of warfare. Certainly Hoveden has left these matters unrecorded. But our author on folio 60b has meditated on that period to some purpose. 'William, son of Duncan, nephew of King David,' he narrates, 'vanquished the English army in Craven at Clitheroe, slaying very many and taking numerous prisoners. At the same time Alberic, a monk of Cluny, then Bishop of Ostia and Legate of the Apostolic See, who had been sent by Pope Innocent to England and Scotland, came to King David at Carlisle and reconciled (pacificavit) Bishop Adelulf to King David and restored him to his own (proprie) See, as also John Bishop of Glasgow. In addition he obtained from King David that in the feast of St. Martin they should bring all the English prisoners to Carlisle and there give them their freedom. When this was done that city was not inappropriately called Cardolium, which means carens dolore, because there captivitas Anglorum caruit dolore.' If this account is laid alongside what is known from other sources of the incidents of 1138, it will be observed how little the author followed the textual phraseology of the Hexham writers.1 The etymological adaptation of Cardolium to suit the happy incident appears to be quite new to history.

Another passage, indicative of his independence of Hoveden, raises a question of considerable interest in the literary history of England and Scotland. So important is the text that it must be reproduced in the original.

Eodem anno, videlicet, anno domini m° c° ij°, Rex Henricus primus, ut dicitur, per consilium et industriam Matildis regine, constituit canonicos regulares in ecclesia Karleolensi. Quidam vero presbiter, ad conquestum Anglie cum Willelmo Bastardo veniens, hanc ecclesiam et alias plures et aliquas villas circumiacentes, pro rebus viriliter peractis, a rege Willelmo in sua susceperat, Walterus nomine. Henricus [episcopatum 2] sancte Marie Karleolensis fundavit et non multo post in pace quievit. Cuius terras et possessiones Rex Henricus dedit canonicis [Rex H. underlined for deletion] regularibus et priorem eorum primum Adelwaldum, iuvenem quidem etate sed moribus senem, priorem sancti Oswaldi de Nosles constituit, quem postea corrupte Adulfum vocabant.

It is true that this statement is made in the form of a note at the bottom of folio 58a, but it is not the interpolation of a sub

1 Priory of Hexham (Surtees Soc.), i. 82-3, 98-9, 117-21.

2 There has been an erasure here in a very contracted text, but perhaps of only one letter. A late hand has interlineated ecclesiam. As the bishopric was founded only a few years before King Henry's death, episcopatum was probably in the scribe's mind. The sentence has been misplaced: it should have been written at the end of the passage.

sequent writer. The note is introduced in the same hand and with the same ink as the text in a place reserved for it. The position on the folio only shows that the statement was not in the exemplar the scribe was following for that portion of the narrative. Its resemblance to the famous passage1 in the Scotichronicon (i. 289) on the foundation of the priory of Carlisle will be recognised.

Other passages in the manuscript tell the same tale. The compressed account on folio 51a of William the Conqueror's visit to Durham, his foundation of the castle there, his attempted profanation of the tomb of St. Cuthbert, and his meticulous flight beyond the Tese, shows indebtedness to Simeon of Durham as well as to Hoveden. It is not necessary to multiply proofs of Bishop Stubbs' statement that the earlier portion of the manuscript is based on the Chronicle of Roger of Hoveden, and not a mere continuation of it, as Stevenson has suggested. In not a few instances the author has shown his independence by addition, omission, and compression.2

That Hoveden was the basis of the compilation for the twelfth century every student of the manuscript will acknowledge. From this circumstance alone we get an important sidelight on the authorship. It is stated in the manuscript on folio 103, under the year 1190, that David, brother of William King of Scotland, married blank, sister of Ranulf earl of Chester, and on folio 157 in the list of the bishops assembled in London in 1199 occurs the name of blank, Archbishop of Ragusa. Thanks to the masterly collation of the Hoveden manuscripts by Bishop Stubbs, we can identify from lacunae like these the actual text of Hoveden that the author of our chronicle had before him. It was the Laudian copy now in the Bodleian, where alone these two omissions in the same manuscript are found. The interest, however, is not

1 If Abbot Bower of Inchcolm added this note to Fordun's work, as it is generally believed, from what source is it likely that the superior of a Scottish Augustinian house should have obtained such local information? The statement in the Scotichronicon that the priory of Carlisle was founded in 1102 was supposed to be unsupported till within recent years. It has now the countenance of an English as well as a French Chronicle. See Hist. MSS. Com. Report, vi. 354.

2 The same discretion, used by the author when dealing with the Chronicle of Melrose as his exemplar, will be observed if a collation is made of the early pages of Stevenson's printed text with the corresponding passages of that chronicle. The author appropriated whole slices of the Chronicle of Melrose when they suited his purpose. He did the same with Hoveden for the twelfth century, but perhaps with more frequency and freedom.

confined to this point. The Laudian copy has on its fly leaves transcripts of four documents, all relating to Carlisle. These show, as Bishop Stubbs1 remarked, that the manuscript was at one time, and that probably a very long time, in possession of either the city or the Bishop of Carlisle.' But as one of these deeds is a letter from Henry VI. to Bishop Lumley, dated 23rd November, 1436, 'de custodia ville et castri Karlioli,' we need have no hesitation in ascribing the ownership of the manuscript to that prelate, who was then warden of the Western March. It probably formed part of the episcopal library at Rose Castle. The deeds of this nature, inserted in it, just cover the period of the episcopal residence there up to Bishop Lumley's day. This identification, so far as our inquiry is concerned, localizes the production of our chronicle to the district of Carlisle,2 the area of the bishop's jurisdiction.

Turning now to Stevenson's printed text, and especially to that portion of it translated by Sir Herbert Maxwell, when we are approaching the floruit of the author, no reader can help feeling that, like works of this nature, the Chronicle is a compilation from various sources, and that the materials, which make up the narrative, are of unequal historical value. It cannot be said that the compiler was a skilled artist in the use of his sources. There is no attempt to write continuous history, though a fair semblance of chronological arrangement has been maintained. Duplicate entries are frequent, many of which have been pointed out by the translator, and need not be repeated here. This repetition is evidence enough, if nothing else existed, that the Chronicle at this period was a sort of journal or literary scrap-book for the purpose of jotting down historical events as information had reached the authorities. An entry was made from perhaps imperfect knowledge, either from a written source or oral intelligence: later details arrived or a fuller account was found, and a more extended record of the incident was afterwards made without expunging the previous entry. In most of the duplicate passages

1 Roger de Hoveden (R.S.), i. pref. pp. lxxiv-lxxx.

2 But it does far more than this. The scholar, who undertakes to identify the sources of the chronicle on the lines of those issued in the Rolls Series, will have to define its relationship to the Cronica de Karleolo, compiled for Edward I. in 1291 by the canons of Carlisle, as well as to Bishop Lumley's copy of Hoveden. It will be an interesting study, and will result in the probable discovery that the Carlisle copy of Hoveden was lent to the canons of Carlisle in 1291, as well as to the canons of Lanercost.

it will be found that the second carries with it more particulars than the first.

The method of the compiler comes into view in the manipulation of his sources about 1290. In dealing with the plutocrat1 of Milan, it pleases me,' he says, 'to add in this place what ought to have found a convenient place in the beginning of the eighth part, forasmuch as it happened at that time, although I did not receive timely notice of this matter.' Passages of this sort furnish some evidence that the work was not undertaken and carried out by the same person at the period in which the story draws to a close. But if the printed portion of the Chronicle was mainly compiled from written sources, to which assumption there is much antagonistic evidence, the duplicate passages offer indubitable proof of the writer's unskilfulness in his craft.

There is strong reason for believing that the body of the Chronicle was not put together in or after 1346. In various passages noticed by the translator, contemporary allusions are made at long distant periods quite incompatible with a single authorship after the close of the work. A few instances must suffice. Under 1293 there is recorded a story from Wells about 2 'what I know to have happened nine years ago' to a prebendary of that church. This event,' the chronicler relates, took place in the year (19 March, 1285-6) when Alexander, King of Scotland, departed this life, and was told to our congregation by a brother who at that time belonged to the convent of Bristol. There is no reasonable doubt that the entry was made in the year to which it refers when the story came to hand. Another incident, not included in this translation, is equally conclusive. It is well known that Nicholas of Moffat was made archdeacon of Teviotdale in 1245, and though twice elected Bishop of Glasgow he died unconsecrated in 1270. With this neglected churchman the author of this portion of the Chronicle was so familiar, that he says he officiated at his funeral. Contemporaneous allusions like these go a long way to show that the compilation was built up continuously, period by period, and cannot be the work of a single compiler in the middle of the fourteenth century.

But it is not so easy to form a definite opinion of the nature of the institution responsible for the continuous production of such a work. It seems to be agreed that the Chronicle emanated from some religious house on the English side of the Border. The tone 2 Pp. 101-102.

1 P. 67.

3 Dowden, Bishops of Scotland, pp. 304-6.

K

Chron. de Lanercost, p. 53.

of the composition in its acrimonious hostility to Scottish interests betrays its English origin: the historical setting of the narrative is similarly conclusive of its localisation to the Border counties. The ecclesiastical colour of the incidents cannot be mistaken: the lightning of the churchman coruscates on every page. As these general considerations will be conceded, the difficulty lies in the identification of the particular religious house in which the work was done.

It was a bold and praiseworthy venture of Stevenson to cut himself adrift from the traditional view that the Chronicle emanated from the priory of Lanercost, and to suggest the Greyfriar House in Carlisle as the more probable source. With much acumen has he marshalled his evidence, and with all the moderation of conviction has he defended his own discovery. Without going over in detail the formidable list of evidences in support of the Minorite authorship, it may be here acknowledged that no critical student can fail to be impressed with the cogency of his arguments. The narrative bristles with the exploits and virtues of the Friars Minor. One would think that it was specially composed in glorification of that Order. The passages are too numerous for special discussion: they are all of the same character: on every occasion, in season and out of season, the merits of the brothers of St. Francis are lauded to the skies.

While this much is admitted without reserve, the weak side of Stevenson's proposition, as it would seem, presents itself when he attempts to identify the Franciscan habitation in which he locates the Chronicle. If the work is due to Minorite authorship, internal evidence gives little encouragement to make Carlisle the headquarters of the particular congregation that gave it birth. So much of the narrative is taken up with affairs, political and ecclesiastical, in the neighbourhood of that city, that the editor was constrained, as it may be permissible to believe, to fix on that place, in spite of the evidence, as the local habitation. The overwhelming evidence for a Greyfriar authorship is more conclusively in favour of Berwick than of Carlisle.

It will be observed that the references to this Mendicant Order are for the most part very general. News about the Order came from all points of the compass in the shape of prattle and legend : in very few instances can it be said to be local. When local news protrudes itself, the scene is at Berwick or elsewhere, not at Carlisle. Some specific instances of the compiler's connexion