the oldest sealed charter of any authenticity in England.'[1] And a third has declared that 'there was no written Anglo-Saxon literature until the conversion of the people to Christianity' (i.e., at the opening of the seventh century).[2]
73. Again, most people would say that the Great Charter was first signed in 1215 Anno Domini, but the deed only sets forth that it was executed—the king set his seal thereto, for regal autographs came into use only in Richard II.'s reign[3]—by John on the 13th of June, in the seventeenth year of his reign. Twenty years later, the date of an Act of Parliament reads, 'Wednesday, the morrow after the feast of St. Vincent, the 20th year of the reign of King Henry, the son of King John.' This mode of dating Acts was also in vogue in Scotland.[4]
74. Probably one of the earliest printed statutes is the one known as 'Anno 24 Henrici VIII,' made 'in the session of this present Parliament holden upon prorogation at Westmynstere, the 4 daye of Februarye in the 24 yere of the reign of our most dradde soveraigne Lorde Kinge Henry the VIII.'
75. The revisers of the English statutes, whose labours were begun in the present generation, have had a deal of bother with doubts and questions upon the true dates of the earlier statutes. They give a list of fifty 'statutes of uncertain date,' as they term these acts, but from internal evidences they are able to fix these enactments in some of the Parliamentary Sessions during the period from 1267 to 1325
