[221] "Si qui defuerunt, legatis et literis causas cur non venissent dederunt.... Egregie quippe memini, ipsâ die, post recitata scripta excusatoria quibus absentiam suam quidem tutati sunt," etc. (_Will. Malms._, pp. 744, 745). Is it possible that we have, in "legati," a hint at attendance by proxy?
[223] _Archæologia_, xxvii. 110. See the charter in question in the Pipe-Roll Society's "Ancient Charters," Part I., p. 92.
[224] _Arch. Journ._ (1863), xx. 281-296.
[225] _Ibid._, p. 283. Mr. Way adopts the extension "Angl_orum_" throughout.
[226] "The only instances in which we have documentary evidence that she styled herself Queen of England occur in two charters of this period" (_ibid._).
[230] "A Fasciculus of the Charters of Mathildis, Empress of the Germans, and an Account of her Great Seal" (_Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass._, xxxi. 376-398).
[231] "On the Seals of King Henry the Second and of his Son, the so-called Henry the Third" (_Transactions_, vol. xi. part 2, New Series).
[234] Wells _Liber Albus_, fol. 10 (_Hist. MSS. Report on Wells MSS._).
[236] "In Angliæ Normanniæque dominam eligimus."
[237] _Cont. Flor. Wig._, ii. 75. See Addenda.
[239] "Pleraque tunc pars Angliæ dominatum ejus suscipiebat" (_Will. Malms._, p. 749).
[240] "Ejusdem civitatis sumens dominium ... totiusque civitatis suscepit dominium," etc. (_Cont. Flor. Wig._).
[242] It is very singular that Mr. Freeman failed to perceive this parallel, since he himself writes of Henry (1100). "The Gemót of election was held at Winchester while the precedents of three reigns made it seem matter of necessity that the unction and coronation should be done at Westminster" (_Will. Rufus_, ii. 348). Such an admission as this is sufficient to prove my case.
[245] _Norm. Conq._, v. 303, 304. The footnote to this statement ("William of Malmesbury seems distinctly to exclude a coronation," etc., etc.) has been already given (_ante_, p. 62). Mr. Birch confusing, as we have seen, the reception of the Empress with her election, naturally looks, like Mr. Freeman, to the former as the time when she ought to have been crowned: "The crown of England's sovereigns was handed over to her, a kind of _seizin_ representing that the kingdom of England was under the power of her hands (although it does not appear that any further ceremony connected with the rite of coronation was then performed)" (_Journ. B. A. A._, xxxi. p. 378). This assumes that the crown was "handed over to her" at a "ceremony" in the cathedral, whereas, as I explained, my own view is that she obtained it with the royal castle.