From original manuscripts David Howlett edits, translates, and analyses twenty-four Latin charters - English, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Scottish, and Hebridean - from the 7th century to the 15th, as monuments of thought and composition parallel to the literary and epigraphic traditions of these islands. This revolutionary analysis presents charters of local variety but underlying unity, in which complex self-authenticating mathematical structures produce works of art of astonishing and apprehensible beauty.