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JENKINS PRINTED FOR THE RECORDS BRANCH OF THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE ARCHJEOLOGICAL SOCIETY Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd. London and Aylesbury for the Records Branch of the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society (being Volume 2 of the publications of the Branch and issued for the year 1938) Printed & made in Great Britain "... sed codex multa habet quae historiam dicti Monasterii, et Comitatus etiam Buckinghamensis, bene illustrant." Catalogue of the Harleian MSS. sub numero 3688. r CONTENTS Introduction page ix The Cartulary I Appendix A 238 Appendix B 244 Appendix C 246 Index 25I vii ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS USED Additions and interlineations, which form part of the final record, are in parentheses, and marked by the symbol I" (filius) Marginal notes by the scribe * (nora) Terminal expansions, especially of personal names when the right ending is conjectured, are printed in italic . Reginaldo Interpolations and additions by the transcriber [etc. Warranty clause] Blank spaces in MS. indicated by [blank] or . Terminal expansions, especially of place-names, when the right ending is uncertain, are left with an apostrophe Messenden' Pipe Roll Society volumes P.R.S. I Victoria County History of Buckingham V.C.H. Lipscomb's History and antiquities of the county of Buckingham Lipscomb Bucks and Beds Pipe Rolls of the reign of Richard I, edited by G. H. Fowler and M. W. Hughes B. & B.P.R. Publications of Bedfordshire Historical Record Society B.H.R.S. Rotuli Hugonis de Welles, Canterbury and York Society, vols. i, iii, iv Welles Rotuli Roberti Grosseteste, Canterbury and York Society, vol. x . Grosseteste Rotuli Ricardi Gravesend, Canterbury and York Society, vol. xxxi Gravesend viii INTRODUCTION (a) Tn~. CARTULARY THE Cartulary or register of deeds and charters relating to Missenden Abbey which forms the subject of this volume is preserved in the Harleian collection in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 3688). It measures 14¼ in. X 9 in. × 21 in.; the binding is modern. The transcription was the work of Robert de Welwes or Wells, and, as he himself tells us in the words written at the head of the firstMissenden charter, his task was completed in 133o. The writing throughout is in a good fourteenth-century hand, except for a few later additions and interpolations. So far as one can judge, the transcriber appears to have done his work accurately and wet1, and to have had the intention at least of copying the original charters verbatim et literatim. Unfortunately, none of these original charters appears to have survived, so that it has proved impossible to check his accuracy by the method of collation. Tanner, in his Notitia Monastica (p. 25, 1744 edition), mentions two cartularies, one in the possession of Edward Coke, of Holkham, Norfolk, con- taining 124 folios, and the other described as at one time in the possession of Lady Dormer. The former is dealt with below, but I have been unable to discover the fate of the cartulary owned by Lady Dormer. It is probable, I think, that this is the cartulary which found its way into the Harleian collection, especially as Tanner does not refer to the Harleian MS. The date of its acquisition for the collection is, however, known, for in Wanley's Diary (Lansdowne MS. 772), under the date I9 Nov., 1725, the following entry appears: '14. This day (at noon) by my Lord's Order, I went to Mr. Anderson, and paid him for six imperfect manuscripts. The principal of them is an old Chartulary of Missendene Abbey, which wanteth one leaf, if not more. These books are all marked with the date of this day.' From other entries in the diary it appears that Anderson was only acting for the real owner, whose name unfortunately is not mentioned. In the Index to the diary Anderson is ix X INTRODUCTION described as Thomas Anderson, late Writer to the Signet in £ Scotland. The date on fo. I* of the Cartulary is in Wanley's handwriting. e t (b) TH~ BROWN~. WIT LIS TRANSCRIPT 1 c, One would have expected to find the Coke cartulary, L referred to above, in the great library of the Earl of Leicester t at Holkham, but I am informed that no such cartulary exists there at the present time. There is, however, in the Bodleian Library a transcript of this cartulary (Browne Willis MS. 5) which Browne Willis, the great Buckinghamshire antiquary, caused to be made in the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the transcript the following note appears: 'N.B. The follow- ing Register of Missenden was lent me by Peter Le Neve Nor- roy K. at Arms and these sheets transcribed by Mr. Slyford in about Io days. As to the Index on the next page it is taken from a very imperfect and almost illegible one entered in a modern hand at the beginning of the MSS. which is wrote on vellum and contains 125 folios. It belonged to the Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke and was borrowed by Mr. Le Neve of His Heir Mr. Coke of Holcumb, Co. Norfolk.' Presumably Browne Willis returned the manuscript to Le Neve, and it is possible that the latter, after the manner of borrowers, omitted to deliver it to the owner at Holkham; at all events its present whereabouts, if it still exists, cannot be ascertained. From the evidence afforded by the contents of the Browne Willis tran- script, it would appear that the original cartulary was com- piled about the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the four- teenth century, and was, therefore, not very much earlier in date than the Harleian MS. But in the absence of the cartulary and without the opportunity of inspecting the handwriting, it is really impossible to assign a date; the fact that one of the charters is dated as late as I322 (see Appendix A, No. I8) does not necessarily imply that the whole cartulary was written then or later. The principal value of the Browne Willis transcript lies in the fact that several of the twelfth-century charters are given a precise date, which in nearly every case is supported by the evidence of the charters themselves. These dates could hardly have been inserted by Browne Willis or his amanuensis, nor INTRODUCTION xi could they have been supplied with such exactitude by the monastic transcriber working a century and a half after the execution of the original charters; the only conclusion seems to bc that the charters themselves were dated, an unusual but not unknown occurrence.