Well, the problem is that one reads verdicts such as 'forgery' and
'spurious' or 'doubful' in books referring to AS charters; but this doesn't
mean the charters don't provide some valid information. Just perhaps not at
the date they're supposed to be, and witness lists may not be convincing,
but may be copied from other charters (which is usually the giveaway). I
don't know if they were reconstructed simply from memory. My impression on a
bitty acquaintance with Sawyer's Anglo-Saxon Charters is that similarity to
other charters is what causes scholars to be nervous; if charters were
accurately reconstructed from memory, there wouldn't be much to betray it.
As many (most?) surviving charters are transcripts, dating the handwriting
isn't always much use.
The only ref to Beoley's bounds in Sawyer's index is to his charter no. 786,
King Edgar to Pershore Abbey, AD 972. Some scholars such as Finberg accept
it as authentic, but e.g. Dorothy Whitelock regarded it as 'suspicious'.
It's part of a group that look a bit too similar to each other.
In any case, Della Hooke isn't someone I feel at all qualified to challenge.
Christine Buckley
----- Original Message -----
From: "Madeleine Gray" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 3:59 PM
Subject: Re: Jacob's Well, Beoley PS
> Presumably it depends on how you define forgery - much of the early Welsh
> material in eg the Book of Llan Daf is copied from generation to
generation
> but careful historical detective work can identify an authentic core. And
> to what extent is a copy from memory in a chartulary of a document which
> has been lost a forgery?
>
> Maddy
>
>
> Dr Madeleine Gray, in the foothills of God's golden county of Gwent
> (Department of Humanities and Science
> UWCN Caerleon Campus
> PO Box 179
> Newport NP18 3YG
> Tel: +44 (0)1633.432675
> http://humanities.newport.ac.uk/history.html)
>
> 'Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought'
>
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