Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/18

10 houses to Shouldham Priory'. This assertion is repeated on p. 44 b, where we read that this Geoffrey 'had founded' that priory 'before 1201'. Mr. Rye attaches great importance to this London property, and tells us that 'This London holding of Hubert's, which passed to Eudo, … was probably a large one', and that Eudo, 'before the Conquest, held the church of St. Mary … called Niewechurch … and a stone house [sic] called Newchurch, which Eudo also gave to the Colchester monks'. He is evidently unacquainted with Dr. Armitage Robinson's notable appendix on 'the early charters of St. John's Abbey, Colchester', in which that eminent scholar not only accepts my conclusions but even finds it 'necessary to take a further step in the path of criticism which' I 'have marked out'. He deals in sweeping fashion with the Colchester charters, not only speaking of 'the Colchester fabricator' and 'the Colchester forgery', but even (as dean of Westminster) urging a wholesale falsification by the Colchester monks, who were intent on thus supporting the claims of their own house against those of his abbey! He holds that I have sufficiently exposed the charter of William Rufus 'as a forgery' and 'the forged charter of Bishop Richard'; but he boldly claims a longer list of these documents as impostures.

"St. John's, Colchester, … defended its claim by a forged charter of Will. II; a forged charter of Hen. I, dated 1119; a forged foundation deed of Eudo Dapifer; and, as we shall see, a forged charter of Richard, bishop of London."

The learned writer here adds a quotation from my own paper, namely that—

"One would hardly expect Eudo to describe as his antecessor Hubert de Rye, who was his father. Moreover, so far as I know, we have no other evidence of Eudo's father preceding him as a holder of lands in England."

It will be observed that this criticism directly affects Mr. Rye's assertion that Ash was granted (as his 'Chronicle' alleges) by King Edward to Hubert, who was also (he claims) holding London property before the Conquest.

The chief point of contention between the two abbeys seems to have been the London church of St. Mary Newchurch, afterwards known, it seems, as St. Mary Woolchurchhaw. The dean