The Ismere Diploma (London, British Library,

Cotton Augustus This is an incomplete list of some of the manuscripts from the Cotton library that today form the Cotton collection of the British Library. Some manuscripts were destroyed or damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, and a few are kept in othe ...

ii. 3) is a

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the re ...

of 736, in which Aethelbald of Mercia grants ten hides of land near Ismere to Cyneberht, his "venerable companion", for the foundation of a ''coenubium'' ( minster). The charter survives in what is thought to be a contemporary manuscript, now in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...

. It is written in Latin. The text is written in two different pens. The first pen is used for the charter itself, and also for the first two lines of the witnesses, and then the fourth through tenth lines of the witness list. The remaining lines are written with a thinner pen, though by the same hand that wrote the first lines written. A different scribe added another grant from Aethelbald to Cyneberht on the back. The addition of the later witnesses is an indication that the document is an original, and not a copy made later.{{cite web , url = http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=charter&id=89 , title = Anglo-Saxons.net , accessdate=22 April 2007 The charter concerns land on both sides of the River Stour with the wood of ''Cynibre'' ( Kinver) on the north and the wood called ''Moerheb'' on the west.D. Hooke, ''Worcestershire Anglo-Saxon Charter-bounds'' (Boydell, Woodbridge, 1990), 61-3. The traditional view has that the latter was to interpret ''Moerheb'' as Morfe, but this is a geographic impossibility. The wood is more likely to have become Kidderminster Heath.P. W. King, 'The minster ''aet Sture'' in Husmere and the northern boundary of the Hwicce' ''Transactions of Worcestershire Archaeological Society'' 3rd ser. 15 (1996), 73-4. The charter is the earliest mention of the

Husmerae The Husmerae were a tribe or clan in early medieval England, possibly forming an early settlement of the Hwicce subkingdom. Charter evidence also referred to the group as ''Wiogorna'' and was also considered a ''prouvincia'' or ''provincia'', an ...

, a tribe only known from this area.

References

External links

* Item 9 i
Kemble Anglo-Saxon Charters

Anglo-Saxons.net charter list, translation and notes
Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts Cotton Library Texts of Anglo-Saxon England Kidderminster Anglo-Saxon law Medieval charters and cartularies of England