Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/244

236 text is still unsatisfactory. The different editions present a variety of readings, and, since several editors do not state their sources, it is difficult to fix the relations of the various editions to one another and to the originals. The earliest printed edition is that in the second volume of Spelman's Concilia. This volume, although it passes under Spelman's name, was edited by Dugdale. Spelman died in 1641, two years after the publication of the first volume, when he had collected only a small quantity of material for the second. Dugdale, who took up the work only after some delay, did not prepare the second volume for publication until 1664. He contributed the greater portion of the contents through his own researches, but the ordinance of 1184 was among the documents left by Spelman, and so presumably we owe the text to him and not to Dugdale. The source of the edition in Spelman's Concilia is not named; and no subsequent editor of the ordinance specified a manuscript as his source until Riley, in 1860, edited the Liber Custumarum, which contains a copy. This compilation was written during the reign of Edward II, probably about 1310, and in 1328 it came into the possession of the city of London. Later it became divided into two parts, and one of these found its way into the Cottonian collection, where it now forms part of the volume numbered Claudius D. ii. Since this is the only manuscript mentioned by an editor and seems to be the earliest copy of the ordinance known to be extant, Riley's edition ought to have settled some of the difficulties of textual criticism. Unfortunately his text contains manifest corruptions, which are in part editorial. Just how far they are editorial, however, the reader cannot decide