Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/33

1922 It has fallen chiefly to Freeman to deal with this legend of Eudo and his father Hubert de Rye. Others, however, when referring to it, have expressed a similar opinion: Mr. L. W. Vernon Harcourt, in 1907, printed from the Cottonian MS. part of what he termed 'the Colchester tract', as 'of very uncertain authority', and observed that, in it, 'the story of how Eudo acquired his office from Fitz-Osbern' is 'an obvious fabrication'; in the same year Mr. R. C. Fowler, of the Public Record Office, wrote of the Colchester story, that 'Much of this appears to be fiction'; lastly, in 1911, Dr. Armitage Robinson approached the question from another point of view, in an appendix to his Gilbert Crispin on 'the early charters of St. John's Abbey, Colchester'. His sweeping exposure of 'the Colchester forgery' and 'the Colchester fabricator', 'the compiler or compilers of these forgeries', suggests a probable origin for the Colchester legend, of which he only says that 'it is difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction in Eudo's story'. When, therefore, we seek to discover a probable date for the fabrication of the legend, we may perhaps find a clue in the late period suggested by Dr. Armitage Robinson for the forged Colchester charters. I gather that, in his opinion, 'the Colchester forgery', as he styles the charter of 1119, in its present form cannot be earlier than the fourteenth century. He points out that 'there can be no doubt that the Colchester fabricator had the so-called third charter of Edward the Confessor as his authority' when he concocted the charter to St. John's Abbey in its present form.

I would suggest that when Dr. Armitage Robinson arrives at his conclusion that 'the compiler or compilers of these [Colchester] forgeries must have had' access to genuine documents, which 'furnished the necessary historical setting', he supplies, however unintentionally, a possible clue to the method by which this legend was concocted. For instance, the introduction of William de Pont de l'Arche as in charge of the royal treasury at Winchester in 1087 was doubtless suggested by the fact that, at Stephen's accession (1135), an officer of the same name held the same office and played the same part as in the legend of Eudo. On the other hand, it is from William of Malmesbury,