiii.31a (Cii) |
The seal in
Ci
is attached by a vellum tag, which
an engraving by John Pine in 1733 suggests
was originally in a different position and threaded through a fold at the foot
of the document (Collins 1948: 270-1). Presumably the seal was reattached when
Ci was ‘restored’ by a British Museum
bookbinder named Hogarth in 1836 (Prescott 1997). This seal is now dark red/brow
n in colour, which suggests it is of white wax, varnished brown. Chaplais observes that by the early thirteenth century, charters 'were normally sealed with the great seal in green wax (cera viridis)
appended on twisted or plaited cords of silk strands (usually of two colours,
red and green being the most common combination)’ (1971: 15). Chaplais notes a
few examples of charters sealed in white wax appended with a tag and adds ‘By
the early part of the thirteenth century sealing in white wax was generally
reserved for great-seal documents of ephemeral or temporary value’ (1971: 15).
The sealing of this engrossment is anomalous, and the possibility cannot be
ruled out that the seal was fixed or added to this document when it was
acquired for Sir Robert Cotton, but in the present state of this document this
is impossible to establish.
The 1215 engrossment which is now London, British Library,
Cotton Augustus ii.106 (Cii), is the
only one of these four documents in landscape format, but, as Collins
emphasized, this document appears to have been heavily cropped when it was
bound up for Sir Robert Cotton in a large volume of charters.
 |
| BL, Cotton Augustus ii.106 (Cii) |
Cii was reported as still being bound up
with all the other charters in Augustus ii in 1810 (Collins 1948: 272) and this
huge volume was eventually disbound in 1834 to reduce the damage that was being
caused to the documents contained in it (Prescott 1997: 4-6-7). It has been assumed
that the three slits at the bottom of
Cii
were for seals (Breay and Harrison 2015: 67), but Collins (1948: 272) points out that the slits may have been
made when the document was cropped and bound into a volume which seems the most
likely explanation, a conclusion supported by Carpenter (2015:14). David Casley stated
that
Ci and
Cii were in the same hand.
Recent multispectral imaging of Ci may assist in verifying or otherwise
Casley’s claim.
Although the seal in the Lincoln engrossment (L) is now missing, the three holes in a
triangular arrangement through a fold at the foot of L indicate that the sealing practice in the case of this document
followed that described by Chaplais as normal for early thirteenth-century
charters; namely, a seal appended on twisted or plaited cords of silk strands.
Unlike Ci and Cii, the twelve-fold folding of the charter is still evident, and
on two of the folds is an endorsement, ‘Lincolnia’,
in a hand which is apparently the same as that of the text of the charter. L also bears thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century Lincoln pressmarks and appears in the Lincoln Registrum of about 1330. As Collins
(1948: 265) remarked, ‘There is hardly a peradventure about the pedigree of L’ and there seems little doubt that
this is one of the two engrossments of Magna Carta recorded as being dispatched
to the Bishop of Lincoln on 24 June 1215 (Rowlands 2009: 1426).
 |
| Lincoln Magna Carta (L) |
Despite
misguided experiments with steam cleaning by Sir Hilary Jenkinson (Vincent
2010: 7),
L preserves diplomatic
features which accident and misguided conservation treatment have compromised
in the other engrossments. Given that it is also the engrossment with the best
attested provenance, it is surprising that it has usually been the 1215
engrossment which has been sent abroad, including a loss-making trip to
Australia in 1988, which helped precipitate
a major dispute within Lincoln cathedral. The
catalogue to the current British Library exhibition describes how
L became stuck in America during the
Second World War when it was exhibited at the British Pavilion of the New York
World Fair and attempts were made by the British government to give
L to the American people to encourage
the American public to support Britain during the war (Breay and Harrison 2015:
246-9). A suggestion that one of the British Museum copies be given to Lincoln
Cathedral to make up for the loss prompted Arthur Jefferies Collins to threaten
to resign from the British Museum (ex info M.A.F. Borrie).
Of the four 1215 engrossments of Magna Carta, however, the one
whose appearance differs most obviously from the others is that in the
Salisbury Cathedral archives (S),
since it is the only one not in a documentary hand. As Sir James Holt comments:
‘The other three are plainly in a Chancery hand; S not so - not, at least,
until the scribe of S is discovered at work in other Chancery documents. His
hand is too “bookish”’ (Holt 2015: 374). Collins (1948: 270 n. 3) is even more
trenchant: ‘Just as the text of S is inferior to that of the other exemplars,
so its script is the least convincing. To my eye it rather suggests a date a decade
or so later than 1215 and smacks of an ecclesiastical scriptorium. It seems to
me to be similar in type (but earlier than) the hand of the charter of the Dean
and Chapter of Salisbury of 1244 in the British Museum, Add. Ch. 7500’.
However, Collins noted that Charles Johnson and Hilary Jenkinson, two leading
authorities on documentary script, would not rule out the possibility that S was written in the royal chancery in
1215, and Collins emphasized the variability of scripts in later reissues of
Magna Carta.
 |
| Salisbury's Magna Carta (S) |
Nevertheless, doubt as to whether S was written in the royal chancery has constantly recurred. Claire Breay notes that 'The Salisbury Magna Carta does differ from the others in that it was not written in the hand of a scribe of the royal chancery. This may mean that it was produced by its recipient and presented for authorization under the Great Seal, but its text is as authentic as the other three (Breay 2002:37). In
1981, Daphne Stroud mounted a sustained criticism of the authenticity of S. She wrote that ‘Both in text and
script S is the odd man out of the four manuscripts. It is written in the
careful and dignified script employed at this period for copying books, not in
the business hand normally used for Chancery documents in which Ci, Cii and L
are written. It also has more textual variations than the other three’ (Stroud
1981: 51). Stroud noted that it had been assumed that tear at the foot of the
document was thought to have been caused by a seal being ripped off but
observed: ‘This is a reasonable assumption provided it can be established on other
grounds that the document is in all probability genuine, but the M-gap does not
by itself constitute proof that S once carried the Great Seal of King John’
(Stroud 1981: 52). Neither Wiltshire nor Salisbury were mentioned in the list
on the dorse of patent rolls for the distribution of the writ for the
publication of Magna Carta or in the schedule of charters issued. Stroud argued
that the chancery never issued a writ or charter for Wiltshire and she proposed
that S was not a chancery engrossment
of Magna Carta, but a copy made by Elias Dereham, the steward of Stephen
Langton who was later a resident canon of Salisbury. Elias took delivery of six
engrossments of Magna Carta at Oxford on 22 July 1215 and had ample opportunity
to make a copy of the document for his own use in order to preserve the terms of the original grant
in the face of the more conservative reissues in 1216 and 1217. Although Stroud
admitted that ‘we shall probably never know for certain how, when or why S came to Salisbury’, she suggested that one possibility was that
‘in later years, when the cause of the Charter was won and Elias himself was
living quietly at Salisbury with the new cathedral rising under his direction,
he still kept his copy of the Runnymede document as a tangible memorial to
those few weeks in the summer of 1215 when he played a vital role in the most
stirring political event of his time’ (Stroud 1981: 57).
 |
| Salisbury Magna Carta (S) |
Daphne Stroud’s article prompted a magisterial review of the
issues surrounding S in 1982 by Sir
James Holt (1985: 259-64). Holt suggested that the clerical errors in S were within the limits acceptable for a scribe writing such a
lengthy document. He felt that Collins’s suggestion that the document might
date from the 1220s was over-optimistic about the precision with which scripts
can be dated. On the other hand, he felt that Daphne Stroud was being
excessively rigid in implying that there was a single business hand for
chancery documents and that book hands were not used. Holt stressed the
variability of scribal practice evident in royal instruments and noted that, in
any case, special measures might have been taken in the unusual circumstances
of the summer of 1215 and the royal chancery might have drafted in external
scribal assistance. Holt pointed out that the tear at the foot of S was in just the right place if
it was the seal was attached by silk strands
threaded through holes arranged in an inverted triangle or M-shape, a less common
method of appending the seal than the arrangement in L, but nevertheless an arrangement occasionally used
(although one might expect a fold here if this sealing practice was used; Collins 1948: 271 suggests the fold
was trimmed off after the loss of the seal).
Above all, Holt examined the evidence of the
dispatch list of writs and charters. Holt highlighted the distinction between the dispatch list
for the writs, where the concern was to ensure that the sheriffs of every
county were ordered to swear to the Twenty Five and that enquiries into abuses
were begun, and the list of charters issued, which was less comprehensive. Holt
argued that the list only notes those writs not sent to the sheriff by royal
messengers and suggests that Wiltshire does not appear in the list because the
writ been sent through normal channels, a conclusion subsequently endorsed by
Ivor Rowlands (2009) in his detailed analysis. In the case of the list of charters on
the dorse of the patent roll, the omission of Wiltshire is less surprising
because only thirteen charters are listed (one for each of the dioceses with
bishops in place, suggests Rowlands). Holt also noted that it would be unlikely
that the university graduate Elias Dereham, if he was the scribe, would have
made the mistake of preferring the future indicative to the more correct
present subjunctive.
Emily Naish, the archivist of Salisbury Cathedral, has recently
made the important discovery that there is a copy of the text of S on ff. 5v-7v of the Salisbury
Cathedral cartulary, ‘Liber Evidentiarum C’, compiled before 1284 (Carpenter 2015b). This shows
that S has been at Salisbury since
the thirteenth century and probably explains the endorsement, read by Collins as ‘Dupplicata’ on S (see Carpenter 2015b, too), which also appears on a number of
other Salisbury documents and doubtless indicated that they had been copied
into the register. While there has been discussion of the dating of S, there has been no attempt to localize
the hand, although Collins hinted that it might be a Salisbury hand in
referring to London, British Library, Add. Ch. 7500. Further examination of
known Salisbury hands in the first decades of the thirteenth century, though,
does indeed seem to strongly indicate that S
was written by a scribe from Salisbury Cathedral (or, rather, its pre-1220
institutional precursor at Old Sarum). Moreover, the Salisbury Magna Carta hand is both entirely commensurate with other hands datable to c.1215, and exemplifies that book-hand could be used alongside charter hand within a single institutional context.
The hand and
palaeographical context of S
The hand of
S can be compared, in the first instance, with other contemporary
documents, including London, British Library, Additional MS. 4838,
The Articles of the Barons, issued in 1215 (as well as with the three
other 1215 Magna Carta engrossments, of course). Additional MS. 4838 is digitally
available at the British Library website (
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_4838_f001r).
It is written in a legible, cursive charter hand, with its slightly
backward-looking aspect; and a duct illustrating typical thicker ascenders and
curvilinear strokes. Many ascenders are looped and descenders of
p and
q are tapered, curving slightly to the left. The final foot of
m and
h often extends below the line. Scribal characteristics include a
single-compartment
a, as well as
double-compartment
a with an enlarged
bow;
d is round-backed; the tongue of
e is elongated in final position;
g, notably, has a closed, or
almost-closed, tail which extends in a loop from the right of the downstroke;
the downstroke of
r sits on, or
descends slightly below, the line. Both long
s and a loosely-formed round
s,
arguably akin to Derolez’s ‘trailing s’, occur. The latter, in particular is
important. The lower left limb of
x extends
under the line and flicks to the right. Ligatures include the 2-shaped
r in
or combination;
ct where the ligature is formed from the
top of
t’s shaft extending and
curving down towards the
c on the left. Biting letters include the common
d+
e,
and
p+
p. Other noteworthy characteristics include the crossed Tironian
nota; barred capitals (such as
B,
C,
G,
N,
O,
P,
Q);
the flat-topped form of suprascript
a
used to denote abbreviations like
qua-
or –
ra-; and the dashed double
i.
By contrast to this charter hand, and
as noted by all scholars who have worked on the four 1215 Magna Carta versions,
Salisbury’s charter is written in a mostly textura hand rather than a diplomatic
hand. It is available in a rather odd yellowy digital simulacrum here: <
http://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/pressrelease/2015/february/magna-carta-1215-salisbury-cathedral.jpg>.
There is far less currency than one might expect from a documentary text; its
formality is demonstrated in its upright aspect and general restraint. The duct
suggests a pen angle of about 30’, and letters are formed with significant consistency.
Ascenders are usually tagged or slightly wedged to the left; descenders are
short and occasionally finish with a small tick to the right. Significant
scribal characteristics include the persistent use of double-compartment
a, sometimes
with an enlarged bow in final position (‘Carta’, line 5;
‘custodia’) or initial position (line 9 ‘
aliquid’, line 14);
d is round-backed with a curve to the right at the end of the
ascender, or straight-backed with a finish of equal floreation; the tongue of
e is very slightly elongated in final
position. The letter
g takes a
variety of forms and is one of the most important characteristics of this hand:
it is either relatively small with an equal sized closed tail and bowl
(‘maritagium’, line 14—a typical book-hand type); or, also as in book-hand, it
has a closed tail which is angular on the left (line 13, ‘exiget’); or, and
most frequently and notably, the tail finishes with a flourish, which loops
under the tail-end and sweeps up to the bowl (line 4, ‘Burgo’; line 7,
‘Regni’). The downstroke of
r sits on
the line, as in textura hands. Occasionally, and, again, interestingly, a small
majuscule
r occurs, most often in
front of variant forms of ‘
Rex’,
but also in ‘
Relevium’
(line 8). A slightly later manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 275,
a composite manuscript that has a thirteenth-century
Life of Thomas Becket inserted between later texts (it is
c. 1230, given that it’s written below
top line), also shows this feature, such as at folio 233aR/11 and 12, ‘
Regis’ (and elsewhere,
including in medial position where it is ligatured with a [‘ba
Ronia’, f. 233bV, line 25]).
Of this form, Derolez (2003:91) comments ‘The majuscule r (R) occasionally
present in Praegothica is found much more rarely in Textualis, except in a few
early English manuscripts’. He gives an unillustrated example in his footnote
80 of a manuscript, dated pre-1201. It is likely, given the evidence presented
here, that this feature is found rather later than Derolez suspects.
 |
| CCCC
275, f. 233aR/11, 12 |
 |
| Forms of R in Salisbury Magna Carta |
In Salisbury’s Magna Carta, both long
s and a loosely-formed round s (perhaps ‘trailing s’) occur. The
latter, in particular is important, too, and occurs in many charter hands in this period. The lower left limb of x curves under
the preceding letter. Ligatures include the 2-shaped r in or combination; a
characteristic form of the crossed 2-shaped r,
indicating –orum (line 5, ‘aliorum’); and ct where the ligature is formed from by
a curved stroke extending from the top of c’s bow to the top of t. Biting letters include the common d+e,
b+b, d+d, and p+p. Other noteworthy characteristics
include the usually crossed Tironian nota,
which sit on the line, together with the occasional uncrossed version (lines 5
and 6 ‘7 heredibus’ and ‘7 Barones’ demonstrate each respectively); barred
capitals (such as B, C, F,
G, H, M, N, O, P, Q);
the open-topped form of suprascript a
predominantly used to denote abbreviations like qua-
or –ra (‘quam’, line 6; ‘libras’,
line 8. This seems to be a consistently earlier practice than the flat-topped version of the mark.); the dashed double i; and a
consistently curved abbreviation stroke. One final infrequent scribal practice
in this text is the conjoining of enlarged a and round-backed d, where the back of d crosses through the bow of a, as in the image below. This is a
feature most commonly witnessed in charter hands.
 |
| Conjoined 'ad' in Magna Carta S |
There is far more one could say, but
this collection of data, taken in toto,
is sufficient to build a strong case for the production of S, the Salisbury Magna Carta, by a Salisbury scribe, as we shall demonstrate. A number of
comparanda exist to support this claim, among them the existence of multiple
Salisbury scribes writing in manuscripts and diplomata that are, and always
have been, in situ in the archive
that created them. Some of these are closely datable, but, of those I [ET] have
examined quickly, most postdate the 1215 date postulated for the Magna Carta. Thus,
for example, a small number of membrane slips containing the signed oaths of
obedience to Salisbury’s bishop by abbots and abbesses provide approximately
dateable writing associated with the institution. These illustrate hands
confirming the obedience of Claricia, abbess of the Cistercian abbey of Tarrant
in 1228; her successor, Emelina (before 1240); and Richard I of Reading in
1238, among others. Still, together with multiple charters, writs, and other diplomata
extant from all aspects of the Salisbury chapter’s business, individual scribal
characteristics can be discerned that permit a comprehensive description of
script and textual production from the twelfth century to the Reformation (to
be published in Treharne 2018). For the earlier thirteenth century, it is
perhaps little surprise to learn that a wide variety of hands is exemplified in
the corpus of diplomata from high grade book hands to those demonstrating the
influence of court hand or evincing considerable currency or lack of
calligraphic proficiency. In one remarkable volume, these variable scribal
performances are gathered altogether as a witness to the diversity of scribal
habits and competencies. More to the point here, these hands offer strong
evidence supporting the localization and thus the origin of S to Salisbury itself.
Registering Rules and
Records
Such a finding emerges from the evidence suggested by a
comparison of palaeographical characteristics between
S and certain scribes of
The
Register of St Osmund, now housed in Salisbury Cathedral Archive (see
http://www.sarumcustomary.org.uk/exploring/PDF_files/1%20OCO/OCO-L.pdf).
This
Register, until recently
deposited in the Wiltshire County Record Office, is generally dated to
c. 1220, presumably because that is the
date of the foundation of the new cathedral building at Salisbury. It may, of
course, have been begun slightly earlier in readiness for the move from Old
Sarum to the present site, since the volume contains the fullest extant text of
Osmund’s Consuetudinary, including descriptions of the roles of the cathedral’s
major officers and liturgical rites. It seems likely that the
Register was compiled and maintained as
both guide to the organizational practices of the cathedral and as a repository
of the privileges, liberties and possessions of the institution. Following the
Consuetudinary, the volume becomes, effectively, a cartulary with many documents added as the thirteenth century progressed. Taking stock in
this way during the years of planning and implementing the move--a move
initiated by Richard Poore, bishop of Salisbury 1217 to 1228, and granted in
1219 by papal indulgence--made absolute sense to ensure a secure record
intended for the cathedral’s reference and archive.
The earliest scribe in the Register
copied the opening folios containing the Statutes and Regulations of the
cathedral. His is a book-hand of greater formality than that associated with
Salisbury’s Magna Carta.
 |
| The Register of St Osmund, pp. ii-iii |
Consistent with other textura of the period, the aspect is
generally upright, though sometimes rather backward-tilting; the ascenders and
descenders generally compact (and often lacking the flourish seen in S); the pen-angle about 30’.
Two-compartment a predominates, and
the occasional enlarged a makes a few
appearances; straight-backed and round-backed d are used; the small 8-shaped g
is most common. Like S, and many
other examples, the left limb of x swoops
under the preceding letter. There are frequent, but not ubiquitous barred
majuscule forms. These increase in number as the manuscript’s earliest scribe works through his multiple stints. His biting letters include d+e and double p. As in S, there is the
occasional use of a conjoined enlarged a
and d in ‘ad’, where the ascender of
round-backed d pierces the bow of a.
 |
| Register, p.1 |
 |
| Register, p. 73 |
In the early pages of the Register,
the Tironian nota is not crossed;
later hands illustrate varied usage that is sometimes crossed, and sometimes
simply 7. The suprascript a with a
flat, closed top is most common in the introductory pages, but there are
instances, too, of the open a seen in
S. The macron, like S’s, is curved. Confirming a date of the
first third of the century (and somewhat earlier, indeed) is the ‘above top
line’ format of the folio. While the hand is more laterally compressed than
that of S, there are distinctive
similarities, as one might expect.
The most notable preponderance of similarities between a scribe
of the Register and Salisbury’s Magna
Carta comes quite far into the Register
in a sequence of texts copied some time after 1222. At pages 111-113, in a
section on canonical behaviour, the scribe, whose hand is more cursive than
that of S, nevertheless evinces
similar forms of enlarged a, trailing
s, majuscules, punctuation, and
various other features, illustrated below in the conglomerate image. Of most
significance, this scribe writes the very notable g with a tail that loops back upon itself to touch the bowl. Now
this g is very distinctive, and
certainly allies the scribal practice of the Magna Carta hand with that of the Register’s scribe at these pages. It is seen elsewhere too, but always in manuscripts or diplomata that are
possibly slightly later than Magna Carta, including, obviously, the Register itself. It occurs in other diplomata associated with Salisbury, including this below--from a document issued to Salisbury by Archbishop Langton in c. 1220 or a little earlier.
 |
| Document of c. 1220, issued by Stephen Langton in Salisbury Cathedral Archive. Note form of g, S, and also final -s. |
Other instances of this particular form of g include Duchy of Lancaster, Cartae Miscellaneae 36, dated to
1229-30, and included as Plate Va in Hector; London, British Library, Royal 14.
C. vii, fol. 150, dated 1250-59, and included in Denholm-Young as Plate 12; and
in the final lines of CCCC 275, fols. 233a-n, which is post-1230, where the g is part of a final flourish at the
foot of the writing grid. Its use in the Magna Carta might, then, be among the
earliest recorded instances.
 |
| Amalgamation of some of the interesting similar features in the (yellowy) Magna Carta S and the Register of St Osmund |
What does emerge from this preliminary examination of
Salisbury’s Register and some of the
chapter’s documents and diplomata is how very varied scribal hands are in this
period, as Holt indeed pointed out. This is particularly so when they are not
consistently the highest grade of Gothic textura (quadrata, semi-quadrata, and
so on). Not only is it quite difficult to categorize the preponderance of hands
beyond the broadest categories, but also, there are dramatic changes in
appearance and letter-formation within what are approximately contemporary
stints in similar contexts of production. This reflects ‘the proliferation of
documents’, as Clanchy says; the concomitant increase in numbers and levels of
training of scribes; and the varieties of script commonly used for different
kinds of writing (Clanchy 127-34), many manifested differently according to
scribal proficiency and time. This is made abundantly clear by the rich
diversity of evidence documented in the Salisbury Cathedral Archive. But then the consistent and significant number of similar forms between the Salisbury Magna Carta and other known contemporary Salisbury scribes becomes diagnostic of a shared writing environment. Thus, it is
surely to this archival community that scholars should look to identify the
common context for the Magna Carta’s production, if not the very scribe
himself.
Textual Performance
In the face of the identification of
the scribe of S as a member of the
very institution which received and housed the charter, it would be tempting to
leap to the conclusion that S is not
an authentic Magna Carta and somehow did not deserve its place at the
reunification event at the British Library in February. As both Claire Breay and Sir James Holt have previously emphasized, this is not the
case. Salisbury, together with other cathedrals throughout England from the
twelfth century onwards, had become increasingly meticulous about recording and
curating significant diplomata, both within the cartulary or register, and in
single sheet format. The identification of the scribe of S as from Salisbury tells us important things about how Magna Carta
was disseminated and about forms of textual dissemination and preservation in
the Middle Ages. It is indeed salutary, as Nicholas Vincent states, to
acknowledge that a solid, if not preponderant, proportion of diplomata produced
were written by scribes attached to the beneficiary rather than to the king
(Vincent 2004: 31). Moreover, Holt (2015: 374) comments that the use of a book
hand in S does not make it any less
authentic: ‘In the circumstances at Runnymede and Windsor the Chancery could
have impressed extra scribes to help with the lengthy exemplifications which
the settlement required (although, if so, none of their work is apparent
otherwise): more probably S could
have been the work of one of the recipients, a messenger or agent of one of the
counties, presented for authorization by the great seal - an acceptable though
by now unusual procedure’. We can now suggest that consistently present
palaeographical comparanda between some of the scribes of the Register and the scribe of S indeed
indicates that S was written by a
scribe from the cathedral which retains that version of the Great Charter to
this day. The evidence of the tear together with its long attested history at
Salisbury suggest that S was produced
and then presented for sealing with the Great Seal. It would be an unlikely
coincidence that a scribe who had been impressed to help out the royal chancery
just happened to write out a copy which is now in his home institution. It is
far more likely that recipients were able to present their own copies of Magna
Carta for sealing by the Chancery.
The practice of ecclesiastical scriptoria preparing charters
recording grants in their favour was a long-standing one, dating back to the
earliest days of the appearance of the charter in England. It might be assumed
that with the growth and professionalization of the royal administration in the
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries that this practice died out, but the
variety of scribal forms on royal acta, which persisted on reissues of Magna
Carta well into the thirteenth century, suggest that the sealing of documents
prepared by the recipient was a more commonplace practice than has been
assumed. If S was prepared by a
Salisbury scribe, this may explain some of its textual idiosyncrasies, since
the Salisbury scribe may have been working from a draft or intermediary copy in
preparing his text. The textual relationships between drafts and final version
is complex, and one of the great achievements of the Magna Carta project will
be to help piece together these relationships.
We have tended to see the distribution of texts like Magna
Carta as a one-to-many relationship, with a single approved text (the letters
testimonial) being handed down and disseminated. But there were a number of
earlier drafts of Magna Carta, the text of which is preserved in statute
collections. This was first pointed out by Galbraith (1967), and David Carpenter (2015a: 19-21) has
recently identified many more examples of texts derived from drafts
incorporated into statute collections. The dissemination of Magna Carta was
many-to-many, with drafts circulating and institutions presenting texts of the
charter for sealing. Indeed, analogously, the process of dissemination of this
political text reflects the way in which literary scholars have come to
appreciate the complex cross-currents and intersections in the spread of
literary texts, which do not follow simple hierarchies of descent. In this
context, prescriptive ideas of authenticity are not helpful, and it is worth
remembering Galbraith’s dictum that for contemporaries, for whom it was the act
of making the grant which counted, the documents recording Magna Carta ‘would
have meant no more than a carbon copy, or a printed copy of, say, a modern
treaty means to-day’ (Galbraith 1948: 123). This outlook was still evident in 1731 when Speaker
Onslow’s reaction to the damage to Ci
was simply to have a certified copy made in a modern hand, as if it was a
property deed which had been damaged.
(This vera
copia is now shares a pressmark with Ci,
as Cotton Ch. Xiii.31b.)
Moreover, for many people in thirteenth-century England, it was
how they heard Magna Carta which counted. Holt drew attention in 1974 to a French text of
Magna Carta made shortly after 1215 in the Cartulary of Pont Audemer which also
contains a French version of the writ of 24 June 1215 (Holt 1985: 239-57).
Holt (1985: 242) proposes that the Magna Carta of 1215 was ‘the
first document of political importance known to have been issued in the
vernacular’. This is a problematic claim at a number of levels: it assumes that
pre-conquest vernacular texts such as lawcodes were not of political
importance; and it ignores suggestions that the content of Henry I’s coronation
charter must have been made known in French and English, since it was addressed
‘all his barons and faithful men, as well French as English born’ (Poole 1913:
444-5). It is also worth noting Poole’s hint that the second charter of
Stephen of 1136 might also have been promulgated in the vernacular: ‘It looks
as though a scribe familiar with the style of French charters had attempted to
produce a diploma in the Old English form’ (Poole 1913: 447).
French translations of reissues of Magna Carta also survive in
other statute collections, such as Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Peniarth 329a
(Holt 1985: 243 n. 2). The fact that the Pont Audemer copy of the 1215 also
includes a translation of the writ ordering the sheriff to proclaim the terms
of the Charter indicate that the translation was made for use in a
proclamation. Holt reviews evidence for the use of vernacular languages in
proclamations for the thirteenth century. The re-issues of the Charter of 1216,
1217 and 1225, the Provisions of Merton, were also proclaimed in the shire
courts. Holt assumes that these proclamations would have been in French and not
English, a conclusion supported by Carpenter (2015a: 431): ‘We do not know the
language of these readings, but they were probably in French as well as Latin’. In Holt’s view, the use of English for
such proclamations began with the 1255 order concerning the excommunication of
the infringers of Magna Carta which was to be ‘published clearly and lucidly
both in the English and French tongue whenever and wherever it may seem
expedient’ (Holt 1985: 242). Holt also notes the well-known royal letters of
October 1258 confirming the Provisions of Oxford and promulgating ordinances
for the reform of local government, issued in both French and English ‘so that
they might be read by the sheriffs and understood and observed intact by all
men in the future’ (Holt 1985: 242). In 1300, Edward I ordered Magna Carta to
be proclaimed in Westminster Hall both ‘literally’ and ‘in the language of the
country’ (lingua patria) (Carpenter
2015a: 431).
The assumption has been that Magna Carta would have been disseminated in
French and not English, and that the use of English in proclaiming major political
documents developed only from the middle of the thirteenth century. However, recent
work emphasizing the vibrancy and continued
vitality of English in the twelfth century would seem to point towards the
possibility that Magna Carta and its thirteenth-century reissues were
proclaimed in English as well as French. The process of preparing these translations
for proclamation was evidently an informal and ad hoc one, and it was only the
chance discovery of the Pont Audemer text in 1974 that documented the French
translation. It is worth noting that Poole (1913: 450) was more open than Holt
and Carpenter to the possibility that Magna Carta was proclaimed in English in
1215, suggesting that the procedure adopted was similar to that for the
Provisions of Oxford. Although Magna Carta was a settlement between John and
the nobility and a grant directed to freeman, its ramifications were
wide-ranging and in matters such as fish weirs or weights and measures it would
certainly have been necessary to convey information about Magna Carta in
English. Further investigation of the language of Magna Carta, and linking this
understanding to recent scholarship on the history of English during the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is a major area for future investigation; much of the discussion of this topic is still dependent on work done by
Reginald Lane Poole and Faith Thompson over eighty years ago.
There is much more to learn, then, as demonstrated by the brilliant new work of the Magna Carta project team.
Our work on the Salisbury origins of its own extant Magna Carta demonstrates that the process of textual dissemination for the 1215 Charter was
indeed a complex and multi-faceted one, and that these diplomata were both produced and received in a variety of contexts. For King John’s subjects, it may have been how they heard Magna Carta that counted. For them the ephemeral and live text proclaimed in
the towns and meeting places would have been as authentic a Magna Carta as the
four original surviving instantiations from 1215 are for modern scholars. That this Great Charter can still generate such interest and debate is testimony to its continuing significance for all of its many successive audiences.
Acknowledgements
Elaine Treharne should like to thank the Dean--the Very
Reverend June Osborne--and the Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral for their
permission to work in the Library and Archive. In particular, I should like to
thank the Canon Chancellor, Reverend Canon Edward Probert, and the Archivist,
Mrs Emily Naish. I owe enormous gratitude to Mrs Naish for many helpful
conversations, for her knowledge of the archive, her kindness and her time.
References and Further
Reading
Breay, Claire. 2002. Magna Carta: Manuscripts and Myths. London: The British Library.
Breay, Claire, and Harrison, Julian, eds. 2015. Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy.
London: The British Library.
Carpenter, David. 2015a. Magna
Carta. London: Penguin Classics.
Chaplais, Pierre. 1971. English
Royal Documents, King John-Henry VI (1199-1461). Oxford: The Clarendon
Press.
Clanchy, M. T. 2013. From
Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Collins, Arthur Jeffries. 1948. The Documents of the Great
Charter of 1215. Proceedings of the
British Academy 34: 233-79.
Denholm-Young, N. 1954. Handwriting
in England and Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Derolez, Albert. 2003. The
Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth
Century. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Galbraith, V. H. 1967. A Draft of Magna Carta (1215).
Proceedings of the British Academy 53: 345-60.
Grieve, Hilda E. P. 1954. Examples
of English Handwriting, 1150-1750. Colchester: Essex Record Office Publications.
Hector, L. C. 1966. The
Handwriting of English Documents. Dorking: Kohler and Coombs Ltd.
Holt, J. C. 1985. Magna
Carta and Medieval Government. London and Ronceverte: Hambledon Press.
Holt, J. C. 2015. Magna
Carta, 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parkes, M. B. 1969. English
Cursive Book Hands, 1250-1500. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Prescott, Andrew. 1997. ‘Their Present Miserable
State of Cremation’: the Restoration of the Cotton Library in C. J. Wright ed., Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on
an Early Stuart Lawyer and his Legacy. London: The British Library, pp.
391-454.
Rich Jones, W. H., ed. 1883. Register of S. Osmund (London: Longman & Co.), 2 vols.
Rowlands, I. W. The Text and Distribution of the Writ for the
Publication of Magna Carta, 1215. English
Historical Review, 124: 1422-31.
Stroud, Daphne. 1981. Salisbury’s Magna Carta: Was It Issued by
the Chancery? The Hatcham Review 2:12: 51-8.
Treharne, Elaine. 2018. Collective
Memories in Salisbury Cathedral Library and Archives, 1200 to 1600.
Vincent, Nicholas. 2004. ‘Why 1199? Bureaucracy and Enrolment
under John and his Contemporaries’, in Adrian Jobson, ed. English Government in the Thirteenth Century. Woodbridge: Boydell
and Brewer. pp. 17-48.
Vincent, Nicholas. 2010. Australia’s
Magna Carta. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Vincent, Nicholas. 2012. Magna
Carta: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
And the echoing remnant of an absent figure is attested here by just the point of his spear-like obelus (see Trinity College's superb digital repository for this and many other manuscripts): 
