One cannot but be greatly struck by the names of the witnesses to this charter. The legate and his four brother prelates, who had been with the Empress in Winchester, at her reception on March 3, are here with her again at Westminster. So are her three inseparable companions; but where are the magnates of England? Two west-country earls, one of them of her own making,[318] and a few west-country barons virtually complete the list. I do not say that these were, of necessity, the sole constituents of her court; but there is certainly the strongest possible presumption that had she been joined in person by any number of bishops or nobles, we should not have found so important a charter witnessed merely by the members of the _entourage_ that she had brought up with her from the west. We have, for instance, but to compare this list with that of the witnesses to Stephen's charter six months later.[319] Or, indeed, we may compare it, to some disadvantage, with that of the Empress herself a month later at Oxford.[320] Where were the primate and the Bishop of London? Where was the King of Scots? These questions are difficult to answer. It may, however, be suggested that the general disgust at her intolerable arrogance,[321] and her harshness to the king,[322] kept the magnates from attending her court.[323] Her inability to repel the queen's forces, and her instant flight before the Londoners, are alike suggestive of the fact that her followers were comparatively few. There are several points of constitutional importance upon which this instructive charter sheds some welcome light. In the first place we should compare it with Stephen's charter (p. 51), to which, in Mr. Eyton's words, it forms the "counter-patent."[324] In the former the words of creation are: "Sciatis me fecisse comitem de Gaufredo," etc. In the charter of the Empress they run thus: "Sciatis ... quod ... do et concedo Gaufredo de Magnavilla ... ut sit Comes," etc. This contrast is in itself conclusive as to the earldom having been first _created_ by Stephen and then _recognized_ by the Empress. This being so, it is the more strange that Mr. Eyton should have arrived at the contrary conclusion, especially as he noticed the stronger form in the charter creating the earldom of Hereford ("Sciatis me fecisse Milonem de Glocestriâ Comitem"), a form corresponding with that in Stephen's charter to Geoffrey. The earldom of Hereford being _created_ by the Empress, as that of Essex had been by Stephen, we find the same formula duly employed by both. The distinction thus established is one of considerable importance. The special grant of the "tertius denarius" is a point of such extreme interest in its bearing on earls and earldoms that it requires to be separately discussed in a note devoted to the subject.[325]