1921 CHARTERS OF COVENTRY 53 from the burgesses. The omission of a clause granting exemption from taxation for two years to new-comers building houses in the town might be explained in the same way, but was perhaps no more than the repeal of a temporary privilege. It seems possible to fix the date of Earl Ranulf's surviving charter within narrower limits than the constableship of Roger de Lacy (1190-1211). During his marriage with Constance of Brittany (1188-99) Ranulf's usual, perhaps his only, style was 1 duke of Brittany and earl of Chester and Richmond ', but here he calls himself earl of Chester only, as he did from 1200 onwards. If any stress can be laid upon the fact that Philip de Orreby is not described as justice, the lower limit of date will be 1208. However that may be, the first decade of the thirteenth century seems to have been the time when Ranulf was using the curious lion seal 1 which is still attached to this charter by four silk tags threaded through as many holes arranged lozenge-wise in the doubled lower margin of the document. The centre of the seal is a rather long heater shield with the top corners rounded off and bearing a lion (or lioness) rampant to the left. Its edge is so broken away that only a few letters of the legend can be made out : . . . com[itis ce]strie. It may be objected, if the date suggested for Ranulf's charter is correct, that on the theory advanced above of its relation to that confirmed by Henry II, the earl took a long while to become conscious of the inconveniences of some of the concessions made in his name by that king. It is also strange that he does not mention the earlier charter. Yet one can see no other possible explanation of the two charters at Coventry. James Tait. The Parliament of Lincoln of iji6 The importance of the parliament which sat at Lincoln in January and February 1316 has been fully recognized by historians of the reign of Edward II, one of whom recently has published a minute analysis of its proceedings, 2 based upon the admirable and systematic roll compiled at the time, 3 ' the first full and intelligible record of the proceedings of a parliament 4 It came mid -way in that period of royal humiliation and general disorder which opened with the English defeat at Bannockburn in 1314 and did not close till the treaty of Leake in 1318 gave an opportunity to a middle party not unfriendly to the king. Its special object, as explained in the king's speech, was to take 1 Ormerod, Hist, of Cheshire (1882), i. 33, 38, 422. 2 J. C. Da vies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward II, pp. 408-15. 3 Pari. Roll (Exchequer Series) 20 : printed in Rot. Pari. i. 350-64. 4 T. F. Tout, The Place of Edward II in English History, p. 184.
