Charters were the recorded formal and legal agreements made between two or more parties. Usually discussing property rights, duties, and obligations, charters were the legal contracts of their time. Donations, resolutions for private property disputes, and agreements would be formalized and recorded in charters. Eventually, entire towns would be brought into legal existence via a charter issued by either a king or a local lord who had space and population overflow enough to found a new urban settlement. Charters also, however, formed the means by which laws could be brought into effect. Sometimes, these legal charters would be as simple as a series of "if-then" statements: “if you murder someone, then you pay this much.” More complicated legal charters would limit or otherwise define the powers of certain offices or individuals, allow for the formation of guilds and communes, or even dictate the terms and status of semi-independent cities.
Charters and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Society, ed. Karl Heidecker, Utrecht Studies in Medievla Literacy; 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000)
Charters, Cartularies and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the Medieval West: Proceedings of a Colloquium of the Commission Internationale de Diplomatique (Princeton and New York, 16-18 September 1999), eds. Adam J. Kosto and Anders Winroth (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2002)
Charters of the Medieval Hospitals of Bury St. Edmunds, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994)
Cities, Texts, and Social Networks, 400-1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, ed. Caroline Goodson (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010)
Dating Undated Medieval Charters, ed. Michael Gervers (Rochester: Boydell Press, 2000)
Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Warren Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013
Holt, James Clarke. Magna Carta, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)
To Have and to Hold: Marrying and its Documentation in Western Christendom, 400-1600, Philip L. Reynolds and John Witte Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
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