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 324 THE DATING OF THE EARLY PIPE ROLLS July cxxxix). 1 This is the passage cited by M. Paul Meyer. Henry, according to the Histoire, had promised to the marshal that great heiress, Isabel de Clare, in May 1189, and Richard, on his father's death, ' lui confirma, gratuitement, le don de la demoiselle de Striguil 2 M. Meyer criticizes here the Histoire' s statement on the ground that ' nous savons que le Marechal eut a payer, en 1191, pour une partie au moins de ces biens, une somme de deux mille marcs '. Again (iii. 121 n.), we read : Stapleton dit que Gautier Giffard III etant mort sans enfants (1164), ses terres furent saisies par le roi Henri, mais que, plus tard, en 1191, Guillaume le Marechal paya au roi Kichard un droit de deux mille marcs pour la moitie de cet heritage, specialement pour les biens sis en Nor- mandie, qu'il recueillit du chef de sa femme, tandis que l'autre moitie, consistant en terres situees en Angleterre, allait a Richard de Clare, comte de Hertford. Although the facts of this transaction are by no means so clear as could be wished, they are here further complicated by assigning the above payment to ' 119.1 ' ; the Pipe Roll of 2 Richard I, which is cited for them, is that of Michaelmas 1190 (not of 1191) and records the accounts of the twelve months Michaelmas 1189-Michaelmas 1190. 3 M. Meyer is not the only scholar whom Stapleton has here misled ; in his able and valuable study on The Loss of Normandy (1913) Professor Powicke has referred three times to the division of the Giffard inheritance and has dated it in each case ' 1191 ' (pp. 446 n., 491, 502). Of Stapleton he has written, in his preface : ' I join with Mr. Round in admiration for that great antiquary ; ' but I hope that the singular persistence of the error which I have here traced to Stapleton may serve as a warning of the caution needed when absolute reliance is placed, without verification, on statements made by antiquaries who were, of course, but the pioneers of modern historical learning. I have shown above that Stapleton, having made his initial error, was at least consistent in repeating it in the case of other Pipe Rolls of Richard's reign. It was, however, M. Paul Meyer — for Stapleton does not mention it — who was responsible for assigning to a long and notable extract from the Formulare Anglicanum (no. cxlii) the date of 1199, 4 clearly on the ground 1 Stapleton must have derived this information, at that date, from the original roll. 2 Histoire, in. liv, lviii. 3 Stapleton does not actually speak of a Pipe Roll', but M. Paul Meyer {Histoire, iii. 121 n.) observes that his statement is found ' dans le role de la pipe pour la deuxieme annee du regne de Richard ', as indeed was obvious. I shall recur below to this passage. The payment is found, I believe, under Gloucestershire on the roll, on account of the marshal holding the ' Striguil ' fief. 4 'L'acte est de 1199 ' (p. 240 n.).