RESCUED FROM SCRAP HEAP

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13234, 9 January 1941, Page 2

RESCUED FROM SCRAP HEAP

Not all the paper found in the lumber-rooms up and down the land finds its way to the pulp merchant. Some very valuable documents are turning up, thanks to the experts who are examining lawyers’ accumulations before they are sold as waste. One of these precious pieces has now found a permanent and honoured home in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, haing last been recorded as seen by the 17th century antiquary, Sir William Dugdale, collecting material for his great work on his native Warwickshire. The document is a deed of the 12th century by which William de Mandeville makes a grant to his brother Ernulph, of Kingbam in Oxfordshire. Dugdale copied it, and when, 50 years ago. Dr John Horace Round was writing his famous life of Geoffrey de Mandeville, the richest and most powerful noble of King Stephen's reign, he had to rely on this transcript because the original was missing. The deed is of special interest to students of the language used in this country at the time it ’ was wi’itten, for it is the first legal document known to have been written in French instead of the usual Latin.