Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/459

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 451 dices, in which full descriptive references are given to manuscripts relating to the tourney preserved in the Bodleian Library (in the Ashmolean Collection) and at the British Museum. On all that relates to arms and armour and to the management of the tournament it is needless to say that Mr. Clephan speaks with authority, and on these technical subjects the volume will be an important work of reference. It is somewhat unfortunate that the actual descriptions of tournaments are frequently unequal in quality. Mr. Clephan refers to ' monkish chronicles, written in times not contemporaneous with the events they describe ' as ' usually unreliable in being coloured with the circumstances of a later age '. But medieval chroniclers, when not contemporary, commonly depended on those who were, and the original source is in many instances still available. Thus it is not necessary to cite Walsingham for the Little Battle of Chalons, when the fuller and contemporary — or nearly contemporary — narratives of Walter of Hemingburgh and Rishanger (the latter being the source used by Walsingham) are readily available. But medieval history is not one of the writer's strong points, and he is content to quote accounts of tournaments from Holinshed, where the original narratives of contemporaries might be easily consulted. A notable instance is the account of the jousts and round table at Windsor in 1344:, of which the strictly contemporary Murimuth gives a much fuller and better description. So also the fighting in the mines at Montereau in 1420 — it was hardly jousting — is given by Holinshed in an abbreviated form from that in The First English Life of Henry V. There are dis- cordant references to the combat between John Chalons and Louis de Buriell on pages 56 and 61 ; the true date seems to have been in 1449, and in any case Loys de Buriell or Beul cannot have been killed twice. Mr. Clephan is apparently not acquainted with Mr. Emery Walker's reproductions of John Rous's drawings of Richard earl of Warwick, which are much superior to those given by Strutt. The description of the tournament at the marriage of Arthur prince of Wales (p. 113) was printed in the Antiqiiarian Repertory, ii. 298, and there is also an interesting account of it in Chronicles of London, p. 251. C. L. Kingsfobd. The Red Register of King's Lynn. Transcribed by R. F. Isaacson. Edited by HoLCOMBE Ingleby. Vol. i. (King's Lynn : Thew, s.a.) The importance of making accessible, to students at least, the chief records of our older boroughs as early as possible is so great that Mr. Ingleby's apologies for publishing the Red Register of Lynn piecemeal, owing to war exigencies, are hardly needed. It is regrettable, no doubt, that, as it happens, we must wait for just that portion of the volume which, throws most light upon the municipal constitution of the town, but this cannot be helped. The present instalment contains, indeed, a certain amount of material bearing upon the method of selecting the burghal organs and their relation to the merchant gild. It also gives an earlier copy of the charter of Henry II to Oxford, whose privileges were bestowed upon Lynn in 1204, than that hitherto used, though not (as printed) an equally correct one. But any estimate of the value of the record for the historian G g 2