316. _Rectitudines Singularum Personarum._--This interesting Anglo-Saxon
document is necessarily well known to many of your readers. Will they
favor me with a Note, stating what they consider to be its date? In the
mean time, I will say that it is not improbable that the date may be
referrible to _temp._ Ethelredi II. The service of _Sæ weard_ is
insisted upon, and it is fair to suppose that such would not have been
the case if the _textus_ had been written at a period anterior to those
times, when the coast was wasted by the piratical incursions of the
Northmen. In the title "thegnes riht" it is mentioned in priority to
"heafod weard" and "fyrdweard." It is again mentioned in the title
"cotsetlan riht." This document was doubtless written by a priest, and
probably by a secular one, for some of its concluding words show a
habit, or at least a possibility, of migration on the part of the
writer, viz.:
"Be thære theode theawe, the we thænne onwuniath."
The Latin translation, which accompanies the original, is of a date
manifestly later than the Norman Conquest. The phraseology which it
exhibits, and the gross mistakes which it contains, are sufficient
evidence of the fact.
In the title "be thaw the beon bewitath," the words "self lædan" are
translated "ipse minare." Sometimes the translator does not understand
his original: in the first title he converts "bocriht" into "testamenti
rectitudo;" and of the words "sceorp to frithscipe," he leaves the first
word as he finds it.