Page:Old English Gospel of Nicodemus - Hulme 1904.djvu/6

6 included among the benefactions which Bishop Leofric made to the cathedral of Exeter at some time between 1050 and 1072 A.D. In the former year Leofric transferred the united "sees of Devon and Cornwall" to Exeter, and moved the episcopal seat from Crediton to the same place. But it by no means follows that the bishop also made the benefactions to St. Peter's in the same year - an assumption that Förster makes without sufficient warrant. It appears to me more likely that the transfer would be made within, say, two or three years of Leofric's death; about which time, we may also conclude, the memorandum or list of the benefactions was written. As Leofric lived twenty-two years after moving to Exeter - that is, until the year 1072 - we have a considerable margin within which the MS might have been produced. Earle, who prints the memorandum in its original OE. form, adds a few explanatory notes, in which he says, among other things:

A memorandum of this sort might be made either before or after the death of the benefactor: it would probably be not at any wide interval on either side of that event, which happened in 1072. Among the Exeter deeds is one by William A.D. 1069 granting to Leofric most of the lands named in this memorandum as Leofric's own benefaction.

Wanley gives the date of the MS as "circa tempus conquisitionis Angliae." But Skeat thinks Wanley's date is a little too late, and he assigns to it "the locality Exeter, and the date about A.D. 1050."

The fixing of a definite date for MS B is a still more difficult problem. In the matters of carelessness, corrupt word-forms, and hand the MS bears a rather striking similarity to those of the OE. version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies immediately preceding it in the codex. It is, however, impossible to determine from these meager data whether either MS belongs to the end of the eleventh