Another weighty argument is derived from the fact that there are but very few charters of the kings which do not in some formula or another profess that many illustrious persons have consented to or have witnessed the making of the deed. We have no desire to detract from the significance of this fact, still we ought to examine our documents with care. Such words as a charter has about 'consent' may occur in two different contexts. They may occur in close connexion with the words of gift, 'the operative words,' as our conveyancers say, or they may occur in the eschatocol, the clause which deals with the execution and attestation of the instrument. If we come across two deeds, one of which tells us how 'I king Æthelwulf with the consent and leave of my bishops and great men give land to a church or a thegn,' while the other says nothing of consent until it tells us how 'This charter was written on such a day _his testibus consentientibus_,' we must not at once treat them as saying the same thing in two different ways.
For this purpose we may divide our charters into three periods. The first begins with the few genuine charters of the seventh century and ends in the reign of Egbert, the second endures until the reign of Edward the Elder, the third until the Norman Conquest. It will be well understood that we draw no hard line; each period has its penumbra; but the years 800 and 900 or 925 may serve to mark very rudely the two limits of the middle period. Now a clause in the body of the deed stating that the gift is made by the consent of the witan is characteristic of this middle period. Any one who wishes to forge a royal land-book of the ninth century should insert this clause; any one who wishes to forge a deed of the tenth or of the eighth century should think twice before he makes use of it. To be more exact, it becomes a common form under Cenwulf of Mercia and Egbert of Wessex; it grows very rare under Æthelstan[911]. In the meanwhile it serves as a common form, and it appears in deeds wherein the king says in forcible terms that he is disposing of his land and his inheritance[912]. During the last of our three periods all that is ascribed to the great men whose crosses follow the king's cross is little, if anything, more than the function of witnesses. A deed of Æthelstan's day will end with some such formula as the following: 'this book was written at such a place and time, and its authority was confirmed by the witnesses whose names are written below.' But very often there is no such concluding formula: we have simply the list of witnesses and their crosses, and of each of them it is said that he consented and subscribed. Later in the tenth century the formula which introduces the names of the witnesses will hardly admit that they in any sense confirmed the transaction; it will say merely, 'This book was written on such a day _his testibus consentientibus quorum nomina inferius caraxantur_.' On this will follow the names and crosses; and of each bishop--but not as a general rule of any other witness--it will be said that he has done something for the stability of the deed. To convey this information, the scribe rings the changes on a score of Latin words--_subscripsi_, _consensi_, _consolidavi_, _corroboravi_, _confirmavi_, _conscripsi_, _consignavi_, _adquievi_, _praepinxi_, _praepunxi_, _praenotavi_, and so forth, thereby showing that he has no very clear notion as to what it really is that the bishop does. But this degradation of what seems to be a formula of assent into a formula of attestation has been noticed by others[913], and it is more to our purpose to examine the charters of the earliest period, for then, if at any time, the folk-land should have appeared in its true character as the land of the people.
