This week – 21 July 1222

A charter to Coldingham Priory is issued by Alexander II. Though not necessarily an important document for the priory, the charter marked a watershed in his kingship. From this point forward, the plural of majesty was adopted and used systematically in his charters, giving historians a firmer idea of the dates of those charters in which a year (or even a month and day) may not have been specified. [See Dauvit Broun, ‘The Absence of Regnal Years from the Dating Clause of Charters of Kings of Scots, 1195-1222’, Anglo-Norman Studies XXV, ed. John Gillingham (Woodbridge, 2002), 47-63, at 57-8; ibid., Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain (Edinburgh, 2007), 200.]