Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/31

PREFACE. XXlll full account given of her burial (p, 330). This portion was certainly written contemporaneously with the events described, as immediately before, in wiiting of the affair of the Scottish succession, the author says, " ad quem " vero fineni rei gestae tractatus praecise devenerit, " quam cito ad publicam notitiam devenerit et divul- " gata fuerit, rei seriem prfesenti opusculo duximus " inserendam." He speaks very openly and strongly about Edward I., adding shortly afterwards, in mention- ing the tax in 1292, that even the new tax collectors, who exceeded incomparably the "protervia" of the old ones, could not extinguish the inextinguishable avarice of the king's heart (p. 333). But the most interesting portions of the chronicle are Notices of necessarily the notices of Oxford and Osney itself. The ^^^^Y- monastery, after being founded as a priory, was soon after (p. 22) raised to the rank of abbey,^ the island of Middeny (Medley) being the first land bestowed on it ; soon afterwards several churches and lands near Oxford Avere given. There is less than is usual with monastick annalists of lawsuits respecting the abbey property, though the annals are not free from them.^ The various taxes seem to have fallen with especial severity upon Osney. Two hundred marks paid to the Siennese merchants for the king's expenses in Gascony in 1255 seem to have been an especial grievance (p. 110), though the annalist allows (p. Ill) that this sum was reckoned towards the payment of the tenth granted by the Pope. There was a considerable loss at the same time (125G) from the retaxing of the hostels at Oxford (p. 111). The abbey had also, in 1268, to pay a fortieth towards the redemption of the disinherited barons (p. 218). ' I do not understand the title of primus abbas given to William de Sutton in 1274 (p. 257) ; there was no other William in the list till William Wendoverc in 1403. - There were continual disputes with S. Frideswyde's in the earlier years of the abbey.