Page:Somerset Historical Essays.djvu/26

 Thus much for genuine privileges, which are such as we might expect. But just before this list comes a small section to the following effect:

Ancient Indulgence for Glastonbury in a charter without seal. Pope Eleutherius granted 10 years of Indulgence at the request of Phagan and Deruvian.

Pope Celestine granted 12 years at the request of St Patrick.

Item, SS. Phagan and Deruvian obtained 30 years. ¶ Torre.

We know whence these items come, and we are not surprised that no papal confirmation is claimed for them. We may even doubt whether the Charter of St Patrick which authorised them had seen the light at all in the lifetime of Pope Innocent III. Here at any rate is our earliest evidence of its existence. And this same document of 1247 mentions it again (p. 379), when under the heading Antiqua Privilegia it places by themselves the three great forgeries,

The great fire which consumed the abbey on St Urban's day, the 25th of May, 1184, was responsible for several wonderful discoveries at Glastonbury—among others the body of King Arthur. The sore distress of the monks under Bishop Savary's rule and their expensive efforts to regain their freedom after his death must have yet further quickened their imagination; and we may suppose that the 'very ancient writing', which St Patrick had providentially deposited in a safe hiding-place high up on the Tor, was a timely find for their empty purse.

Let us now draw together our reasons for thinking that William of Malmesbury had no knowledge of St Patrick's Charter, and that it was foisted into his work long after his death. In the first place we have seen that the third edition of his Gesta Regum, though it contains passages which appear in identical words in the De Antiquitate, makes no mention of the Charter or of any incidents for which the Charter is cited as an authority in this latter work in the form in which we now read it. Secondly, whereas the Charter gives the names of Phagan and Deruvian to the missionaries sent by Pope Eleutherus to K. Lucius, and these names now appear in those portions of the De Antiquitate which correspond to the insertions in