William the Conqueror's Lost Writ for London Rediscovered

Abstract

William the Conqueror's writ for London has long been recognised as one of the key sources for the Norman Conquest of England, and has been discussed at length and printed many times. Yet the archives of the Corporation of the City of London contain another, hitherto unpublished, text of a writ of that king in favour of the citizens of London. In the later middle ages, it was set alongside its better-known companion as one of the fundamental texts of the City and its jurisdictions, but the original had disappeared by the seventeenth century. This essay sets out an edition of this text, and argues that it is a Latin translation of a lost Old English writ. It further argues that the underlying text was of 1067 or 1068, and that it shows the City of London's involvement in the process whereby English landowners were required to redeem or buy back their lands after the Norman Conquest. The document has a double significance. The process of redemption has hitherto been understood through Domesday Book and narrative sources, but this text shows how the process of redemption was carried out to an extent that has not been possible before, thus exposing one of the key phases of the Conquest. The text also shows the developing relationship between London and the Conqueror, and undermines some of the exceptionalist views on how London survived the Conquest itself.