Confirmation by Wiemar, son of Warin, of his father's grant of a garden in his park to the Hospital of St. Leonard in York, manuscript document in Latin, on parchment [England (York), last decades of twelfth century]

Single-sheet document, with 11 long lines in an elegant English semi-secretarial hand, some text washed out through old water damage, one corner folded in, one large split at top and another at foot, folds and scuffs, but mostly legible, reverse with 3-line contemporary endorsement, 120+22 x 152mm.; in foolscap envelope with notes and record of Phillipps' number (from Sotheby's sale)

From the celebrated collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), his MS. 40,969; then passing to Lionel and Philip Robinson of W.H. Robinson Ltd., who operated from the same rooms in which this auction is held; sold by Sotheby's 13 April 1981, lot 216(b), to Alan G. Thomas, London bookdealer (1911-92); his posthumous sale in Sotheby's 21 June 1993, lot 11 (part 2), to Martin Schøyen (his MS. 1675/2) and thereafter kept in his London library.

Northern English charters of this great antiquity are exceedingly rare, and the witness-list here begins with Hamo, the 'cantor' of York Minster.