Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Charite, William
CHARITE, WILLIAM (1422–1502?), monkish writer, compiled a register of St. Mary's Abbey, Leicester, of which he was prior, a collection of charters and other muniments belonging to the abbey, and a catalogue of the library. The register ('Rentale Novum Generale Mon. B. M. de Pratis Leycestrie') contains the rent-roll of the abbey, affording the means of estimating the depreciation of landed property caused by the plague of 1436, detailed information as to the various customary tenures on which the lands were let, a list of the incumbents of the benefices in the gift of the house, and the like. A considerable portion of it was printed from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library (Laud MS. 623) by Nichols in the appendix to vol. i. of his 'History of Leicestershire' (vol. i. pt. ii. app. 53-100). The collection of charters ('Repertorium Chartarum Abbatie de Leycestria') is preserved in a damaged condition in the Cottonian Library (Vitellius, F xvii.) The catalogue of the library, also printed by Nichols from Laud MS. 623 (Leicestershire, i. pt. ii. app. 101), contains few works of importance, but mentions in all twenty-three rolls as written by Charite with ms own hand, of which all but the foregoing have perished.
[Nichols's Leicestershire, i. pt. ii. 591.]