from him for five years in 1197 (Ep. 141). Old age and the loss of friends and position made residence in England, where he ‘heard a tongue that he knew not,’ increasingly distasteful, and in one of his latest letters he begs Odo, bishop of Paris, to grant him some benefice, that if he could not live in his native land, at least he might be buried there (ib. 160). The last certain reference to Peter is in a charter which cannot be dated earlier than March 1204, where he is styled archdeacon of London (Academy, 21 Jan. 1893, p. 59). But he may be the Peter of Blois who held a canonry at Ripon, a piece of preferment which he might have obtained through his friendship with Ralph Haget, abbot of Fountains (cf. Epp. 31, 105). The Ripon tradition favours the identification (cf. Raine, Historians of the Church of York, ii. 480). Peter, the canon of Ripon, was alive as late as 1208, when he had his goods seized during the interdict (Cal. Close Rolls, i. 108 b). On 20 May 1212 an order was given that the executors of Peter of Blois, sometime archdeacon of London, should have free disposal of his goods (ib. i. 117 b); but there is no evidence how long Peter had then been dead. A jewelled morse (i.e. the clasp of a cope) and chasuble that had once belonged to Peter were formerly preserved in the treasury at St. Paul's (Simpson, St. Paul's and Old City Life, pp. 22–3).
Peter's letters reveal him as a man full of literary vanity, ambitious for worldly advancement, and discontented with his preferments, which he thought unequal to his merits. Probably his character rendered him unfit for a high position, though his undoubted, if superficial, ability made him useful in the humbler capacity of a secretary. Letter-writing came easily to him, and he boasted that he could dictate to three scribes at once while he wrote a fourth letter in his own hand, a feat with which no one else but Julius Cæsar was credited (Ep. 92). His learning was, however, varied and unquestioned; he had some knowledge of medicine (ib. 43), was an authority on both the canon and civil law (ib. 19, 26, 115, 242), and quotes with apparent knowledge the Latin classics, especially Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, and Juvenal, the Roman historians Livy and Suetonius, as well as later writers like Valerius Maximus and Trogus Pompeius. His chief interest was in history, whether ancient or modern, and he confesses that theology was a later study, though he shows some acquaintance with the Latin fathers. His writings, and especially his letters, display considerable literary merit, though rhetorical and overburdened with constant quotations. This last feature exposed him to adverse criticism in his lifetime; but Peter defended his method of composition, which placed him ‘like a dwarf on the shoulders of giants’ (Ep. 92), and boasted that he had plucked the choicest flowers of authors whether ancient or modern (De Amicitia Christiana, iii. 130).
I. Epistolæ. Peter's letters are the most interesting of his works, and, from the historical point of view, the most important. He professes that they were not written with a view to publication, and, in excusing their ‘native rudeness,’ pleads that as spontaneous productions they will possess a merit which does not belong to more laboured compositions (Ep. 1). The letters themselves suggest a different conclusion, and some were probably revised at the time of collection (Stubbs, Lectures on Mediæval and Modern History, p. 127). Others no doubt were written with elaborate care in the first place. The collection of his letters was originally undertaken at the request of Henry II (Ep. 1). The collected letters may not have been first published till some years later, but Peter's intention was known at least as early as 1190 (ib. 92). In a third letter he alludes to the difficulty of getting his letters correctly copied (ib. 215). There was not improbably more than one edition in Peter's own lifetime. A copy of Peter's letters was among the books which his patron, Hugh de Puiset [q. v.], left to Durham Priory on his death in March 1195 (Wills and Inventories, Surtees Soc. i. 4). Goussainville's edition contains 183 letters; the earlier editions gave twenty more, which Goussainville omitted as wanting in authority. In Giles's edition these twenty letters are restored, and others added, which professedly bring the total number up to 245 (there is an error in the numbering). But of the letters published by Goussainville, 162 and 165–183 are probably not by Peter (Hist. Litt. xv. 388, 399). Of those added by Giles 214–17, 219, 222–4, 230, 232, 234, 238–40, 244–6, and 248 are the most probably genuine; while 189, 200–2, 207–8, 211, 218, 225–6, 229, 231, and 236 have obviously no connection with Peter, and many of the others are very doubtful. Epistle 247 is a repetition of 134, and 249 a continuation of 15. To the letters in the collected editions must be added the letter written by Peter and William of Wells from the papal court in October 1187, which is printed in ‘Epistolæ Cantuarienses’ (pp. 107–8). The manuscripts of Peter's letters are very numerous; Hardy (Descript. Cat. British History, ii. 553–8) gives a list of over a hundred. A definitive edition of the letters has yet to appear. A full account
