Page:Sussex Archaeological Collections, volume 6.djvu/21



one, learned or unlearned, has heard of the Roll of Battle Abbey, or has read of it in books. There is a vague opinion floating in society that there exists a list of the persons who accompanied William Duke of Normandy in the expedition which ended in the subjugation of Saxon England, prepared by the persons who presided over the monastery which the duke erected at this place as a memorial of the event, and that perpetual prayers might be offered for them, and especially for those who were slain in the battle. Others have been content with the notion that it is a list of families who became settled in England at the Conquest. But though warning has from time to time been given not to trust too implicitly to any thing which is presented to us as being the roll in question, people not inattentive to gentilitial inquiry, nor without something of the spirit of critical research, are heard to speak of such a roll as a document, a record, or at least a quasi record; a certain writing of very high antiquity and authority; as a last appeal, an authoritative decider of controversies, whenever a question is raised, whether this or that family is of Saxon origin, or to be classed amongst those, who, as the phrase usually runs, "came in with the Conqueror at the conquest of England."

I propose to make this supposed Roll the subject of inquiry, and to give a little more of definiteness to the ideas entertained concerning it than at present seems to prevail. And in this VI.