Norman Charters from English Sources: Antiquaries, Archives and the Rediscovery of the Anglo-Norman Past, by Nicholas Vincent

Abstract

This book by Nicholas Vincent comprises an edition of an illustrative selection of material relating to Normandy to be found in English archives and, just as important, an explanation of how that material came to reside in England (and elsewhere, for that matter). In a lengthy introduction, comprising four essays in archival history, readers will thus find the ‘fascinating, but to date neglected story of the earliest antiquaries, both English and French, whose exploration of Norman archives helps to explain why so many Anglo-Norman antiquities are today to be found in England rather than France’ (p. 1). The edition itself comprises the texts of some 121 acts. The last forty-five of them (only ten of which have up till now been printed in full) relate to the French properties and rights of Canterbury cathedral priory, and in particular to its claims to wine from vineyards around Poissy and its exemptions from tolls and customs along the Seine. They are introduced in the fourth essay of the Introduction, where Vincent notes: ‘All told, our evidences are of very great significance for the final years of Plantagenet rule in Normandy, and supply a keen insight into relations between England and the lords of the Norman frontier’ (p. 99), although that relationship seems principally to have been personal and religious, for, ‘through their generosity to Canterbury, the French aristocracy was not necessarily demonstrating an attachment to England so much as approval of a saint, Thomas Becket, whose entire career could be read as a condemnation of the tyranny of the Plantagenet kings’ (p. 99). The final part of the essay explains why so many of these acts are no longer found at Canterbury but at other archives, notably the British Library. Here the finger is pointed squarely at Sir Edward Dering, who plundered the Canterbury archives during the seventeenth century, and whose ill-gotten gains were later passed to the likes of Thomas Astle and Robert Cotton, and thus, by various routes, to their present homes.