1921 TWO EARLIEST CHARTERS OF COVENTRY 51 taken into account the list of witnesses of Ranulf 's extant charter and had noted that it is headed by Roger (de Lacy), the con- stable of Chester, who did not succeed his father, John, in that office until 1190. Quite apart from its contents, this charter could not have been confirmed by Henry II. What then did Henry confirm, or did he confirm anything ? The discovery just mentioned at first roused some suspicions of the genuineness of the confirmation attributed to him, and these doubts seemed to gain some support from the appearance of Richard de Luci as its fourth witness. For a confirmation of a charter of Earl Ranulf could not be earlier than 1181, and Richard de Luci the justiciar died in 1179. The only witness of his name recorded by Eyton to a charter of Henry after that year was an obscure tenant of the king in Maine. Further consideration, however, has tended to allay these suspicions. The witness Richard de Luci may have been the grandson of the justiciar who, with his brother Herbert, succeeded to his estates in the sheriffwick of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. 1 Herbert de Luci, it is true, was only fourteen years old in 1185, 2 Richard may have been little or no older, and the last-recorded visit of Henry II to Marlborough took place in the autumn of the next year, 3 to which occasion the charter has therefore been usually assigned. But Henry may very well have been at Marlborough in the spring or early summer of 1188, and 1181-8 was Miss Bateson's more cautious dating of the document. Even in 1188 Richard de Luci the younger can only have been a youth, but he cannot be dismissed as an impossible witness. 4 The two charters have recently been photographed afresh, with less exclusive attention to the text, 5 and the Rev. H. E. Salter, who has been good enough to examine the earlier of them, is of opinion, on palaeographical grounds alone, that it is a genuine charter of the last years of Henry II. He has not, indeed, met with the hand among charters of that king, but he has seen a charter of the first year of Richard I which seems to be the work of the same scribe. A clerk [he writes] who was at work in the Chancery in 1 Richard I was probably at work in the last years of Henry II, and it is only an accident that his work under Henry II survives, as far as I know, only in this charter. In the charters of Henry II which I have seen, Glanville is 1 Rotuli Litt. Claus. (Record Comm.), i. 95 b, 127 b. 2 Rotuli de Dominabus (Pipe Roll Society, no. 35), p. 76. 3 Eyton, Itinerary of Henry II, p. 271. 4 Mr. Salter tells me that he feels sure he has seen Richard's name in a charter of Henry II in some book quite recently, but cannot remember where. 5 I have to thank the Corporation of Coventry for kindly allowing this to be done, and Miss Dormer Harris for placing her local knowledge at my disposal. E 2
