The Treatment of Charter Bounds by the Worcester Cartulary Scribes

This essay investigates the various influences on how scribes copy charters, focusing in particular on how a scribe’s treatment of the repeated, formulaic noun phrases in charter bounds can provide insight into these influences. The scribes’ treatment of these noun phrases shows that the chief motivation that informs how they copy charter bounds is the purpose for which the copy is being produced. Contrary to the opinion expressed in much scholarship on charter copyists, these scribes’ changes have not resulted in an illegible or unusable text, but have intelligently adapted the bounds to suit the individual purpose of each copy.