Grant by Johan de Arcenay and his wife Phelipe, to her paternal relative, Johan Debor Valeit, of their rights and interest in twenty-seven livres of money granted to her, in Old French, manuscript document on parchment [western France (Loudun, dept. Vienne), dated 1277]

Single-sheet document, with 20 long lines in a neat and legible early gothic secretarial hand, initial embellished with penwork dots, medieval endorsements on reverse, nineteenth-century precis of details and number 3 added at head of obverse, one small 'V'-shaped cut in middle of text (but without loss to text), remains of seal tag present, but seal wanting, folds and a few spots, else in outstanding condition, 165+14 by 198mm.

Early documents in vernacular French are both valuable witnesses of the transactions they record as well as the language they are written in. Before the beginning of the twelfth century only a handful of witnesses to Old French survive, with the works of Chrétien de Troyes (fl. 1160s-1180s) and the chansons de geste part of a blossoming interest in vernacular composition in France. The present document is a securely dateable and localisable record of this, only a century later.