Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/29

1922 of castle-guard Mr. Rye observes that I have 'kindly corresponded' with him on it, and, indeed, I have more than once spent much time on trying to explain it to him; but as he restricts what he terms his 'own independent researches' to 'Castle Guard service in Norfolk'—which, after all, is not England—he is, of course, 'not yet convinced' (p. 5). Of the nature of these researches I need only say that he has discovered on the Pipe Rolls that 'in 1158 the Knights of the Bishops [sic] of Norwich and of the Abbot of St. Edmund [sic] were actually paid for their castle-guard services'. This is so astounding a statement that we turn to his own extracts from the Pipe Rolls on p. 13, where we read:

"1157 [sic]. Allowed for payments to the king's knights who held the castle of Norwich—£51. 12. 0. (Pipe Roll, 4 Hen. II, 126.) Similarly £161 8s. was allowed to the king's knights who held the castle of Framingham [sic]."

The (printed) Pipe Roll (1158) shows (p. 126) that the latter sum should be £16 18s.—a very different figure. As for 'the bishops of Norwich and the abbot of St. Edmund', neither they nor their knights are here so much as mentioned; the alleged payment to them, 'in 1158', is but sheer invention on the part of Mr. Rye. Whether he is dealing with ancient or with modern names, Mr. Rye's utter carelessness is almost beyond belief. When Louis, son of King Philip Augustus, joined the English barons in 1216, Mr. Rye speaks of him as 'King Lewis'; in his chronological list of the 'Governors', &c., of Norwich Castle, he states that in '1362—Sir John Howard had a grant of the Constabulary and keeping of the Castle on 3 February, 1 Edward IV', but, on the opposite page, that in '1464—Sir John Howard was constituted Constable'. Mr. Freeman's critic is too negligent of a well-known historian of our own time to cite accurately even her name: in three successive paragraphs we read of 'Mr. F. Norgate', of 'F. Norgate', and of 'Miss