Now, it is absolutely certain that not a single one of them can be assigned to the period suggested, that not one of them is previous to that 2nd of March (1141) which Mr. Birch selects as his turning-point, still less to "the death of her father" (1135). Nay, on Mr. Birch's own showing, the first and most important of these documents should be dated "between the 3rd of March and the 24th of July, A.D. 1141" (p. 380), and two others (Nos. 21, 28) "must be ascribed to a date between 1149 and 1151" (p. 397 _n._). Nor is even this all, for as in two others the son of the Empress is spoken of as "King Henry," they must be as late as the reign of Henry II. So, also, with the third class ("Mathildis Imperatrix Henrici regis filia et Anglorum domina"), of which we are told that it— "was in the first instance adopted—I mean used—in those charters which contain the word and were promulgated between A.D. 1135 and A.D. 1141, by reason of the ceremony of coronation not yet having been performed; and with regard to those charters which are placed subsequent to A.D. 1141, either because the ceremony was still unperformed, although she had the possession of the crown, or because of some stipulation with her opponents in power" (p. 383). Here, again, it is absolutely certain that not a single one of these charters was "promulgated between A.D. 1135 and A.D. 1141." We have, therefore, no evidence that the Empress, in her charters, adopted this style until the election of April 7 and 8 (1141) enabled her justly to do so. But the fact is that Mr. Birch's theory is not only based, as we have seen, on demonstrably erroneous hypotheses, but must be altogether abandoned as opposed to every fact of the case. For the two styles which he thus distinguishes were used at the same time, and even in the same document. For instance, in the very first of Mr. Birch's documents, that great charter to Geoffrey de Mandeville, to which we shall come, in the next chapter, issued at the height of Matilda's power, and on the eve, as we shall see, of her intended coronation, "Anglorum domina" is omitted from her style, and the document is therefore, by Mr. Birch, assigned to the first of his classes. Yet I shall show that in a portion of the charter which has perished, and which is therefore unknown to Mr. Birch, her style is immediately repeated with the addition "Anglorum Domina." It is clear, then, on Mr. Birch's own showing, that this document should be assigned both to his first and to his third classes, and, consequently, that the distinction he attempts to draw has no foundation in fact.