Huntingdonshire to Ramsey Abbey ‘for the soul of King Henry and
for the salvation of myself and my wife and my children and for the
salvation [not ‘the state’] of the whole realm’. Stephen’s opponent, the
Empress Matilda, made a political point in the summer of 1141 by
granting lands and rents at Oxford to Oseney Abbey ‘for the state and
stability of the kingdom of England and for the health and safety of
my lord the count of Anjou and my children and my own and for the
soul[s] of king Henry my father and queen Matilda my mother and our
ancestors and for the salvation of my soul and the remission of my
sins’.^99 But in the feudal world most royal charters to churches were
coming to follow the terms of grants to laymen, in which prayers for the
state of the kingdom could not be asked: the same terms, indeed, as of
the mass of grants made by lesser lords with no kingdoms to preserve in
stability.
The salvation of the souls of the grantor and the members of his
family as individuals remained the motive expressed for gifts to the
church at all social levels.^100 What threatened to disappear in feudal
society was the sense of the metaphysical status of the kingdom. The
intention that grants should last in firma stabilitatecontinued to be
affirmed, particularly in royal confirmations.^101 But in the more eco-
nomical type of charter which displaced the diploma in both England
and France, lords (including the king) registered the permanence of their
grants simply by affirming that they were to be held ‘in perpetuity’ or
‘in free, pure and perpetual alms’,^102 if they were made to churches, and
‘hereditarily’ or ‘in fee and heredity’ or ‘by hereditary right’, if they were
made to lay vassals.^103
Yet the ‘feudal mutation’ which began to slacken as the eleventh
66 The Courts of Lords and Townsmen
(^99) Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, iii. Regesta Regis Stephani ac Mathildis
Imperatricis ac Gaufridi et Henrici Ducum Normannorum 1135–1154, ed. H. A. Cronne and
R. H. C. Davis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), nos. 591, 592, 629, 667.
(^100) For examples: Regesta, ii. 316 (xlviii), 322 (lxiii), 324–5 (lxxv), 374 (cclvi), 375 (cclx),
iii. nos. 16, 376; T. Madox, Formulare Anglicanum(London, 1702), pp. iv, 238 (cccxcvi), 250
(ccccxxii).
(^101) Recueil des Actes de Philippe Ier, 233–4 (xc); Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, i.
190 (no. 157), 263 (no. 217), 367 (no. 304); Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, ii. 324–5
(LXXV);Reading Abbey Cartularies, 2 vols., ed. B. R. Kemp, Camden 4th Ser. 31, 33
(London: Royal Historical Society, 1986–7), i. 47–8, 51, 52, 61, 64, 67.
(^102) For examples, see Madox, Formulare Anglicanum, 238 (CCCXCVI); Regesta Regum
Anglo-Normannorum, iii, nos. 16, 376; M. L. Delisle, Recueil des Actes de Henri II con-
cernant Les Provinces Française: Introduction(Paris, 1909), 152–3; Recueil des Actes de
Philippe Auguste, i. 3 (no. 2), 157 (no. 128), 183 (no. 152), 259 (no. 213), ii. 43 (no. 509), 44
(no. 510), 68 (no. 528), 170 (no. 623), 173 (no. 626).
(^103) John Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England(Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1994), pp. 77–85; for examples: Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, ii. 322 (LXIII),
374 (CCLVI), 375 (CCLX), iii, no. 274;English Historical Documents, ii. 1042–1189, ed.
D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway (London, 1953), 926 (no. 252); Recueil des Actes de
Philippe Auguste, ii. 9 (no. 485), 92 (no. 542), 99 (no. 548), 100 (no. 549), 111 (no. 560), 226
(no. 669).