ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief charter of 1155 where Henry II confirms the rights and privileges of the monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, and whose linguistic forms are strikingly more conservative than nearly contemporary Final Continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle. It provides an excerpt, an open letter proclaiming determination of King Henry III to uphold the terms of the agreement reached with the barons in the Provisions of Oxford. The proclamation issued in both French and English, the use of English perhaps being dictated by its political importance, since competence in English as a distinguishing characteristic between the settled Anglo-Norman barony and the Continental French incomes favoured by the king. The language of proclamation is that of London in the mid thirteenth century, and exhibits many of the southern and linguistically conservative features which expected in a city which had originally been the capital of the East Saxons and had remained outside the direct influence of Scandinavian settlement.
