The learned Dr. Hickes has shewn that the hand in which these charters are written, is of a later period than the time when the grants are supposed to have been made; that the phraseology is partly Norman; that Edgar’s Charter has the mark of a pendent seal having been attached to it; and that, to the so called Dunstan’s Charter the waxen impression was remaining when it was examined by him. He tells us that the practice of attaching pendent seals is Norman; {2c} and in this opinion he is supported by Mr. Astle, in a paper printed in the tenth volume of the Archæologia. Mr. Kemble, in his introduction to the first volume of the Anglo Saxon charters, p. 101, also says, “The Norman Charters are for the most part granted under seal; those of the Saxons, never.” And although in the introduction to the second volume, Mr. Kemble states that as to the authenticity of several charters he does not agree in the opinion arrived at by Dr. Hickes, yet we perceive on turning to this charter the fatal asterisk before it, which either denotes it to be “an ascertained forgery, or liable to suspicion.” The Rev. Richard Widmore, for many years librarian to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, says, “What the privileges were that either he (Dunstan) granted, or obtained from King Edgar, for it (the Abbey) is not at this time to be known the Charters which now remain, both of the one and the other, have been proved beyond all doubt to be forgeries.” {3} This being the case, the mis-quotation of Lysons and Saunders is of very little account, and is corrected here only for the sake of preserving something like truth in this historical narrative. Dart, who appears to have received Dunstan’s Charter without questioning its authenticity, must have been struck by the omission of any mention of Paddington in the Confessor’s Charter; and he seems to have been persuaded of the necessity of producing some kingly authority for the enjoyment of these lands from the time of Dunstan, as he states, to the dissolution of the convent—a period of nearly six-hundred years; for he adds to the sentence, already quoted, and as though it was an after thought, “King Stephen afterwards confirmed this manor and liberties granted with it, and after him King Henry the second.”