Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/34

XXVI PREFACE, the Annals. him of appointing the prior himself, on the rejection of the postulation of Richard of York, wliom the convent had elected.' The writer not unfrequently speaks in the first person (see p. 164, ut more poetarum fabulantium loquar, p. 199, Errors in &c.). Of errors in detail there are not many, though the author has not escaped them entirely. In the earlier portion, where Diceto and Florence are his authorities, confusion is sometimes produced by one sentence being- made out of the two (see p. 4, for instance), and the chronology is careless; for instance (p. 6), Walkelin's accession to the see of Winchester is put down to 1066, instead of 1070, which year both Diceto and Florence give. The alteration of Matilda's title from comitissa, which Florence, whom he is copying, gives, to ducissa (p. 9) is curious. The entries under the years 1095 and 1096 are under 1093 in Florence. On the other hand, the day of the capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders in 1099 is correctly given as Friday, instead of Thursday which Florence has. There is an error with respect to the coronation of Henry I. ; the annalist (p. 14) states the king to have been crowned by archbishop Gerard, evidently mistaking the archbishop for his predecessor Thomas, whom Diceto mentions as assisting Maurice, bishop of London, in the ceremony.^ In p. 89, we find Ricardus Marescallus for Walterus. In p. 114, the Pope is called Alexander nonus, a confusion between Gregorius Tionus and Alexander quartus. In p. 171, the eldest ' See Mr. Eaine's Preface to The Priory of Hexham (Surtees Soc. 1863), i. p. clx, and also No. XIV. of the Illustrative Documents, Ap- pendix, p. xxii. * 2 Florence only mentions Mau- rice. As to the truth, see Raine's Lives of the Archbishops of York, pp. 1.53, 159, and the authorities quoted. One of them, Walter Map, De nugis curialium (p. 224), states that Gerard, -while bishop of Here- ford, cro^wned Henry I., and that Henry in consequence made him archbishop of York ; but as he states that Aluredus was his imme- diate predecessor in the see, his authority is not worth much on the point.