The text and treatment of this charter require a special note. The “original,” transcribed by D'Anisy, is in the liasse, H. 564, which contains, as stated in the Inventaire Sommaire, two documents. One of these, which the compiler seems to have overlooked, for he does not describe it, is an Inspeximus of this charter in 1400. The other is the charter itself, now much injured by gall, and in parts almost illegible. The Inventaire gives a detailed analysis of it, but makes the singular mistake of converting the benefactors, whose gifts are confirmed, into witnesses, reading: “Témoins de Guillaume comte de Ponthieu, R. comte de Leicester,” etc. It also omits, among the true witnesses, the name of Robert de Harecort. Lastly, it positively assigns the document, at the outset, to “1176,” but dates it at the close, as “vers 1170.”
D'Anisy seems to have omitted in his Transcript, without giving any indication of the fact, the important transactions relative to Roger de Bocquencé, {the Inventaire Sommaire reads “de Bachevent” in error} supplied on next page from the Cartulary; and he carelessly left out the words “de Harecort” in the list of witnesses, thus misleading Mr. Eyton, who took “Robert” to be a brother of Godard de Vaus (pp. 22, 342).
Mr. Eyton himself, who assigned the charter, by a slip, to “St. Stephen's abbey at Caen,” held that it belonged to the end of 1156 or beginning of 1157. Reference to his work will show that the witnesses fairly suggest that date. But the name of Godard de Vaus is the only real evidence, and that not conclusive. The date is of importance, for if the charter belongs to 1156–7, its mention of the Norman exchequer (which was not known to Mr. Eyton) was an exceptionally early one. Much turns on the style of “seneschal” given to Richard du Hommet. Mr. Eyton, not unnaturally observed “read Constable,” but that portion of the text which was not known to him, assigns to Richard both the style and the position of Seneschal, and D'Anisy had correctly copied the word. We know from a Mont St. Michel document (No. 716) that Robert de Neufbourg was the Dapifer (i.e, Seneschal) of all Normandy in 1157, and presided as such “in assisa apud Cadomum”; while he and bishop Arnulf had been jointly in office in 1155. It is therefore highly improbable that Richard could have styled himself Seneschal in 1156–7, though he may have done so for a while at a later time, cf. No. 643.
This charter has a special value as being the only one now remaining in the archives, by which can be tested the highly suspicious “Teste me ipso” of the king, which heads the list of witnesses in some of the St. Evroul charters (Nos. 628, 642–3) entered in the Cartulary. It is clear, from this document, that the phrase was not an invention of the Cartulary scribe; but the fact of its occurrence in the documents themselves must throw the very gravest doubt on their authenticity. (Footnote 12 in Calendar)