Recorded in the Old Cornish language, in the margins of a Gospel book,[2] are the names and details of slaves freed in Bodmin (the then principal town of Cornwall, an important religious centre) during the 9th or 10th centuries.
Some 961 Cornish words are recorded, ranging from celestial bodies, through church and craft occupations, to plants and animals.
[3] This, it is believed, is the only original record relating to Cornwall, or its Bishopric, which predates the Norman Conquest.
The volume is in quarto, of rather an oblong form, and is very neatly written, though evidently by a scribe not well informed, or of great learning, even for those times.
The practice of manumitting slaves in the church, as recorded in the entries, appears to have existed from the early 4th century.