The Textus Roffensis - England's forgotten jewel

Everyone knows the names of the great documents of English history, Domesday Book and Magna Carta, but England produced documents long before the Normans arrived.  One of the far lesser known documents is the Textus Roffensis, the Book of Rochester, which, despite what the name suggests, has national importance.

The Textus is really two volumes bound into one, a collecting together of carefully selected old documents that were all copied at the same time and eventually came to be bound together.  They are not unconnected, indeed both volumes were written out by the same scribe and finished off by later hands.  One volume contains a copy of the laws of Æthelberht, king of Kent who, in 597, invited St Augustine to England to reintroduce Christianity to England and thus founded the cathedrals of Canterbury and Rochester.  It also contains a copy of the coronation charter of King Henry I from 1100.  The second contains a register of varying kinds of document, grants, charters and lists.

Lists of bishops.
Later names were added by different scribes

The Textus itself dates back to around 1122 and its compilation was almost certainly directed by Bishop Ernulf, a cleric of Bec, the same institution that produced the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc.  It was written, as I said, by one single scribe, one who was highly accomplished and was probably Prior Ordwine.  It was bound into one document at around 1314 and generally left alone beyond a few annotations in the margin from various hands up to the 17th century. Each page was numbered using arabic numerals which were only in use in England from around 1300 onwards, fitting with a binding date of c.1314.  We can say with some certainty that this was the case as the register volume contains lists of Archbishops of Canterbury and bishops of Rochester but both cease at 1314, Walter for Canterbury and Hamo of Rochester.  It was probably Hamo who directed it to be bound, a great promoter of Rochester cathedral.

The laws of Æthelberht as found in the Textus Roffensis is the earliest surviving codified law in the English language.  Written law was a sign of civilisation in Europe and to write down laws was to promote Kent.  Allowing St Augustine to visit would have been another sign that Æthelberht wanted to be seen as innovative, a renaissance man of his time.  Can we be sure that this is genuinely from Æthelberht's time? There will always be a touch of doubt over such a long period of time, these laws were already 500 years old when they were copied by Ordwine, but the language of the text is archaic English, the Jutish dialect which was never as widespread as West Saxon, and was lost when Mercian and West Midland dialects went on to become the base of the Middle English more familiar to Ordwine.  It couldn't be re-created.  Also, the laws were not attributed to Æthelberht but to the people of Kent, which was an early Frankish style, but later, say in the time of Alfred a little over 200 years later, it was the king who headed the law, not the people.

The only illuminated letter
 in the Textus

Henry I's coronation of charter of 1100 is also important as it is the oldest known copy of the document in existence, copied out in 1122 at the same time as the laws above.  In his coronation charter Henry promised to uphold the laws of Edward the Confessor.  The Rochester scriptorium preserved a version of the basis of them, Æthelberht's laws, a version for Ordwine to copy - did Henry use it?  He was known to the cathedral, its bishop, Gundulf, witnessed the coronation charter in 1100 and later in 1130 Henry attended the cathedral's re-consecration ceremony. The coronation charter was known to the rebel barons of 1215 and formed a loose basis for Magna Carta.

The other documents contained in the Textus Roffensis include two grants of land to the St Andrew's church in 604.  It is quite possible that both of these are forgeries, one almost certainly is, but if the other is not it could be the earliest record of English place names and street names.  Why would anyone forge grants of land from 604?  The answer lies in the other documents included by the same scribe in the Textus.

There is a list that contains details of all the parishes that paid for and received chrism from the cathedral, chrism being a holy oil for use in baptisms.  This list dates to 1080 at the latest, and is possibly pre-conquest.  It certainly pre-dates the great survey of England, Domesday Book.  Such a list records subservient parishes to the cathedral and sets out its rights over them.  Couple this with grants of land, you further extend, record and emphasis the cathedral's rights and responsibilities. This would be very useful if the need arose to assert those rights if they were ever encroached upon, or, in the case of Domesday Book, prove to an outside authority. 

Pages of the Textus showing marginalia,
arabic numerals and water damage
after it was dropped in the River Medway

Consider the situation here - Anglo Saxon monks and an accomplished Anglo Saxon Prior with a highly regarded Norman bishop asserting the rights of an institution founded under a forward thinking Anglo Saxon king, asserting its rights to land granted before the conquest.  Bishop Ernulf was recording the heritage of his institution from before the Norman conquest, a self-conscious act to preserve and recognise its entire history, not just the few years under Norman influence.  There was no mass sweeping away of all that came before by the Normans.  Bishop Ernulf protected his bishopric and his priory and that, for me, is the poignancy of this collection of documents - the explicit cooperation between conqueror and conquered to protect something that transcended both.

The Textus was always a valuable book and it was lent to several supposedly trustworthy people over the years.  It suffered a few accidents along the way.  In 1631 the volume was taken to London and in the absence of its recipient at the appointed boarding house, was left with the landlord's wife, who promptly sold it for 5s to a Dr Thomas Leonard.  Nothing short of a court case could prevail upon Dr Leonard to hand it back.  And on another occasion, on its way back from another trip to London it, somehow, ended up in the river Medway.  Water and vellum do not mix and the pages were damaged by the presumably dirty water and still show signs of shrinkage after restoration.

The new works in Rochester cathedral crypt will provide a light-sensitive display environment for this remarkable document to be displayed.  Maybe then more people will know of it and understand its place in the history of England.