A Collection of Chester Comital Charters Relating to Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Leicestershire and Derbyshire

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article provides transcriptions (where possible) and commentary on seven charters of Earls Ranulf II and III of Chester that have not previously been published in full. Although Leicestershire and Derbyshire were not the most important of the earls’ lands, these charters illuminate that they were nevertheless active in this region. The first and second charters, untranscribed due to copyright restrictions, were only known previously from antiquarian copies: discovery of the originals fortifies the likely foundation date of Calke Priory. The third attests to Ranulf II’s attempts to influence lesser knights. Earl Ranulf III in charters four and five is concerned with the minutiae of landed business in Derbyshire. Charter six is an original for St. Werburgh’s Abbey, Chester, of which few are known. Finally, charter seven, previously known from an abbreviated version, forms part of the corpus of material showing the royal administrator Stephen de Segrave’s ambitious land acquisition in the early thirteenth century.