from Augustine to Hubert Walter, who died in 1205, and whom Gervase probably did not long survive. Leland, who gives this writer a high character for his diligent study and accurate and extensive knowledge of the national antiquities, speaks of his History as commencing with the earliest British times, and including the whole of the Saxon period ("tum Britannorum ab origine historiam, tum Saxonum et Normannorum fortia facta, deduxit"). He takes great pains in the portion we have of it to present a correct and distinct chronology; but it is principally occupied with ecclesiastical affairs.

VINSAUF. RICHARD OF DEVISES.

BRAKELONDA.

JOSCELIN DE

AN account of the expedition of Richard Cœur de Lion to the Holy Land, in six books, by Geoffrey Vinsauf, has been published, under the title of Itinerarium Regis Anglorum Richardi, et aliorum, in terram Hierosolymorum, by Gale in his Scriptores Quinque (pp. 245-429). A portion of the same work had been previously printed by Bongarsius in his Gesta Dei per Francos, 1611, as a fragment of the History of Jerusalem (Hierosolimitanæ Historiæ Fragmentum) from A. D. 1171 to 1190, by an unknown writer, probably an Englishman. There is a translation of the whole in the volume of Bohn's Antiquarian Library entitled Chronicles of the Crusaders. Geoffrey, or Walter, Vinsauf, or Vinisauf, or Vinesalf (in Latin de Vino Salvo), was an Englishman by birth, although of Norman parentage, and accompanied Richard on his crusade. His prose is spirited and eloquent, and he was also one of the best Latin poets of his day. His principal poetical work, entitled De Nova Poetria (On the New Poetry), has been several times printed: it "is dedicated," Warton observes, "to Pope Innocent the Third, and its intention was to recommend and illustrate the new and legitimate mode of versification which had lately begun to flourish in Europe, in opposition to the Leonine or barbarous species." This work, published soon after the death of King Richard, contains an elaborate lamentation over that event, which is quoted in what is called Bromton's Chronicle1 (written in the 1 In the Scriptores X. col. 1280. The author's name is misprinted Galfridus de Nino Salvo.

reign of Edward III.), and, as both Camden1 and Selden 2 have noted, is referred to by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales,3 although only the latter seems to have understood the delicate ridicule of the allusion. The "craft of Galfride" (so he names Vinsauf) is also celebrated by the great English poet, apparently with much less irreverence, in his Court of Love, no doubt composed at a much less advanced period of his life.

Another valuable contemporary history of the early part of the reign of Richard the First (from A. D. 1189 to 1192), comprehending the transactions in England as well as abroad, the Chronicle of Richard of Devises, has been printed for the first time by the Historical Society: -Chronicon Ricardi Divisiensis de Rebus Gestis Ricardi Primi, Regis Angliæ; nunc primum typis mandatum, curante Josepho Stevenson; -8vo. Lon. 1838. Divisiensis appears to have written before either Diceto or Hoveden, and his work forms therefore an authority additional to and quite independent of theirs.

Finally, we ought not to omit to mention the singularly curious Chronicle of Joscelin de Brakelonda, printed a few years ago by the Camden Society, - Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, de Rebus Gestis Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi; nunc primum typis mandata, curante Johanne Gage Rokewode; 4to. Lon. 1840, —which, although professing to record only the acts of Abbot Samson and the history of the monastery of St. Edmondsbury, includes also several notices of the public affairs of the kingdom, as well as lets us see farther into the system of English life and society in that remote time than perhaps any other record that has come down to us. It embraces the space from 1173 to 1202, comprehending the last sixteen years of the reign of Henry II., the whole of that of Richard I., and the first three years of that of John; and it contains repeated personal notices of all these three kings. Brakelonda's Chronicle has been translated by Mr. T. E. Tomlins (8vo. Lon. 1840); and Mr. Carlyle's brilliant resuscitation of the old Abbot and his century in his Past and Present, 1843, lives in the memory of most readers of modern English books.

1 Remains, 7th edit., p. 414.

2 Præfat. ad Scriptores X., p. xli. 15

VOL. I.

"Nonne's Preestis Tale, v. 15,353, &c.

4

v. 11.

MONASTIC REGISTERS.

AMONG the contemporary historical monuments of this age are also to be reckoned parts at least of several of the monastic registers, compiled by a succession of writers, which have been published; such as that of Melrose, extending from A. D. 735 to 1270 (in Fulman, 1684, and much more carefully edited by Mr. Stevenson for the Bannatyne Club, 4to. 1835); that of Margan, from 1066 to 1232 (in Gale, 1687); that of Waverley,1 from 1066 to 1291 (in the same collection); those of Ramsay and Ely, both, as far as printed, coming down to the Conquest (the former in Gale, 1691, the latter in the same collection, and also, in part, in the second Seculum of Mabillon's Acta Sanctorum Benedictinorum); that of Ely by the Priors Thomas and Richard, from A. D. 156 to 1169 (in Wharton's Anglia Sacra); those of Holyrood, from A. D. 596 to 1163, and of Abingdon, from 870 to 1131, and the History of the Bishops and Church of Durham from A. D. 633 to 1214 (all in the same collection). A new and much improved edition of that of Holyrood was brought out in 1828 for the Bannatyne Club by the late Mr. R. Pitcairn. To these may be added some of the tracts relating to the great monastery of Peterborough in Sparke's collection; and several lives of prelates by Malmesbury, Goscelin of Canterbury, Osbern, John of Salisbury, Eadmer, &c., in Wharton. The Annals of the Monastery of Burton, in Staffordshire, from A. D. 1004 to 1263, and the continuation of the History of England from 1149 to 1470 (both in Fulman), appear to be throughout compilations of a later date. The venerable collection of ancient monuments relating to the church of Rochester and the kingdom of Kent, entitled the Textus Roffensis, which was published by Hearne, in 8vo., at Oxford in 1720, was drawn up by Bishop Ernulphus, who presided over the see of Rochester from A. D. 1115 till his death in 1124; and Heming's Chartulary of the Church of Worcester, - Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, published by Hearne in two vols. 8vo. in 1723, is of still earlier date, having been compiled in the reign of the Conqueror.

1 The passage, however, from the earlier portion of the Waverley Annals, which Gale quotes in proof of the writer having lived at the time of the Conquest, is merely a translation from the vernacular Chronicle.

LAW TREATISES. — DOMESDAY BOOK. — PUBLIC ROLLS AND

REGISTERS.

WE may close the account of the numerous historical writings of the first century and a half after the Conquest by merely noticing, that to the same period belong the earliest work on the common law of England, the Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, commonly ascribed to the chief justiciary Ranulf de Glanvil, which was first printed, in 4to., at London in 1673, and of which there is an English translation, with notes, by Mr. John Beames, 8vo. Lon. 1812; the Liber Niger, or Black Book of the Exchequer, supposed to have been compiled by Gervase of Tilbury (Gervasius Tilburiensis), who, according to some authorities, was a nephew of King Henry II., of which there is an edition by Hearne, 2 vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1728, reprinted at London in 1771; and the Dialogus de Scaccario, or Dialogue respecting the Exchequer, probably written by Richard Fitz-Nigel, or Fitz-Neale, bishop of London, from a. D. 1189 to 1198, which is printed at the end of Madox's History of the Exchequer, 4to. Lon. 1711, and again 2 vols. 4to. 1769; and of which there is an English translation, 4to. Lon. 1756. Along with these text-books of English law may be noticed the book of the laws and legal usages of the Duchy of Normandy, called the Coutumes de Normandie, of which there are editions of 1681, 1684, 1694, and 1709, all printed at Rouen, and each in 2 volumes folio. It hardly belongs to our subject to mention the most venerable of all national registers, the Domesday Book of the Conqueror, printed at London in 1783, in 2 volumes, folio, under the title of Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi Regis Angliæ inter Archivos Regni in Domo Capitulari Westmonasterii conservatus; the Indices printed in 1811, and the additional volume printed in 1816 containing the Exon Domesday, the Inquisitio Eliensis, the Book of Winchester, and the Boldon Book; the public documents appertaining to the present period in the Statutes of the Realm, the Fœdera, the Calendar of Patent Rolls in the Tower, the Calendar of Rolls, Charters, and Inquisitions Ad Quod Daninum, the Placitorum Abbreviatio, the Rotuli Literarum Patentium, the Rotuli Literarum Clausarum, the Great Rolls of the Pipe of the 31st of Henry I. and of the 3d of John, the Rotuli Normanniæ, the Rotuli de Oblatis et Fini

bus, the Fines in Curia Domini Regis, the Rotuli Curiæ Regis, the Charter Rolls of John, the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England from Æthelbert to Henry I., and perhaps one or two other publications of the late Record Commission; the Concilia of Spelman, and of Wilkins, &c.

THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN ENGLAND.

It is commonly asserted that for some reigns after the Norman Conquest the exclusive language of government and legislation in England was the French, that all pleadings, at least in the supreme courts, were carried on in that language, and that in it all deeds were drawn up and all laws promulgated. "This popular notion," observes a learned living writer, "cannot be easily supported. Before the reign of Henry III. we cannot discover a deed or law drawn or composed in French. Instead of prohibiting the English language, it was employed by the Conqueror and his successors in their charters until the reign of Henry II., when it was superseded, not by the French but by the Latin language, which had been gradually gaining, or rather regaining, ground; for the charters anterior to Alfred are invariably in Latin." So far was the Conqueror from showing any aversion to the English language, or making any such attempt as is ascribed to him to effect its abolition, that, according to Ordericus Vitalis, when he first came over he strenuously applied himself to learn it for the special purpose of understanding, without the aid of an interpreter, the causes that were pleaded before him, and persevered in that endeavor till the tumult of many other occupations, and what the historian calls "durior ætas a more iron time 2. of necessity compelled him to give it up. The common statement rests on the more than suspicious authority of the History attributed to Ingulphus, the fabricator of which, in his loose and ignorant account of the matter, has set down this falsehood along with

1

1 Sir Francis Palgrave, Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, vol. i

p. 56.

2 Quid nos dura refugimus ætas ? - Hor. Od. i. 35.

3 Excerpta ex Libro iv. Orderici Vitalis, p. 247; edit. Maseres.