Ethelred the Unready apologises

New translations of royal diplomas from Textus Roffensis

Textus Roffensis (c. 1123), Rochester, Cathedral Library MS A. 3. 5, folio 152r. The opening page of Ethelred the Unready's diploma restoring land at Wouldham and Littlebrook to Rochester Cathedral, dated to 995. By permission of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester Cathedral.

Blessed ones,

You may not wish to confess it, but I suspect you all like to witness a spot of repenting now and then from someone on high. Go on, admit it. Even an eleventh-century Benedictine monk gets to see quite regularly his abbot prostrate himself in acts of penance. And enjoys such moments.

Well, today you have an opportunity to read for yourself what one infamous Anglo-Saxon king had to say about his unfortunate past deeds. Dr Monk has made available his new translations of two of King Ethelred the Unready's royal diplomas.

If you manage to plough through the ridiculously grandiloquent language of Ethelred's scribe (he would have made Aldhelm proud), you will find therein words of regret from a king who seemed to feel he had genuinely angered God by his outrageous treatment of Rochester Cathedral.

Now grovel, Ethelred, grovel!

Update 16 Sept 2022. My older translations of texts from Textus Roffensis for Rochester Cathedral have now been reformatted, so they are no longer available as PDFs but are in webpage format. This means they now have new web addresses. Please bear with me as I correct the links. Please check out the Rochester Cathedral Textus Roffensis page for both my older and newer translations.

Ethelred restores land at Wouldham

Ethelred restores land at Bromley