"This most important charter, one of the earliest, if not the earliest example of the text of a deed creating a peerage, does not appear to have been ever published. I cannot find the text in any printed book or MS. Fortunately Sir William Dugdale inspected this charter before it had been injured in the disastrous Cottonian fire, which destroyed so many invaluable evidences of British history. In his account of the Mandevilles, Earls of Essex (_Baronage_, vol. i. p. 202) he says that 'this is the most antient creation-charter, which hath ever been known, _vide_ Selden's _Titles of Honour_, p. 647,' and he gives an English rendering of the greater portion of the Latin text, which has enabled me to conjecture several emendations and restorations in the above transcript." Mr. Birch having thus, like preceding antiquaries, borne witness to the interest attaching to "this most important charter," it is with special satisfaction that I find myself enabled to print a transcript of the entire document, supplying, there is every reason to believe, a complete and accurate text. Nor will it only enable us to restore the portions of the charter now wanting,[275] for it further convicts the great Dugdale of no less serious an error than the omission of two most important witnesses and the garbling of the name of a third.[276] The accuracy of my authorities can be tested by collation with those portions of the original that are still perfect. This test is quite satisfactory, as is also that of comparing one of the passages they supply with Camden's transcript of that same passage, taken from the original charter. Camden's extract, of the existence of which Mr. Birch was evidently not aware, was printed by him in his _Ordines Anglicani_,[277] from which it is quoted by Selden in his well-known _Titles of Honour_.[278] It is further quoted, as from Camden and Selden, at the head of the Patents of Creation appended to the _Lords' Reports on the Dignity of a Peer_,[279] as also in the Third Report itself (where the marginal reference, however, is wrong).[280] It is specially interesting from Camden's comment: "This is the most ancient creation-charter that I ever saw" (which is clearly the origin of the statement as to its unique antiquity), and from the fact of that great antiquary speaking of it as "now in my hands." The two transcripts I have employed for the text (D. and A.) are copies respectively found in the Dugdale MSS. (L. fol. 81) and the Ashmole MSS. (841, fol. 3). I have reason to believe that this charter was among those duly recorded in the missing volume of the Great Coucher. CHARTER OF THE EMPRESS TO GEOFFREY DE MANDEVILLE (Midsummer, 1141).