Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/64

Ivi PREFACE. they occasionally differ. And in their estimation of public men and public events, while this same difficulty has to be taken into consideration, and also while it must be recollected how very much they had to rely on second-hand or chance information, their fairness and candour, on the whole, must be considered as deserving of all praise. No doubt the estimation of such a man as Simon de Montfort must depend very much on the side in the great struggle embraced by the writer ; yet it is very rare to find the actual facts of the history wilfully distorted. If the facts of each year were written by various persons during the year's course, corrected from time to time as fresh information reached the monastery, and then written out by the professed annalist of the monastery, as the Winchester writer seems to intimate, this plan would afford a great safeguard from error. Nor ought we to quarrel with the annalists for giving us in such detail the petty affairs of their own monas- tery, while they dismiss with scarcely a remark the great events of the general history of their own or foreign countries that were passing around them. Accounts of the latter, learnt at second or third hand, could never have much authority ; the former bring before us in a very vivid manner the inner life of the monasteries, and thus give a key to the realizing the life of a very considerable portion of our forefathers. And when the annalists had a real opportunity of speaking of public events, they are generally very full : take, for instance, the account of the siege of Bedford castle in the Dunstable Annals, or the last few days of Simon de Montfort's life in the Waverley Annals. That the inner life of the monk of the thirteenth century was not all peace and quiet- ness, and the monastery a complete refuge from all worldly troubles, is amply shown by the details here furnished of struggles against episco[)al superintendence, lawsuits about lands, the evident enjoyment of adding house to house and field to field, and the not unfrequent internal