action of the English common law. But no direct influence need be
sought: in a similar context of property transactions by charter between
king and landlords, enforced by the same sort of territorial official (the
Latin term for the Anglo-Norman sheriff was vice-comes, ‘viscount’),
similar procedures might be expected to develop. By the early eleventh
century, English kings were sending writ-charters to counties, which
ordered the thegns to see that the grants were fulfilled and hear disputes
that might arise from them.^26 Legal processes grew out of the con-
firmation by kings of the property-rights of churches and nobility, by
charters which (though given to the beneficiary) were addressed to the
king’s ‘agents, present and future’, who would have the job of enforcing
them.^27 At the same time as the diploma was handed over, special orders
might be directed to officials, repeating the terms of the immunity, lay-
ing down the special fine of 600s. for its infringement, and perhaps
ordering that disputes about it be sent before the king.^28 The authenti-
cation of charters by the king’s hand and seal, and their witnessing by
members of the king’s entourage, were also intended to ensure that
land-rights remained stable and ‘inviolate for the future’; and conversely
they influenced the further evolution of royal authority.^29 The sealed
charter published abroad the king’s authority, but the witnesses intro-
duced the notion of consent by the magnates to what were in fact the
king’s most important political acts. Royal orders defined the economic
as well as the social power of the aristocracy: for instance, both
Merovingian and late medieval Scottish kings had a form of letter de
aqueductu, to protect the beneficiary’s watercourse.^30 The charters of
the Carolingian kings confirmed the personal liberty (statum libertatis)
of individuals when it was threatened by officials; and the corporate
Pleas before the king 17(^26) H. Brunner, Die Entstehung der Schwurgerichte(Berlin, 1871), 76–83; id., Zur Rechts-
geschichte der römischen und germanischen Urkunde, 158–61.
(^27) Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill, ed. R. C. van Caenegem, Selden
Soc. 77 (London, 1959), 122; The treatise on the laws and customs of the realm of England
commonly called Glanvill, ed. and tr. G. D. G. Hall (London, 1965), 5; cf. Formulae, 62–6
(Marculf, I, nos. 31–5), 291–2 (5, 6), 322–3; Tessier, Diplomatique, 18–20, 22–4, 26 ff.;
Classen, ‘Kaiserreskript’, part ii. 89.
(^28) The confirmation of an immunity was regularly called a praeceptum immunitatis: see 9th-
cent. examples amongst the charters of Lewis the German, Ludovici Germanici, Karlomanni,
Ludowici Iunioris Diplomata, ed. P. Kehr, MGH Diplomata regum Germaniae ex stirpe
Karolinorum 1, (Berlin, 1956), 69. 1 , 86. 30 , 96. 5 , etc.
(^29) Pippini etc. Diplomata, 323. 25 (for a typical example of authentication by hand and
seal); English Historical Documents[general editor: D. C. Douglas], i. c.500–1042, ed.
D. Whitelock (London, 1955), 442, 444, 446, 448, 451, 452, 454, 459, 475, etc.; W. Levison,
England and the Continent in the Eighth Century(Oxford UP, 1946), 230–1; Stenton, Latin
Charters, 34–7; P. Wormald, ‘Charters, Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Anglo-Saxon
England’, in The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Davies and Fouracre.
(^30) Formulae, 322–3; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes, 12
vols. (Edinburgh, 1814–75), ii. 22, c. 2 (a. 1434).