ABSTRACT
Worcester has preserved the largest surviving collection of Anglo-Saxon charters. There are a number of reasons for this: first of all, the church of Worcester accumulated many grants of land and privileges from the time of its foundation in the seventh century throughout the whole Anglo-Saxon period. Secondly, by the mid-ninth century Worcester managed to achieve control of several originally independent minsters within its diocese. The lands and the records which belonged to those minsters also came under the control of the episcopal see. Furthermore, in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, but especially during Oswald’s episcopate, the bishops of Worcester issued many leases of lands lying in various parts of their large estate. Of all the above-mentioned records less than ten per cent survive as originals:1 most Worcester charters have come down to us in the cartularies which were compiled in the eleventh century. These represent a unique type of evidence for the study of early medieval England, as no other ecclesiastical centre appears to have produced anything comparable so early. Traditionally the study of Anglo-Saxon charters has concentrated on the internal characteristics of single texts in order to establish possible degrees of authenticity; Worcester, however, allows for much more than that, as it provides a particularly interesting insight into the procedures through which those same documents were filed, copied and preserved from oblivion.
