Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/267

1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 259 request with benignity, and Brother Simon of Deffcfrd apparently profited by his stay. The register is rich in documents of general diocesan interest. Such matters as the presentation of Ingelard of Warley to the church of Cropthorne (pp. 49-53) were directly concerned with the affairs of the monastery ; but various ordinations of chantries and deeds confirming appropriations of churches were episcopal acts in which the prior and convent were interested only in so far as their consent qud chapter was necessary and as they acquired annual pensions by way of indemnities for appropriations. Copies of the same acts will be found in the contem- porary bishops' registers : e. g. the appropriation of the church of Thorn- bury to Tewkesbury Abbey, and the ordination of the vicarage (pp. 140-1), are entered on fo. 36 of Maydeston's register. Consultation of these volumes, to which the Liber Albus is a complement, would have suggested some pertinent notes. Gilbert, bishop of Annaghdown, who introduced himself to the prior in 1310 (p. 104), made himself useful from time to time in York, Bath and Wells, and other dioceses, and acted as suffragan in that of Worcester for a brief period in 1313 (Reg. Reynolds, ff. 91, 93 d). In the case of the clerk imprisoned for homicide in 1302 (pp. 31-2), allusion might have been made to the numerous memoranda in Reynolds's register, touching a murder committed a few years later in the close at Exeter by the rector of Tortworth. Dr. Wilson's English versions of documents are extremely careful, whilst at the same time he is so diffident of his own powers that it seems ungracious to suggest that a wider acquaintance with the diplomatic aspect of the register would have solved an occasional difficulty. Never- theless, in one difficult sentence (p. 135), familiarity with the language of common forms would have prevented the misinterpretation of the clause ' quam [sententiam] . . . incurrere volumus ipso facto ', and in another (p. 239) of the words ' affectu pariter et effectu '. ' Expeditio fabrice ' (p. 277) implies a special effort to augment the fabric-fund, the ' fabrica ' or ' works ', of the cathedral church : ' the hastening forward of the building ' was doubtless the object and consequence of the sacrist's energy, but does not translate the phrase. In the same sentence the cathedral church is said to be the bishop's ' sponsor ', where the Latin word is evidently the genitive of ' sponsa '. ' Melius plaustrum ' (p. 253) is rendered ' a fairly good wagon ' : this classical sense of the comparative is not admissible, and the proper translation is ' the best wagon ', just as Shakespeare's ' second best bed ' is the English equivalent of ' secundum melius lectum ', a phrase familiar in wills. ' Bones gentz de pais ' (p. 148) means more than ' honest country folk ' : the ' boni homines patriae ' were the local jury summoned to the inquiry of which the result is given. The alternative versions of ' les soverneles venues de marcheis ' (p. 197) are very doubtful : an allusion to the frequent occurrence of markets, which filled the town with visitors and made excessive demands upon the hospitality of the convent, is more likely than one to guests from the Welsh marches. ' Messesours ' (p. 147), translated as ' men ', is not a form of ' messieurs ', but a misreading ' of ' mesfesours ', i. e. malefactors. Palaeographical errors of a familiar kind are responsible for such forms S2