A CARTULARY OF THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST EDITED BY THE REV. H. E. SALTER, M.A. NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD VOL. I OXFORD PRINTED FOR THE OXFORD HISTORICAL SOCIETY AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1914 THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA PREFACE THE Cartulary of the Hospital of St. John the Baptist, preserved in Magdalen College Library, is a volume of 147 folios, and measures 11 inches by 7 inches. The first 53 folios contain the charters about tenements in the town of Oxford; the remainder deals with properties outside Oxford in the counties of Oxfordshire, Bucks., and Warwickshire. It appears that it was drawn up in 1278 or 1279 as it contains deeds 51 and 275, which are assigned to the year Michaelmas 1278 to Michaelmas 1279 by the names of the mayor and bailiffs; but it must be confessed that the succession of town officers is still a little uncertain about the years 1276-9. It is at all events certain that its date is after 1274, for it contains many deeds of the years 1274-5. In 1910 the Oxford Historical Society received an offer from the President and Fellows of Magdalen College to defray the expense of printing this Cartulary; but when it was found that the College muniment room contained almost all the originals from which the Cartulary was copied, and also many other charters giving the earlier and later history of the lands and tenements, it was decided to compile a new Cartulary and to limit the work to the properties which were owned by the Hospital within the town of Oxford. The following volumes contain more than 900 charters, whereas there are only 171 in the corresponding portion of the Cartulary of the Hospital. To make the work complete, the lease books of the College have been examined and abstracts of the leases have been printed, tracing the history of the properties to modern times. Also the Fine book of the College is to be included, by which we can discover the gradual rise in the value of the houses |