Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/273

THE ANCESTOR 213 the task he had set himself. A certain suspicion is aroused in turning over these pages that the author is not at his ease with the language or writing of an ancient manuscript, and is happier with a version in print or at least in the plainer hand of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Mr. Foster has evidently had the Boroughbridge Roll itself in his hands, and the present writer can testify that its handwriting, although somewhat faded, presents no difficulty to an expert ; yet for a transcript of a portion of this roll Mr. Foster has to make use of the version printed by Palgrave. The Camden Roll is a unique instance of an original roll existing both in blazon and in colours, and this lies at the British Museum, and a facsimile is given of a piece of it. But for entries from this roll Mr. Foster is forced to make use of a seventeenth century copy, as is clearly shown by the fact that he gives the arms of Betune and Fenes with lions looking backward, an error which occurs only in the copyist's work. This is an error which no one conversant with early heraldry could have passed without comment, considering that in early English heraldry, lions are never found with their heads in this position, the earliest instance being probably in the well known Welsh coat of the 'three skulking lions.' After this it is possible to surmise that Mr. Foster's reason for omitting a certain famous roll of arms at Oxford from his collection was not unconnected with the fact that the roll is only accessible in its original form. On the evidence of this book it might be questioned whether Mr. Foster had ever examined an ancient record. We are amazed to find him quoting an entry from a close roll of Henry V. beginning ' all such who had taken y^ liberty of wearing cotes of armes.' The reference is thrust forward as 'Close Roll 5 H. V. (141 7) in dorso^ m. 15 ' to give a flavour of original research to the quotation, but when Mr. Foster sees a close roll of that period he will credit our statement that enrolments were not made at that date in Elizabethan Eng- lish. After this we are not surprised to find Roger of Hove- den quoted as using the same ' quaint ' language more than two centuries earlier still. The rolls when in blazon being written in old French, it might be imagined that some knowledge of that language would need to be acquired for the purposes of such a book as this. Yet at the outset Mr. Foster shakes our confidence in his old French learning by indicating the word wyfer as an