L-Legal-Docs-art

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L-Legal-Docs-art - 2/9/08

"Large Legal Documents" by Lady Rebecca the Contrary.

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NOTICE -

This article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set of files, called Stefan's Florilegium.

These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

While the author will likely give permission for this work to be reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.

Thank you,

Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous

stefan at florilegium.org

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Large Legal Documents

by Lady Rebecca the Contrary

Introduction:

A common theory in the scribal community is that larger legal documents did not exist for the time period we study. This comment always had me wondering how large legal documents really did get. We like to compare our SCA awards to legal documents because very often our awards do change the rank of our persona. Several of our awards carry grants, which existed in period. In fact this is such a common theory that many are certain the scribes of our period never worked on large documents and never worked on anything larger than 5X7.

I shared the same feeling until I became more curious about the subject. After some investigation through various lists of legal documents I noted an interesting trend. There were miniature-sized documents and the most common size for a legal document might be a 5X7 or 8X10. However there were also very large legal documents and the larger-sized documents in period were not as uncommon as we thought.

The Search:

The most comprehensive web site I could find which lists a large amount of legal documents and their details is from Harvard Law School special collections section.¹ They have the text and properties of a large series of legal documents at their web site.

There are other web sites out there but I have not searched them carefully yet.

I focused on the deeds section because I could find the most detail here however there are other sections that are equally interesting. I compiled a brief list from this web site bringing over as much pertinent information about the documents as I could.

Results of Search to Date:

The most interesting point is that while 5X7 or 8X10 may be the most common size, they certainly did have larger legal documents. Some of the documents were huge. They were mostly out of parch. The web site I focused on listed the measurements in cm. It helps to remember that 2.5 cm = 1 inch when looking at this list. I have yet to collect document size information on every item listed on the web site however I did collect the information on a pretty large section. It is pretty easy to see by the following collection of information in Appendix 1 that regardless of the year or time period a variety of document sizes were used.

From this collection it appears that the average size is 13.5 cm by 25.34 cm (5.4 X 10.14 in). However this is an incomplete collection and the main focus of this research was to find the larger legal document. I suspect when this is all collected together that weπll find a majority were either 5X7 or 8X10. Those smaller than 5X7 did exist however Iπm uncertain of their frequency.

I also note that currently year has no correlation to size. There is no way to say ≥they only had larger sizes in later years or earlier years≤ etc. There were larger sizes at least from 1200 on in a variety of sizes.

As a side tangent it is interesting to note that a huge majority of these documents were parch although there is one instance of paper used in this list.

APPENDIX 1 – NOTE – 1 INCH = 2.5 CENTIMETERS

Compiled from http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/collections/special/manuscripts/deeds/index.php

Type of Document	YEAR	DESCRIPTION	LENGTH	MMT	WIDTH	MMT	TYPE
Grant	1397	Grant, 1397, Sept. 3. 21 Richard II. 1 item	95	cm	29	cm	parch
Grant	1329	Grant, 1329, July 25. 3 Edward III. 1 item	95	cm	21.5	cm	parch
Grant	1459	Grant, 1459, August 11. 37 Henry VI. 1 item	40.5	cm	28.5	cm	parch
Grant 1450	1450	Grant 1450, September 22. 29 Henry VI. 1 item	37.5	cm	37	cm	parch
Conveyance	1563	Conveyance, 1563, February 16. 5 Elizabeth I. 1 item	31.5	cm	42	cm	parch
Conveyance	1563	Conveyance, 1563, February 16. 5 Elizabeth I. 1 item	31.5	cm	42	cm	parch
Bargain and Sale	1575	Bargain and Sale, 1575, Nov. 25. 18 Elizabeth I. 1 item	30.5	cm	46.5	cm	parch
Grant	1236	Grant, ca. 1236. 1 item	28	cm	27.6	cm	parch
Bargain and sale	1586	Bargain and sale, 1586, July 20. 29 Elizabeth I. 1 item	27	cm	42	cm	parch
Lease	1536	Lease, 1536, October 2. 28 Henry VIII. 1 item	24.5	cm	31.5	cm	parch
Grant	1571	Grant, 1571, February 15. 13 Elizabeth I. 1 item	24	cm	31	cm	parch
Confirmation	1170	Confirmation, ca. 1170. 1 item	23	cm	19	cm	parch
Grant	1540	Grant, 1540, August 17. 32 Henry VIII. 1 item	22	cm	33.5	cm	parch
Agreement	1341	Agreement, 1341, October 1. 15 Edward III. 1 item	22	cm	29	cm	parch
Demise	1511	Demise, 1511, July 31. 3 Henry VIII. 1 item	21.5	cm	30	cm	parch
Grant	1275	Grant, 1275, January 12. 3 Edward I. 1 item	21.5	cm	22	cm	parch
Recovery in Worth vs. Hawke	1545	Recovery in Worth vs. Hawke, 1545, November 26. 37 Henry VIII. 1 item	21	cm	45.5	cm	parch
Quitclaim	1429	Quitclaim, 1429, September 28. 8 Henry VI. 1 item	21	cm	41	cm	parch
List of deeds 1585	1585	List of deeds 1585, September 9. 2 p	20.5