Summary
Hughan’s paper presents a comparative listing of different versions of the Old Charges, detailing aspects such as:
- Manuscript names or classifications
- Dates associated with each manuscript
- Locations or sources where they were found
- Key textual variations or characteristics
The document does not contain a narrative analysis but instead serves as a structured reference for different versions of the Old Charges, likely aiding in their classification and comparison.
Critical Analysis
Hughan’s chronological table of the Old Charges is fundamentally flawed because it relies on the dates of manuscript copies, not the dates of composition. This is a critical methodological error: the date of a surviving copy tells us only when that particular manuscript was transcribed, not when the original text was written. Given that all known Old Charges are copies, their textual content could be significantly older than the manuscript itself, or conversely, altered over successive transcriptions. Without a rigorous internal analysis of linguistic, thematic, and contextual elements, Hughan’s approach risks misrepresenting the actual historical development of these texts and artificially compressing or distorting their timeline. Proper historical methodology must distinguish between the material dating of the document and the dating of the content it transmits, a principle Hughan fails to apply.