in England dates from the middle of the ninth century.

The practice of separating the copies with an irregular cut also gave rise to the description of the documents as "indentures", since the edges would be said to be "indented". In the post-medieval period, as legal documents grew in length and complexity, it became impractical to fit two duplicate texts onto a single sheet of parchment. It therefore became more usual to make the two copies on two or more separate sheets, the top edges of which were