Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

has lately been printed for the first time by the Historica 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 Jocelin de Brakelonda, lately printed 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. Edmundsbury, 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. It contains repeated personal notices of all these three kings.

MONASTIC REGISTERS.

Among the contemporary historical monuments of this age are also to be reckoned parts at least of several or 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); that of Margan, from 1066 to 1232 (in Gale, 1687); that of

Waverley,* 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). 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, Eadıner, &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 Roffensus,' 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 Ecclesia Wigorniensis'-published by Hearne in two vols. 8vo. in 1723, is of still earlier date, having been compiled in the reign of the Conqueror.

* We may remark, however, that the passage from the earlier portion of the Waverley Annals, which Gale quotes in proof of the writer having lived at the time of the Conquest, appears to be merely a translation from the Saxon Chronicle.

VOL. I.

F

LAW TREATISES.-DOMESDAY BOOK.-PUBLIC ROLLS AND

[ocr errors]

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 damnum, 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 3rd of John, the Rotuli Normanniæ, the Rotuli de Oblatis et Finibus, the Fines in Curiâ 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 stated 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 endeavour till the tumult of many other occupations, and what the historian calls "durior ætas"-a more iron timet-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 some other things that are true or probable. Even before the Conquest, the Confessor himself, according to this writer, though a native of England, yet, from his education and long residence in Normandy, had become almost a Frenchman; and when he succeeded to the English throne he brought over with him great numbers of Normans, whom he advanced to the highest dignities in the church and the state. "Wherefore," it is added, "the whole land began, under the influence of the king and the other Normans introduced

*Sir Francis Palgrave, Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, vol. i. p. 56.

Quid nos dura refugimus aetas ?-Hor. Od. i. 35. Excerpta ex Libro iv. Orderici Vitalis, p. 247; edit. Maseres.

« AnteriorContinuar »