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Conference of Archæological Societies.

The second Congress of Archæological Societies in union with the Society of Antiquaries was held in London on July 15th. The Report of the Parish Registers and Records' Committee, and the subject of an Archæological Survey of England by counties or districts were discussed. It was announced that maps of Cumberland, Westmoreland and Surrey were in preparation, and it was hoped that one of Berkshire will shortly be undertaken. The question of the desirability of constructing models of ancient monuments was discussed at some length, and a fine series of such models, under the direction of the Inspector of Ancient Monuments, was exhibited. Several resolutions were passed and the Standing Committee appointed, consisting of: The Officers of the Society of Antiquaries; E. P. Loftus Brock, Esq., F.S.A.; Rev. J. C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A.; W. Cunningham, Esq., F. G.S.; Rev. P. H. Ditchfield; Chancellor Ferguson, F.S.A.; G. L. Gomme, Esq., F.S.A.; H. Gosselin, Esq.; R. Nevill, Esq., F.S.A.; G. Payne, Esq., F.S.A.; and Earl Percy, V.P.S.A.

Hurley.

(No. II.)

By Rev. F. T. Wethered, M.A.

on the

[ERRATUM.-On page 28 of the Journal for July, 1891, instead of (line 23) "because their wood aforesaid parties," (line 31) read " ground that you so wickedly ravage and destroy their forest without their (knowledge) and consent: wherefore I charge you and 'super feoda vestra' enjoin and warn you not to hinder them henceforth from their water or in their forest outside your hedges without the approval of the Prior or his Monks to take aught: albeit whatever for your own houses' dilapidations may be needful for you, and for your fences, I enjoin that you have what is needful for you with the approval of the Prior and his Monks."]

"Osmund the Good, Count of Seez in Normandy, afterwards Earl of Dorset, and Lord High Chancellor of England, and at last Bishop of Sarum consecrated (sic) this Church of Hurley A.D. 1086, and died December 4th, 1099, in the reign of William Rufus." So runs the legend on a metal plate, of modern date, fastened on to the outer wall of the old Refectory facing the Church. But there is no authority at all for fixing A.D. 1086 as the precise year in which the Church was consecrated--or, rather, dedicated. The Charter which I have lately had transcribed from the original in Westminster Abbey, makes it quite certain that the foundation of the Benedictine Monastery at Hurley, the endowment of the Church (by Tithes), and the Dedication of it to the Blessed Virgin Mary took place on one and the self same day : but, in Doomsday, which was completed in 1086 A.D., no mention whatever occurs of the existence of any monastery here; so that it is (as already pointed out by me in my last paper) quite sufficiently apparent that the dedication of Hurley Church did not take place until after Doomsday was finished; and whereas William the Conqueror, who had originally given the Manor to Geoffrey de Mandeville, died on September 9th, 1087, the date of the Hurley Charter was on some day either in 1086 (after Doomsday was complete), or in 1087 on some day previous to the death of King William I. There is nothing at all unusual in no date being affixed to ancient Charters.

And, then, another plate on the Refectory wall has the following inscription: "I, Maud, daughter of King Henry, and Governess of the English, do give and grant to Gaufred de Mandeville, for his service, and to his heirs after him hereditarily, the Earldom of Essex; and that he have the third penny of the Sheriff's Court, issuing out of all pleas as an Earl ought to receive from his country in all things. This is the antientist charter that Mr. Camden ever saw." Geoffrey II. here referred to was grandson to Geoffrey I. He was standard bearer of England in the times of the Empress Maud and of King Stephen he had a sister (Beatrice) and married Roesia, sister to Aubrey de Vere, first Earl of Oxford. This Geoffrey (II)* and his wife granted part of the revenues of their chaplain, &c., to Hurley; and William, their son, confirmed his father's gifts. Geoffrey (II) died at the siege of Burwell. On a stone mural slab (also affixed to the South wall of the Refectory) is cut the following: "The priory of St. Mary's, Hurley, founded in the reign of William the Conqueror, by Geoffrey de Mandeville and his wife Leceline A.D. 1086, a cell to Westminster." It will at once be evident that these inscriptions refer to two different members of the Mandeville family. It is uncertain as to the exact Magneville, Manneville or Mandeville in Normandy from which the founder of our Monastery took his name. It is popularly reported that, having greatly assisted the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, he received the Manor of Hurley from his Royal Patron in consideration of his chivalry; but the surmise that he fought at all at the battle of 1066 and received his manors for his prowess rests on no authority. It is true that a French Rhyme of the 14th century, apparently made from the Doomsday Survey, begins a list of the Norman Conquerors by

Maundeville et Daundeville

Ownfravigle et Downfrevile,

but this gives no real authority for the legend referred to. De Lisle puts down the family as from Manneville near Trevières, but it is thought on competent authority to be just as likely that the Manneville near S. Valery en Caux, just off the road to Dieppe, is the place of our founder's family origin, since that district contains several Doomsday names. Geoffrey, the elder, signs a fair amount of Charters, A.D. 1119 being probably the latest date of the signatures. He seems to have come in for a large share of lands which the Conqueror had annexed from the vanquished Saxons, viz., some forty manors in Essex; some twenty-six in Suffolk; some nineteen

* Geoffrey de M. (II) was the founder of Walden Abbey.

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in Hertfordshire; nine in Cambridgeshire; seven in Northamptonshire, and the same number in Middlesex; five in Berkshire; three in Oxfordshire; two in Warwickshire, and three in Surrey: he was, moreover, made Constable of the Tower of London by the Conqueror. In fact, our Benefactor was in clover. So that altogether his bounty to Hurley, as a feudal lord, is much discounted, when we come to total up his newly-acquired possessions. We must gather from the Hurley Charter that Geoffrey had a sincere and lasting affection for the memory of his first wife Athelais (“matris filiorum meorum jam defunctæ "). *He buried her in cloisters at Westminster Abbey, and mentions his intention of being buried there himself. Leceline, his second wife, was evidently a lady of much piety and, as the Charter relates to us, it was at her instance that her husband's gifts to Hurley were made. His gifts were conscience money. I am obliged to those antiquarians who have been good enough to assist me and to offer criticisms in connection with the Charter and its translation, which I now print. It has been done into English with great care and research from the abbreviated Latin, and the endeavour to make a faithful translation has led to much interesting enquiry on all sides. If the edition which I offer for the Journal is not accurate, it is certainly not owing to want of criticism from those competent to offer it; and I have no doubt as to the correctness of the results as they now appear.

The original manuscript from which the translation of the Hurley Charter was made (from a transcript taken last February) is in the Muniment Tower of Westminster Abbey, and it is to the courtesy of the Dean that I am indebted for permission to transcribe it.

The Hurley Charter also appears in the Walden Cartulary, which was very clearly copied for Abbot Pentelow in A.D. 1387. It contains seven other Charters to do with Hurley. Dugdale used the Walden M.S. for his Monasticon (ed. 1682, vol. I., p. 363; ed. 1846, vol. III., p. 433) when he printed his edition of Geoffrey the elder's Charter (and very badly he has done it, too).

Some philological difficulties are said to exist in the text of the Charter, but they do not appear to me as very great when they come to be investigated thoroughly. In the Westminster original, for example, words occur reciting our founder's careful thought of a yearly dole for the Hurley Convent (from the Isle of Ely and

*See Cotton MS., Faustina III., 281 verso. [Grant to Eye] "Ego Geoffridus de Magnâ villâ pro animâ meâ et pro animâ Athelays conjugis meæ in Claustro Sancti Petri sepultœ, qui etiam juxta eam sepeliendus sum, &c."

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from the hamlet of Mose, in Essex) as follows, viz. : 66 His enim addidi adhuc in insulâ de Hely, unam piscariam quæ reddit unum millearium et dimidium siccarum anguillarum et unum presentum anguillarum quadraginta videlicet grossas anguillas, &c." To this reading it has been objected that whereas Dugdale has printed "sticarum anguillarum," and whereas the expression "stiche anguillarum occurs frequently in Doomsday, this word ("sticarum ") is probably the correct rendering. A "stiche" of eels consisted of a lot of 25 (Halliwell's Dictionary). However, the Walden M.S. in the Harleian collection has "siccarum plainly enough, so that Dugdale must have misread the word. If it be objected that "dried eels" are remarkable as articles for food, the answer is that undoubtedly the common eel and the lamprey are often kept dried or smoked for winter consumption even now-a-days. Block, in his Natural History of Fishes, speaks of smoked eels; and Couch, in his work on British Fishes, speaks of dried conger-eels prepared in France. In the transcript which I have secured from the Westminster Manuscript-and which has been most carefully executed and certified by Messrs. Hardy and Page, Record Agents-the words are unquestionably "siccarum anguillarum" and "siccorum allecium." But the words which have provoked more criticism than any others in our Foundation Charter, from a philological point of view, are those which immediately follow the "dried eels!" viz., "et unum presentum anguillarum quadraginta videlicet grossas anguillas." It is objected that the word "presentum" is nonsense, and that in the Walden M.S. no "et" occurs before "unum"; and moreover that in the last-named M.S. valet occurs instead of "videlicet"; and so it has been suggested-whereas Dugdale, as a fact, reads "pesentum " (although both the Walden and Westminster M.S.S. have "presentum "), he having only seen the Walden M.S. (without the "et," and with "valet" instead of "videlicet ")-that this historian imagined that the clause was nothing more than a note," ," and that the word in the original might have been pesñt (?), and so connected it with pensa pensum (cf. the French "peser,"—or how the pondus becomes poids, and then drops) and so means a weight-equalling one hundredweight but varying as to pounds (ours being as high as 112 avoirdupois), but which perhaps may be found as low as 72, seldom the exact 100, &c., and 40 large eels-which would weigh probably (it is argued) 221⁄2 lbs. on the average-was to be the regulation-equivalent, i.e., "valet." However, for my own part, I have quite come to the conclusion that "et presentum videlicet the correct reading, and I can see no real difficulty at all in translat

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