K. Ina, the Privilege of K. Edgar, and the Charter of St Patrick. The lists which follow are of charters of the Norman period and later.
It is of some importance to observe that, with two exceptions, all the charters up to the end of the tenth century, which are found in Monyngton's Secretum, are discoverable either in the calendar of the Liber Terrarum or in the Lists of Ancient Charters above described. The exceptions are: (1) a brief Privilege of K. Ina (B. C. S. 109), which might have been copied for Monyngton from the De Antiquitate (p. 51); and (2) a charter of K. Edgar granting Buckland to Ælfthryth his queen, which may have escaped the eye of the compiler or of some copyist of these lists.
Part of the value of the titles thus preserved to us in the Trinity MS lies in the fact that, though they present many instances of misspelling, they not infrequently enable us to correct mistakes in charters which have been printed from Monyngton's Secretum. One example, which is of some interest in itself, will sufficiently illustrate this. There has been much discussion as to the name of the father of Duke Athelstan, the 'Half-King' as he was called, who ultimately became a monk at Glastonbury. The sole evidence hitherto has been a note appended to the Wrington charter of K. Edward the Elder (B. C. S. 606), where we find the words: ' Athelstan dux Alius Etheredi.' They are thus printed by Birch from MS Bodl., Wood A. 1, f. 206 6 (i. e. the Secretum) and the Glastonbury MS at Longleat, f. 341. ' Etheredi ' has been supposed to be a scribe's error for ' Ethelredi ', and the historians have sought without success to identify this Ethelred. The editors of the Crawford Charters (1895) conjectured (p. 83) that the 'Ethelfrith dux ' to whom the charter was granted was himself Duke Athelstan's father: in other words that 'Etheredi ' is a corruption of 'Ethelfredi'. The conjecture becomes a certainty when we read the title of the charter as recorded in the calendar of the Liber Terrarum:
Edwardus de Wring. [Uurinton. supra lin.] dat. Æthelfritho, quam ejus Alius Ethelstanus dux ded. G.
APPENDIX B
The Two Earliest Glastonbury Charters
The early Glastonbury charters have never been systematically examined. The texts are readily accessible in Birch's Cartularium Saxonicum; and, though it is possible that further research might add to their number or improve their quality, we have enough material already to challenge the attention of the diplomatic expert whose trained experience would enable him to discern the precious from the vile and establish for the historian and the topographer the reasonable certainty of facts which at present they must needs view with suspicion. We are being taught in other directions that it is not enough to say that a charter is genuine or spurious. Fragments of genuine charters are embodied in late copies which have been remodelled for reasons often hidden from us. The compiler of a chartulary will sometimes abbreviate his documents, change the spelling of placenames, recast the bounds, add the date of the Christian era—all for practical purposes and with no fraudulent motive of any kind. The Glastonbury
