Excursion on Saturday, August 2lst. 



171 



few years ago interested him very much, and he went through the 

 manuscripts in the British Museum as far as possible, and gathered 

 together twenty-nine issued by her during her travels and wanderings 

 through England ; and strange to say, out of them, six were dated 

 at Devizes, which, with the three at one time in possession of the 

 Corporation of Devizes, and unpublished, make nine; and this, 

 he thought, sufficiently showed that she spent a very great period 

 of her troubled life in England at the castle of this town. Of 

 those then known charters dated from Devizes he had published 

 the text in the British Archaeological Society's Journal. 1 On 

 the previous day he found another issued by Matilda, which made 

 up the number to exactly thirty. That was dated at Reading, and 

 was a grant of freedom from certain tolls — passage and lestage — 

 well-known taxes of the age. This charter that he had before him 

 of Henry the Second confirmed the charter of Matilda. So far as 

 he understood, every one of the three charters which Matilda gave 

 to the town was mislaid — he would not say lost or stolen, because 

 he hoped they might turn up again, and such things often did turn 

 up very far from the place they should occupy. Let them hope 

 that some day those charters might be returned to the custody of the 

 Town Clerk. Meanwhile the Town Clerk had a very good copy of the 

 original charter, ratified by Henry the Second. The history of 

 Matilda was a very important one in connection with the history of 

 England, for though Empress of Germany she was at one time also 

 Queen of England, as much as Queen Victoria was at the present 

 moment, but that fact had been forgotten or lost sight of by English 

 historians, from the earliest chronicler. He had proved it, but he 

 need only say now, that she took Stephen prisoner, she received the 

 Crown, and she was by the Government of the time proclaimed 

 Domina, Lady of England — a title specially used by a Queen (or 

 King) of England during the intermediate period between the death 

 or deposition of one Sovereign and the coronation of another, when 

 she became Begina (or Rex as the case might be.) While Matilda 

 was Domina she issued several charters, of which he had a list 

 — and in which her title appeared as Domina or " Lady of the 



1 Vol. xxxi., p. 376. 



