Page:Somerset Historical Essays.djvu/150

 learned that I had been working at the subject in connexion with the list of the Somerset archdeacons of the twelfth century, and had come to a conclusion opposite to his own, he most generously put all his notes and collations at my disposal; and since his death the Syndics of the University Library have kindly permitted me to have the use of them. Unfortunately Mr. Searle's theory, though his reasons for it were never stated with any fullness, has deterred modern historians from employing Peter's statements as evidence for the events of his time: indeed the index to the latest biography of K. Henry II does not even contain his name. It is true that some of the letters in the MSS are plainly not Peter's at all; but for the rest it is clear that one hand is at work, and I cannot think that the hand was not contemporary, or indeed not Peter's own. There are a few inconsistencies which are not easily to be explained away: but the text of the letters is in a deplorable condition, and it may be possible to show that more than one edition of the collection was put out by the writer himself. It is one man—a vain, ignorantly learned, hopelessly inaccurate man, it may be—but a very real man who speaks to us throughout; and on the whole the 'epistolary' Peter fits in wonderfully well with the 'historical' Peter, when the story has been rescued from the mistakes with which it has come to be disfigured.