Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/107

 12 s.v. APRIL, i9i9.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

101

(Richard's general) and Berkeley, Earl of Nottingham, while their cousin Lord Stanley was Richmond's stepfather ; and the four cousins were, moreover, intimately con- nected with the ill-fated widow of Edward IV. Queen Elizabeth Woodville, whose first husband, the Lancastrian Sir John Grey, Lord Ferrers of Groby, was also cousin to Roger de Hardwycke, Norfolk, Nottingham, and Stanley, and who herself was once betrothed to Roger's nephew Jocelyn de Hardwycke. Of course, if it were shown that the chaplet of eglantine roses formed part of the crest before 1485 this theory would fail, and in any case it is only a hypothesis. PBIMA FACIE.

HENRY I.: A GLOUCESTER CHARTER.

(12 S. iv. 149, 223, 279; v. 16, 72.)

WE have now to consider the probable date of Henry I.'s notification of his confirmation of (1) Roger de Gloucester's gift of Coin Rogers, and (2) Henry's own gift of Ablode and Paygrave to the monks of Gloucester, addressed to Sampson, Bishop of Worcester, and Walter de Gloucester, Sheriff of Gloucester.

It is important to remember that here we have notified as MR. G. H. WHITE points out (ante, p. 73), a double confirmation of two transactions, apparently quite distinct the one from the other. I will call them for brevity's sake the Coin notification and the Ablode notification. The original grants are lost ; so also is the original of this combined notification. A copy of the Ablode and Paygrave grant, however, as MB. WHITE tells us, exists in the Gloucester -Cartulary.

Of this double-barrelled instrument of confirmation there exist three versions :

(1) That in the Gloucester Cartulary without witnesses.-

(2) That in the interpolated part of a single copy of William of Malmesbury's
 * Gesta,' with three witnesses.

(3) That said by MB. BADDELEY to be also in the Cambridge MS. with eight entirely different witnesses.

As to the date, at 12 S. iv. 149, 279, I advanced cogent argument for the view that this double notification synchronized with charter no. 3 in Round's ' Ancient Charters,' which that master shows to have passed as early as, but not earlier than, June, 1109 (9 Hen. I.).

It is curious, as MB. G. H. WHITE points out, that this date finds some corroboration in the Gloucester Cartulary, where the copy of Henry's grant of Ablode and Paygrave in exchange for the monks' garden is expressly stated to have passed " anno regni Regis Henrici ejusdem nono " (see ante, p. 18). Henry I. returned from Normandy early in 1109, and it may well be that the double notification, as above, may have passed in the regnal year 9 Hen. I. (Aug., 1109- Aug., 1110). I am far, how- ever, from asserting that it did, because &n entry in the Gloucester Cartulary (i. 69) and the interpolation in William of Malmes- bury both intimate that the King issued his double notification on the field of battle before Falaise, in the presence of the wounded knight, in 1105. The new element is this that the interpolator furnishes witnesses to this double notification, three in number, all of them Gloucestershire tenants, includ- ing Roger de Gloucester himself. Now that Roger died before Falaise I still think pro- bable, for the evidence, though not con- clusive, is very strong. Thus William of Malmesbury says, speaking of the King : " Multos ex carissimis amisit inter quos Rogerium de Glocestra probatum militeni in obsessione Falesii arcubalistse jactu in capite percussum." Orderic, MB. W T HITE informs me, is still more explicit, and states that Roger was slain. At the same time a leader always returns his " wounded " as well as his killed as " lost," and many a man reported as killed in action survives his wounds. My doubt is this : Did Roger de Gloucester survive to witness the King's double notification in Gloucestershire ? Consider

(1) Why should the dying knight have been harassed in 1105 over the Ablode notification, which had no possible con- nexion with his gift of Coin ?

(2) Why have we the Gloucester Cartu- lary and the interpolator both testifying that he was merely " graviter vulneratus " ? Had his headpiece saved him ? At any rjite, he was able to recognize his King, to give him the kiss of homage, and to en- sanguine the royal hand with gore (Stubbs's ' William of Malmesbury,' p. 521).

(3) How is it that we have Roger de Gloucester and two other Gloucestershire men, and only Gloucestershire men, attesting the double notification at all ? That these men may have tested Roger's lost original gift I could well believe. For instance, Hugh Parvus was probably of the knight's retinue.