or similar expressions. If that consent were withheld, the king’s grant would be invalid. There was a case of this sort. Baldred, king of Kent, had given to Christ Church, Canterbury, the manor of Malling, in the county of Sussex; but the king having offended his nobles, they refused to ratify his grant, and therefore the grant had not taken effect until King Egbert, in 838, with his counsel assembled at Kingston-upon-Thames, restored the manor to the Church through the action of Archbishop Ceolnoth.[96] If the king himself received a grant of folcland, he had first to receive the consent of his Witan. Ethelwulf booked twenty hides of folcland to himself in his private capacity, but he had the consent of his Witan;[97] Offa did the same. When folcland was appropriated to the king’s subsistence, that is, to the maintenance of his household, court, etc., it was said to be held _in demesne_, or let out to farm; afterwards called Terra Regis, or crownland. A great part of the “Terra Regis” of Domesday was folcland, or public property of the State, and the king was only the usufructuary possessor. We have an important definition of Terra Regis at page 75 of the “Exon Domesday,” viz., “The demesne land of the king _belonging to the kingdom_,” and we find a similar definition in the “Exchequer Domesday.”[98] In dealing with Ethelwulf’s charters, it is essentially necessary to state Mr. Kemble’s six canons of tests by which the Saxon charter may not only be distinguished from a will or the record of a synodal decree, but whether it is spurious. These canons are (1) The Invocation; (2) The Proem; (3) The Grant; (4) The Sanction; (5) The Date; (6) The Teste. (1) The Invocation is a short ejaculation which usually forms the first member of the document. (2) The Proem is a general observation on the virtue of charity to the Church, the nothingness of earthly possessions, and the advantage of purchasing with them heavenly treasures. (3) The Grant, which is the important part of every charter. (4) The Sanction, by which is meant the punishment attached to the violation of the premises. It is called the “Si quis” clause. (5) The Date. (6) The Teste or Subscriptions. In almost all ecclesiastical documents the witnesses subscribed with their own hands.[99] ETHELWULF’S CHARTERS. In Ethelwulf’s Charters we have all these points. I shall omit 1, 2, and 4, and give here 3, 5, and 6.