Charters and episcopal scriptoria in the Anglo‐Saxon South‐West

This article assesses the evidence provided by the Anglo‐Saxon charters from Exeter, and the contribution they make to the important question of how royal charters may have been produced in England. The Exeter charters are unusual in that most of them survive as originals, rather than copies, allowing us to add a palaeographical dimension to their study. Using diplomatic and palaeographical analysis, this article establishes that many of the surviving charters from the South‐West belong to a distinctive regional diplomatic tradition, removed from the diplomatic mainstream. Finally, the agency which may have produced these charters in the century before the Norman conquest is identified as the episcopal scriptorium at Crediton, and later Exeter.