from the very first, had peculiarities of its own. Dr Sweet,
in his _Second Anglo-Saxon Reader, Archaic and Dialectal_, gives five
very brief Kentish charters of the seventh and eighth centuries, but
the texts are in Latin, and only the names of persons and places
appear in Kentish forms. In the ninth century, however, there are
seven Kentish charters, of a fuller description, from the year 805 to
837. In one of these, dated 835, a few lines occur that may be quoted:

Ic bidde and bebeode sw{ae}lc monn se th{ae}t min lond hebbe th{ae}t
he {ae}lce gere agefe them higum {ae}t Folcanstane l. ambra maltes,
and vi. ambra gruta, and iii. wega spices and ceses, and cccc. hlafa,
and an hrithr, and vi. scep.... Th{ae}m higum et Cristes cirican of
th{ae}m londe et Cealflocan: th{ae}t is thonne thritig ombra alath,
and threo hund hlafa, theara bith fiftig hwitehlafa, an weg spices
and ceses, an ald hrithr, feower wedras, an suin oththe sex wedras,
sex gosfuglas, ten hennfuglas, thritig teapera, gif hit wintres deg
sie, sester fulne huniges, sester fulne butran, sester fulne saltes.

That is to say:

I ask and command, whosoever may have my land, that he every year
give to the domestics at Folkestone fifty measures of malt, and six
measures of meal, and three weys [_heavy weights_] of bacon and
cheese, and four hundred loaves, and one rother [_ox_], and six
sheep.... To the domestics at Christ's church, from the land at
Challock: that is, then, thirty vessels of ale, and three hundred
loaves, of which fifty shall be white loaves, one wey of bacon and
cheese, one old rother, four wethers, one swine or six wethers, six
goose-fowls, ten hen-fowls, thirty tapers, if it be a day in winter,
a jar full of honey, a jar full of butter, and a jar full of salt.

At pp. 152-175 of the same volume, Dr Sweet gives 1204 Kentish glosses
of a very early date. No. 268 is: "_Cardines_, hearran"; and in
several modern dialects, including Hampshire, the upright part of a
gate to which the hinges are fastened is called a _harr_.

Several years ago, M. Paul Mayer found five short sermons in a Kentish
dialect in MS. Laud 471, in the Bodleian Library, along with their
French originals. They are printed in Morris's _Old English
Miscellany_, and two of them will be found in _Specimens of Early
English_, Part I, p. 141. The former of these is for the Epiphany,
the text being taken from Matt. ii 1. The date is just befor