• DOI:10.1080/0078172X.2019.1627790
• Corpus ID: 197810250

An original charter of King John at Ushaw College, Co. Durham (Ushaw MS 66)

@article{Pohl2019AnOC,
  title={An original charter of King John at Ushaw College, Co. Durham (Ushaw MS 66)},
  author={Benjamin Pohl},
  journal={Northern History},
  year={2019},
  volume={56},
  pages={138 - 151}
}

• B. Pohl
• Published 27 June 2019
• History
• Northern History

The purpose of this note is to make available the text of an original early thirteenthcentury royal confirmation charter recently (re-)discovered by the author in the archives of Ushaw College, Co. Durham, along with a concise commentary concerning the document’s historical context and wider significance. The royal charter was recorded (without a reference number) by Martin Snape in his edition of the acta of the bishops of Durham, but it has otherwise escaped the attention of historians. The card catalogue in the College’s special collections search room lists the charter as ‘MS 66’, as does a typewritten handlist that would seem to have been compiled by the late Ian (A.I.) Doyle (of Durham University) and Father Michael Sharratt (of Ushaw College), and which is now kept in the reading room of Palace Green Library. Neither of these lists has ever been published, making them difficult to access for researchers outside of Durham. Similarly, there is no known record of either the charter’s provenance or how/when it came to Ushaw, though it is possible that it might once have belonged to the medieval monastic archives of Durham Cathedral Priory. Hopefully future research stimulated by this note will shed more light on this subject.