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 446 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July With respect to the origin of the name Burford the author is of course correct in not deriving the Bureford of Domesday from the Beorforda of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Beorgeforda (Lat.). The name really affords another good example of the frequent contest for survival between beorh and burh. In this case beorh appears earliest ; but, as Domesday discovers Earl Alberic resident at Bureford with a mansio rendering five shillings, and also two mansiones near the church, it is likely the former may have been fortified and thus have favoured this later form of the name, which recurs in two charters of Stephen signed at Bureforde. Mr. Gretton would assign these latter to 1147-50 (cf. p. 159), and he gives as his reason (pp. 159-60) that before Robert earl of Gloucester's decease (1147) it was ' not very likely that Stephen would have been staying on one of Robert's manors when there was the royal domain of Wychwood close at hand '. But ' the unlikely ' is too often what historically happens. The charters in this case not merely assure us that this is so, but they show that the author might have dated the king's visit to Burford fully ten years earlier. For, first of all, they are witnessed by Roger le Poer the chancellor (who ceased to hold that office in 1139) and William Martel. Next, they are both addressed to Milo the Constable, as of Gloucester, not as earl of Hereford (25 July 1141), who abandoned Stephen in September 1139. The desired date may well be as early as 1136, in which year the king was twice at Oxford with all those officials. The volume contains a thorough account of Burford Priory and of the local topography, and the Civil Warfare and the Levellers there, together with some beautiful illustrations of the great church and of certain famous men and houses. St. Clair Baddeley. Documents illustrative of the Social and Economic History of the Danelaw. Edited by F. M. Stenton, M.A. (The British Academy. Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales, vol. v. London : Milford, 1920.) A collection of over 550 accurate transcripts of twelfth-century charters, all of them originals save two which were needed to round off a series, would form a notable addition to the printed materials for the Anglo- Norman period, even if they came from a more thoroughly feudalized region than that of the five Danish boroughs, to which, for good reasons, Professor Stenton has limited himself. Owing chiefly to the greater number of its religious foundations in that age, Lincolnshire claims a large majority of these deeds, though the rich stores of the dean and chapter of its cathedral have not been drawn upon except for occasional illustration in the notes. Apart from half a dozen Bodleian charters, the originals are all in the British Museum or the Public Record Office, and for the former at all events the collection is apparently exhaustive within its limits, the Harleian Charters being the chief source. Nothing that has been printed elsewhere is included. The editor has used the utmost care to give the most faithful reproduc- tion of his texts that is consistent with the extension of their contractions. Students of the sealing of early documents will find his descriptions, brief