STRATHCLYDE AND GALLOWAY CHARTERS. 233 
of it since has shown it now to be. Were it in the ordinary 
medizeval Latin there would have been little difficulty in 
settling its age, but some of the characteristics of different 
periods of writing seemed to show themselves in it. The 
photograph does not reveal all that scrutiny can find; only a 
very close and careful noting of every stroke of every letter in 
its pale writing, by the help of a lens, does. 
From the photograph Dr Jenkinson, Librarian of the 
Cambridge University Library; Mr Chadwick; Mr Lapsley ; 
Mr Craster, Sub-Librarian of the Bodleian; and Mr Plummer 
of Corpus Christi, Oxon. ; who have most kindly examined it, 
agree in its being a copy made by one who was not accustomed 
to the language, and all of them who are palaeographists, in 
its being-a thirteenth century copy. The reasons which occur 
to me now in concurrence with this judgment I will give later, 
when I come to the wording of the document. I wish first to 
turn to its substance, merely premising that there is sufficient 
reason to suppose it fairly representative of the lost original. 
Gospatrik the grantor could only be the Gospatrik whe, 
born about 1025, was from 1067 to 1072 Earl of Northumber- 
land, and was then expelled and became Earl of Dunbar; one 
of whose sons, a second Gospatrik, succeeded him as Earl of 
Dunbar and died 16th August, 1139; another, Dolfin, was 
lord, in Carlisle, of Cumberland, and another, Waltheof, in 
Allerdale. Gospatrik mentions Earl Siward in the charter in 
such a way that we have to conclude that they had aforetime 
worked in conjunction or in the same continuous. spirit. 
Siward was Earl of Deira from 1038 when Bernicia was in 
possession of Eadwulf, younger brother of Ealdred, father 
of Siward’s wife. It was only through her descent that 
Siward, her husband, became Earl of Deira, and by the murder 
of Eadwulf that he became Earl of Bernicia and thus of all 
Northumberland. Gospatrik, son of an aunt of Siward’s wife 
Ealdgyth and of Maldred, brother of Duncan King of Scots, 
had claim likewise on the female side to either Bernicia or 
Deira; but to Cumberland as a sub-kingdom in the old Strath- 
clyde he could succeed, not as an heir of Northumberland, but 
as a relative of the King of the Scots, among whom a son 
during his father’s life, or a younger scion it would seem, held 
