Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Page twenty-two of Forgeries
| be said to have recovered in some measure its past misfortunes, by the countenance and assistance of several princes, though there appears to be great confusion in the dates of the several grants made to it |
You bet there was. Confusion about the dates was the least of their worries
| Godwyn I was at the council at Kingsbury, in 851. From this period to the Norman conquest the account of the bishops of this see is mutilated and uncertain. The deplorable state of those times, occasioned by the confusion of the Danish wars, darkening the history of both church and state with impenetrable obscurity; so far indeed we know by what followed, that most of the estates of this church were wrested from it, by one side or the other, none of which seem to have been restored till after the Norman conquest, so that this church and its bishops must have continued in a state of great poverty till that time |
Not so poor they could not manage to preserve for five hundred years the original charter as given to them by King Aethelbert. We know this because they copied it into the Textus Roffensis and the Textus Roffensis has survived.
Which is more than can be said for the original charter. The funny thing is, we can have copies, we can have what are claimed to be originals, but it seems we can never have both copies and originals. This affords an insight into historians’ notions about medieval record keeping
"'Quick, copy it into that cartulary before the next wave of foreigners comes along."
"Shall I destroy the original?"
"Yes, yes! Of course destroy the original. You've been here long enough to know that."
“I thought just this once ... it's King Aethelbert himself ..."
"You’re not here to think. It’s tradition. You don't mess with tradition. You know the rule as well as I do: take care of the copy as if your life depended on it, destroy the original."
* * *
The Gospels of St Augustine had those three remarkable properties
1. It was the personal possession of the individual who introduced Christianity to England
2. It is the oldest non-archaeological artefact in England
3. It is the earliest manuscript containing a written form of the language which would eventually become the world language, English.
We can now account for two of these. The twelfth century Canterbury monks created this gospel book precisely because its purported owner introduced Christianity into England and can therefore be associated with the very earliest
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