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36 HISTORY OF CORN MILLING: vol. iv.
SHREWSBURY P^^^^^^y ^^ Convenient to follow their example, and
ABBEY curtly dismiss it as a forgery ; but while reasonable
^ 'explanation
of its terms is. possible and tenable proof
f" j^ of is it forgery lacking, becomes a duty to accept and
Charter, 1094. endeavour to somewhat explain it. They impugn the
Text, post, p, 41. deed (which no doubt was drafted by the monks) on
the following grounds :—
Hist. Shby.,
It relates how the earl, by the licence of King William, with
ii. 15, 16. whose name in the first person this pretended charter sets out [i]^
and Archbishop Lanfranc, and Peter, Bishop of Chester, who had died
in 1085 [2], assembled monks there in the year from the incarnation
of our Lord 1087, a mode of dating unknown in English charters of
that . . . age [3]. The manrter in which the Conqueror is made ta
speak of Earl Roger is perfectly ridiculous : that '
was venerable
nobleman, after a
'
lapse of years, to the monks who shared his bounty,.
but it is absurd to suppose that a sovereign would thus style a
subject [4].
In every one of these boldly advanced condemna-
tions (numbered here, as above, for reference) the
historians are utterly wrong, and if the document is
to be proved a forgery it must be done on other
grounds than those they advance.*
* [i] They fail to discover that this is a charter of William II., not of
WiUiam I., and consequently that it does not set out in the first person with the
name of the latter, but with the name of the former ; under the auspices of whom,
and of Bishop Robert the abbey was opened in 1087.
[2] There appears to be neither error nor ambiguity in the allusion to Bishop
Peter. It is true that he died in 1085, but it was he who in March 1083, as
Ordericus states, had granted the original licence to Roger to establish the house.
His authority did not die with him ; and, as the charter states, in 1087 the monki
ultimately "congregated," or assembled, under his original licence— not in hislifetime
or presence, as the historians mistakenly conceive. Precisely the same
statement as to Bishop Peter, with equal accuracy, is made in the Historia, quoted
later.
[3] The charter is not dated in Arabic figures, "1087," in a mode thea
uncommon, but exactly as follows—anno ab Incarnatione Domini millesimooctogesimo
septimo. Some one, later, has marked the figures "1087" in the
margin as a reference (see Monasticon, edition of 1682), and the historians seem.
to have confused this with the charter itself.
Codex Dipl. [4] Sovereigns frequently and ordinarily styled subjects "Venerable." In-
/Evi. Sax., I. xxj stances may be adduced by the score, from the time of Ethelbald, who thus.
passim. addressed Hubert (Ego Aethibald . . . ttenerabile Seruo dei Eauberht^e), and
Rymer's Foedera, other Saxon kings; to Richard I. in 1194 (Ricardus rex Anglia . . . Venerabile
5 Richard Let seq'. P^^" Hubert); Edward IV. in 1478 (Edwardus rex . . . Venerabilis pater
Johannes) ; and so on. In fact, " Venerable" war, an ordinary courtesy title usually
applied to distinguished clerics : and it was in this capacity that, in 1094, the
distinguished monk Earl Roger was so addressed. The same term, used in the
admittedly genuine charter of Henry III. to Shrewsbury, quoted later, passes
unnoticed by the local historians.