fice. It has been observed that in
the 9th century the documents were drawn carefully, but that in the 10th
century there was a great degeneration in this respect. Under the early
Capetian kings there was great confusion and want of uniformity in their
diplomas; and it was not until the reign of Louis VI., A.D. 1108, that
the formulae were again reduced to rules.

Imperial German chancery.

The acts of the imperial chancery of Germany followed the patterns of
the Carolingian diplomas, with little variation down to the reign of
Frederick Barbarossa, A.D. 1152-1190. The sovereign's style was _N.
divina favente clementia rex_; after coronation at Rome he became
_imperator augustus_. At the end of the 10th century, Otto III.
developed the latter title into _Romanorum imperator augustus_. Under
Henry III., and regularly from the time of Henry V., A.D. 1106-1125, the
title before coronation has been _Romanorum rex_. The royal monogram did
not necessarily contain all the letters of the name; but, on the other
hand, from the year 976, it became more complicated and combined the
imperial title with the name. For example, the monogram of Henry II.
combines the words _Henricus Romanorum imperator augustus_. The
flourished _ruches_ also, as in the Frankish chanceries, were in vogue.
Eventually they were used by certain of the chancellors as a sign-manual
and took fanciful shapes, such as a building with a cupola, or even a
diptych. They disappear early in the 12th century, the period when in
other respects the chancery of the Holy Roman Empire largely adopted a
more simple style in its diplomas. Lists of witnesses, in support of the
royal and official subscriptions, were sometimes added in the course of
the 11th century, and they appear regularly in documents a hundred years
later.

Diplomatic in England.

For the study of diplomatic in England, material exists in two distinct
series of documents, those of the Anglo-Saxon period, and those
subsequent to the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon kings appear to have
borrowed, partially, the style of their diplomas from the chanceries of
their Frankish neighbours, introducing at the same time modifications
which give those documents a particular character marking their
nationality. In some of the earlier examples we find that the lines of
the foreign style are followed more or less closely; but very soon a
simpler model was adopted which, while it varied in formulas from reign