charters, we find their authenticity confirmed by the fact that, while the Earl of Gloucester, who was abroad at the time, is conspicuously absent from the list, Henry, son of the King of Scots, duly appears among the attesting earls, and we are specially told by John of Hexham that he was present at this Easter court.[62] Miles of Gloucester and Brian fitz Count also figure together among the witnesses—a fact, from their position, of some importance.[63] It is, too, of interest for our purpose, to note that among them is Geoffrey de Mandeville. The extraordinary number of witnesses to these charters (no less than fifty-five in one case, excluding the king and queen, and thirty-six in the other) is not only of great value as giving us the _personnel_ of this brilliant court, but is also, when compared with the Oxford charter, suggestive perhaps of a desire, by the king, to place on record the names of those whom he had induced to attend his courts and so to recognize his claims. Mr. Pym Yeatman more than once, in his strange _History of the House of Arundel_, quotes the charter to Winchester as from a transcript "among the valuable collection of MSS. belonging to the Earl of Egmont" (p. 49). It may, therefore, be of benefit to students to remind them that it is printed in Hearne's _Liber Niger_ (ii. 808, 809). Mr. Yeatman, moreover, observes of this charter— "It contains the names of no less than thirty-four noblemen of the highest rank (excluding only the Earl of Gloucester), but not a single ecclesiastical witness attests the grant, which is perhaps not remarkable, since it was a dangerous precedent to deal in such a matter with Church property, perhaps a new precedent created by Stephen" (p. 286). To other students it will appear "perhaps not remarkable" that the charter is witnessed by the unusual number of no less than three archbishops and thirteen bishops.[64]