HENRY II (1133-1189), king of England. Letters patent, Woodstock, n.d. [c.1176-82], addressed to all his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, sheriffs, ministers and faithful subjects 'both French and English in the whole of England', granting to the church of St Mary's in Kirkstead [i.e. Kirkstead Abbey, Lincolnshire] and its monks the buildings which they hold in Wildemore, i.e. the Hermitage, Hunildehus and Newham, and 120 acres of meadow next to the Hermitage, together with the ditches that enclose them, and all other ditches and enclosures in Wildemore, and all their other meadows, pastures and peatbogs ['turbariis'] there, witnessed by Richard of Ilchester, Bishop of Winchester, Geoffrey Ridel, Bishop of Ely, John of Oxford, Bishop of Norwich, William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex, Ranulf de Glanvill, Renaud de Courtenay, William de Lanvallei, Thomas Basset and Michael Belet, in Latin, on vellum, 11 lines in an elegant charter hand on one membrane, 145 x 135mm, one contemporary endorsement on verso, noting that this is a duplicate ('Duplex'), another slightly later, seal tags (lacking seal). Provenance: acquired at Hamilton, 28 September 1967. The Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead was founded in 1139 from Fountains Abbey, and rebuilt at a new site between 1160 and 1175. It was dissolved in 1537 and its last abbot and some of the monks executed for their part in the Lincolnshire Rising.