Two Old English Legal Texts

The transcription reads:

Transcription
[†] æþelƿeard cyð ceolbrehte þæt ic ƿille þæt
þu agife þa tƿegen dælas þære teoðunge
from bedeƿindan and fram lamburnan
þam godes þeoƿum to fostre æt bedeƿindan
and hie hit dælen betƿeoh him sƿa ðe ge-
metlic þynce [: – hæn]

Æthelweard makes known to Ceolbeorht that I desire that

you hand over the two parts of the tithe

from Bedwyn and from Lambourn

to God's servants for sustenance at Bedwyn

and they divide it among themselves as seems fitting to you

As you may have noticed, the text contains directives regarding the use and distribution of tithes, an early form or taxation defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “[a] tenth of annual produce or earnings, taken as a tax (originally in kind) for the support of the church and clergy”. In Anglo-Saxon England, the amounts collected via this form of taxation were divided and used for different purposes, usually with a third of the total amount going towards maintenance of the church, support for the poor and the clergy, respectively (Meritt 1934: 348). The legal documents in Codex 671 refer to the latter of the three parts and serve as a reminder to Ceolbeorht to pay the required amounts derived from tithes imposed on the local communities of Bedwyn and Lambourn (still existing as Lambourn, West Berkshire) to “God’s servants” (i.e. the clergy) in Bedwyn.

The document also corroborates archaeological evidence in confirming the presence of a church (and likely a scriptorium where the Old English legal texts were written) in Bedwyn around the early tenth century, on the site of the later-established and still present St. Mary’s Church (Mühlebach and Timofeeva 2025: 152).