Why was it not regarded as essential (at the very least beneficial) for the date when a charter was executed to have been recorded at the time?

Were subscribing witnesses to a charter assembled together when the parties named in it executed it? If not, what were they actually witnessing?

On Tuesday, 27 December 2022 at 12:33:28 UTC, alj...@googlemail.com wrote:
> Why was it not regarded as essential (at the very least beneficial) for the date when a charter was executed to have been recorded at the time?
>
> Were subscribing witnesses to a charter assembled together when the parties named in it executed it? If not, what were they actually witnessing?

I presume you are referring to Anglo-Norman charters. Twelfth-century charters, for example, in Flanders, Artois and Picardy were normally dated. And by the mid-thirteenth century, many English charters were being dated.

One possible explanation is that the date of the Anglo-Norman charter would not necessarily have been the date of the conveyance. The conveyance was carried out at a ceremony held in public where the donor would hand over to the beneficiary something symbolic (a piece of turf or a knife). One time, William the Conqueror, when donating land to an abbot, threatened to stab the abbot's hand with the knife. This would have helped the witnesses remember the occasion. The written charter would usually be worded as simply a confirmation of the ceremony (e.g. sciatis me concessisse et hac carta mea confirmasse ...).

The other peculiarity is how rarely charters were produced in courts of law or administrative proceedings. There was a strong preference for the testimony of witnesses -- who were quite often not those mentioned in the charter. In Domesday Book there are a few mentions of charters, but most of the data was provided by panels of local jurors. Even much later, inquisitions post mortem were based, not on charters, but again on evidence from a panel of jurors.

Medieval charters were not the same as modern conveyances.

Peter Howarth

On 27-Dec-22 11:33 PM, Alan Jones wrote:
> Why was it not regarded as essential (at the very least beneficial) for the date when a charter was executed to have been recorded at the time?

Original charters are more likely to have a dating clause (sometimes
just a regnal year and/or indiction, sometimes also a month and
sometimes the exact date including the weekday, although accuracy in
each of these details was not the strong suit of many scribes) than are
cartulary versions of these - usually because the latter were compiled
later, when the date did not matter very much.

> Were subscribing witnesses to a charter assembled together when the parties named in it executed it? If not, what were they actually witnessing?

This is impossible to answer definitively. Where an original still
exists it is mostly the case that all witness subscriptions (whether
signatures or marks) were made on the occasion of the enactment, but
there are plenty of documents with further subscriptions added later. In
undated charters - usually cartulary transcriptions or paraphrased
versions - these can be plainly anachronistic, leading to questions
about the authenticity of the document that may be misplaced. For
instance, the heir/s of a benefactor may have endorsed the original
charter along with clerics or others using titles of office that they
cannot have held at the time of the donation. It is not altogether rare
for two abbots of the same monastery or bishops of the same diocese,
perhaps successive although not necessarily so, to appear as witnesses
to the same business - clearly not simultaneously.

Peter Stewart

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Many thanks to Peter Howarth and Peter Stewart for their interesting replies.