Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/163

 lawyers and statesmen of the day were not above the study of history may be proved by the later use of these and the like chronicles; especially when Stephen Langton produced the Charter of Henry I before the barons at S. Paul's, or when Edward I consulted all the cathedral and monastic chronicles of England in order to ascertain the true nature and extent of his claims over Scotland; or when Edward III elaborated his claim to France; or when the Commission of Doctors at Westminster searched all chronicles for information on the pedigree of the house of Lancaster; or when Beaufort and Gloucester explored them to ascertain the constitutional position of a regent; or when, to crown all, poor Henry VI, who probably was the best historical scholar in his divided realm, was requested by the lords of his parliament to search, out of the chronicles which he had loved so well, the materials by which they might come to the conclusion that he was a traitor and a usurper.

There have been, as I said, losses; but it may well be that the great value of the works that have survived may lead us somewhat to exaggerate the worth of those which have perished; the Antiocheis of Joseph of Exeter, the Trieolumnis of Bishop Richard, the de Prsestigiis Fortunse of Peter of Blois, the Liber Facetiarum of Gervase of Tilbury may not have been so permanently important as we should suppose; but there is no question of the serious importance of the lost leaves of the Gesta Stephani or the Draco Normannicus.

I have, you may observe, given prominence in this lecture to certain names and certain sorts of names. I have given them prominence because it was desirable, even at the risk of repetition, to impress them on the memory, even if it should prove impossible to form or fix any individual conception of them: they are the greatest names, and the names of those who have left the most precious books behind them. But they are very far from all; a reference to some such book as Mr. Wright's Biographia Britannica Literaria would furnish a long list of names of men who have places in the bibliographies; both historians, philosophers and naturalists, according to the idea of those days. If we turn,