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Anglo-Saxon charters are documents from the early medieval period in England, which typically made a grant of land, or recorded a privilege. The earliest surviving charters were drawn up in the 670s: the oldest surviving charters granted land to the Church, but from the eighth century, surviving charters were increasingly used to grant land to lay people. The term ''charter'' covers a range of written legal documentation including diplomas, writs and wills.〔P.H. Sawyer, ''Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography'', (London, 1968)〕 A diploma was a royal charter that granted rights over land or other privileges by the king, whereas a writ was an instruction (or prohibition) by the king which may have contained evidence of rights or privileges. Diplomas were usually written on parchment in Latin, but often contained sections in the vernacular, describing the bounds of estates, which often correspond closely to modern parish boundaries. The writ was authenticated by a seal and gradually replaced the diploma as evidence of land tenure during the late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods. Land held by virtue of a charter was known as ''bookland''. Charters have provided historians with fundamental source material for understanding Anglo-Saxon England, complementing the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' and other literary sources. They are catalogued in Peter Sawyer's ''Annotated List'' and are usually referred to by their Sawyer number (e.g. S407). == Survival and authenticity == The Anglo-Saxon charter can take many forms: it can be a lease (often presented as a chirograph), a will, an agreement, a writ or, most commonly, a grant of land.〔 Our picture is skewed towards those that regard land, particularly in the earlier period (though it must also be admitted that the emergence of wills and cyrographs also owed much to later development). Land charters can further be subdivided into ''royal charters'', or diplomas, and ''private charters'' (donations by figures other than the king). Over a thousand Anglo-Saxon charters are extant today, as a result of being maintained in the archives of religious houses. These preserved their charters so as to record their right to land. Some surviving charters are later copies, which sometimes include interpolations. Anglo-Saxon charters were sometimes used in legal disputes, and the recording of the contents of a charter within a legal document has ensured the survival of text when the original charter has been lost. Overall, some two hundred charters exist in the original form, whilst others are post-Conquest copies, that were often made by the compilers of cartularies (collections of title-deeds) or by early modern antiquaries. The importance of charters in legal disputes over land as evidence of land tenure, gave rise to numerous charter forgeries,〔(Stephenson's 1898 lectures on "The Anglo-Saxon Chancery" )〕 sometimes by those same monastic houses in whose archives they were preserved. The primary motivation for forging charters was to provide evidence of rights to land. Often forging was focussed on providing written evidence for the holdings recorded as belonging to a religious house in the ''Domesday Book''. It is important when studying charters to establish their authenticity. The study of charters to determine authenticity gave rise to diplomatics - the science of ancient documents. Anglo-Saxon charters are catalogued in Peter Sawyer's 'Annotated List', and are usually referred to by their Sawyer number (e.g. S407). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Anglo-Saxon charters」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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