Address and Delivery in Anglo-Norman Royal Charters

Abstract

The writ is now widely recognized as an innovative diplomatic instrument, created in Anglo-Saxon England, developed by Anglo-Norman rulers, and by the end of the twelfth-century influential elsewhere. Its essence is that it was delivered to a particular person or body responsible for the appropriate aspect of the administration of the realm or the doing of royal justice. In diplomatic terms, this is expressed in the address clause which is generally the vital clue to the way a document would be used and therefore to what it was meant to accomplish. There was an inherent linkage between the nature of the transaction, the person or body to whom it would be delivered, and the address clause. Who actually delivered the document would vary according to the nature of the business too, but the documents themselves do not spell out this step in the process: that must be inferred from understanding the relationship between address and function.