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Manuscript vellum DS in Latin, one page, 11.5 x 4.25, originally issued at St. Laurence-in-Thanet, Kent, on April 20, 1431, in the ninth year of the reign of King Henry VI, later confirmed with the royal sign-manual monogram “RE” of King Edward IV at an undetermined date during his reign. The charter was issued by grantors William Manston, William Harlewyne, John Horne, Simon Lambyn, and Richard Bakar, confirming to Edmund Graunt “a certain messuage and two acres of land adjoining with its appurtenances” in the parish of Saint Laurence, situated in the holding of Menston between lands owned by William Manston, Stephen Tomelyn, and the Abbey and Convent of Saint Augustine of Canterbury. The charter concludes with witness names including Roger Manston, William Umfrey, John Frost, Thomas Graunt the younger, Stephen Tomelyn, Thomas Marchall, and William Gybbe. The lower edge retains remnants of five original red wax pendant seals attached by vellum tags. In fine condition.
Although the charter itself dates to 1431 during the reign of Henry VI, the royal “RE” monogram necessarily represents a later confirmation executed during the reign of Edward IV (1461–1470; 1471–1483), who was born in 1442 and therefore could not have participated in the original issue of the document. The confirmation bridges two dynasties on opposite sides of the Wars of the Roses: Henry VI, the Lancastrian king deposed by Edward IV in 1461, and Edward IV himself, whose Yorkist reign followed decades of dynastic conflict. During such periods of dynastic transition, royal reconfirmation of existing land grants provided important legal continuity for property holders, likely explaining why Edward IV’s sign-manual was sought and appended to this earlier charter. The document’s reference to the Abbey and Convent of Saint Augustine of Canterbury places it within the orbit of one of England’s oldest and most significant Benedictine monasteries, founded in 598 AD by Augustine of Canterbury. Medieval English land documents retaining multiple original wax pendant seals are increasingly difficult to obtain intact, particularly examples tied to identifiable fifteenth-century Kent landholdings and ecclesiastical property associated with so prominent an institution.
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