Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/130

 122 REVIEWS OF BOOKS January of the sources on which he drew, and of the extent to which he is used by subsequent chroniclers. Dr. Hagenmeyer describes fifteen manuscripts, eight of the first and seven of the second recension. Two manuscripts of the first recension belong to the British Museum. Of the second recension the Cambridge University Library possesses a copy which breaks off at the end of the year 1120, and may have been copied in Fulcher's lifetime. One of the problems to which Dr. Hagenmeyer has devoted special attention is that of distinguishing between the successive strata of Fulcher's work and determining the dates at which they were composed. He thinks that Fulcher began to write, and made considerable progress, in the year 1101, immediately after settling at Jerusalem. This is probable enough, though the hypothesis is hardly strengthened by an argument to the effect that Fulcher would not have blamed Stephen of Blois for leaving the siege of Antioch ^ if, at the time of writing, he had known of Stephen's second pilgrimage and glorious death (1102). The weakness of the argument is shown by the fact that Fulcher did not alter his verdict when he wrote his second recension, long after Stephen's death. There is better reason for thinking that Fulcher completed his original draft in the year 1105, and had then no intention of proceeding further. For at this point he delivers a valedictorj' address to his readers, apologizing for the defects of his style ; ^ and the text of the Historia which Guibert of Nogent used certainly broke off at this point. Fulcher's account of the years 1106-8 ' is short and perfunctory, as though it had been written some time after the events described. But the years 1109-13 * are fully treated, like the first five years of Baldwin I, and we seem to be dealing once more with a strictly contemporaneous narrative. After 1113 it would seem that Fulcher resumed his task spasmodically, at intervals of a few years. No wonder that a history so compiled should be conspicuously formless. The literary craft of the author did not ascend beyond the selection of epithets and the rounding of periods. He made a hit because he wrote of events which were fresh in his memory or in the memories of his friends, and because he had a knack of vivid description. His ability was not much more considerable than his technique. Unversed in war and statesmanship, he shows no real grasp of a political situation or a plan of campaign ; and, if he was a judge of character, which seems doubtful, he was too timid to express his opinions frankly. H. W. C. Davis. The Baronial Opposition to Edward II, its Character and Policy. By James Conway Davies. (Cambridge : University Press, 1918.) The reign of Edward II has attracted a good deal of attention in recent years. Mr. Davies suffers somewhat from the fact that he had already begun his work and got some way into it before Professor Tout's Place of Edward II in English History was published. The consequence of this is that the main thesis of the Baronial Opposition, the impotence of the opposition to control the machinery of government, had already been enforced in the first few. pages of the earlier work. Mr. Davies attacks the subject on somewhat different lines, and has made more use of the » I, c. 16. » II, c. 34. » II, cc. 35-9. « II, cc. 40-1.