Published in six volumes between 1839 and 1848, this was the first collected edition of the surviving corpus of Anglo-Saxon charters, comprising royal diplomas in Latin, and a variety of documents (wills, writs, etc.) in the vernacular (Old English). John Mitchell Kemble (1807–57) collected his material from many different places (the British Museum, the Tower of London, cathedral archives, college libraries, and various private collections), and arranged it as best he could in chronological order. He believed passionately that he was laying foundations for a new history of the English people, and built on this research in The Saxons in England (1849), also reissued in this series. Volume 1 of the Codex (1839) contains texts from the seventh, eighth and early ninth centuries. It includes Kemble's pioneering account of the principles for assessing the authenticity of Anglo-Saxon charters, and a new preface by Simon Keynes introducing this landmark work.
