Henry, Henry II.'s son, in 1183. The book, in three parts, or decisions, is the most valuable and amusing medley of the legendary tales and superstitions of the Middle Ages.

His "Otia Imperialia."

In the "Otia Imperialia" of Gervase of Tilbury, written about the year 1211, there is much interesting illustration of the scientific knowledge of the educated laymen of that time, and of the history and geography of the Middle Ages. Of the traditions and popular superstitions of the beginning of the thirteenth century the book is a mine. It abounds in citations of ancient authors, and Gervase of Tilbury received, on this account, more than his due share of credit for learning, until it was lately pointed out by Herr Felix Liebrecht * that a very considerable number of his citations, and the greater part of his first book or 66 decision," had been taken from the "Historia Scholastica" of Petrus Comestor. He is careless, too, says Herr Liebrecht, in his use of second-hand quotations, and he never once mentions Comestor. Seeking reward of the Emperor, his patron, Gervase desired evidently to cheat his Majesty into a very high sense of his client's erudition. Nevertheless, he was remarkably well read for a layman of the beginning of the thirteenth century. But we care little now about his learning; the chief value of his book arising out of his credulous superstition, and the taste for mythology which made Ovid his favourite among the ancient poets. In the third decision, defined by Gervase as "containing marvels of each province-not all, but of each some "-he tells of the enchantments ascribed to Virgil at Naples, and gives

* "Des Gervasius von Tilbury Otia Imperialia. In Einer Auswahl neu herausgegeben und mit Anmerkungen begleitet von Felix Liebrecht" (Hanover, 1856). A book that gives, annotated in a scholarly way with copious illustrations out of European folk-lore, all that is most amusing in Gervase of Tilbury. Herr Liebrecht's book was dedicated to the late Sir G. C. Lewis.

accounts of werwolves, lamias, barnacle geese, and whatever else he had heard or read about that was most curious.

To Gervase of Tilbury has been ascribed a Dialogue on the Exchequer-Dialogus de Scaccario-of which the author is said, in the Red Book of the Exchequer written in the reign of Henry III., to have been the son of Nigel Bishop of Ely, Richard, successively Canon of London, Archdeacon of Ely, and Dean of Lincoln, High Treasurer by purchase in 1169, and Bishop of London in 1189, dying in 1198.*

Walter of

A Memoriale Fratris Walteri de Coventria" was found by Leland, and passed from his possession into that of Archbishop Parker, with whose MSS. it went to the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cam- Coventry. bridge. It is a small folio, in double columns, written at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, and is a compilation with omission and abridgment from Florence of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, Benedict of Peterborough, and Roger of Hoveden; but the annals from 1201 to 1205 are copied almost without change from a chronicle of the monastery of Barnwell, near Cambridge, which could hardly have been written later than 1227, and gives the earliest account of the last years of John.t

There is a weight of emphasis on every word, and an exactness of form in metrical speech that has commonly made the prophets versifiers, in this country rhymers. We shall hear how Archbishop Prophecy.

The Here

* The work is in the "History and Antiquities of the Exchequer of the Kings of England together with a correct copy of the Ancient Dialogue concerning the Exchequer, generally ascribed to Gervasius Tilburiensis," by Thomas Madox (London 1711); and a translation of it has been published.

"Walter of Coventry" was edited by Professor Stubbs in two volumes of the Rolls Series in 1872-73.

Aldred is represented as having troubled himself on his death-bed to express in the emphatic form of rhyme his prophecy of evil upon Baron Urse—a prophecy which, says historical tradition, was fulfilled. A strange bit of old English rhyming prophecy, preserved by Abbot Benedict, is said to have become active after the image of a hart was set up in 1189 by Ralph Fitzstephen over a house at Here, a royal vill that had been given to him by Henry II. There is no place in England named Here, and there is no place, I believe, with which it has yet been identified. But it may be that the name of the old Here survives in the present ancient village of Hever, formerly Heure,* on the bank of the River Eden in the Weald of Kent, where there is a Norman castle, built on the site of the old family mansion in the reign of Edward III., by William de Hevre (Heure), who then obtained a royal charter granting him right to embattle his mansion at Hever, and annexing right of free warren to his lands. It is the same Hever Castle in which Anne Boleyn was at home when Henry VIII. first saw her walking in its gardens. The castle was bought of the Hevre family by Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, grandfather of Anne.

prophecy itself connected with the hart set up at Here is an unsolved riddle, which is, I think, not insoluble. It is said by Abbot Benedict, who gives two versions, and the second as the more correct," to have been this:

66

"Whan thu ses in Here hert yreret

Then sulen Engles in three be ydelet :
That an sal into Yrland al to late waie

That other into Puille mid prude bileue

The thride in hire athen hert alle wreke y-dreghe."

* Hasted's "History of Kent," vol. i., p. 395. William de Heure had a moiety of this place, and was sheriff of the county in the second year of Edward I. But the family had originally taken its name from

a Heure (which looks like Norman for Here), near Northfleet.

But the last mysterious line Hoveden reports to have been

"The thridde into Air hahen herd all wreke y drechegen."

The date of the setting up the hart was that of the death of Henry II. and accession of Richard I., and the probable sense of the lines is: "When thou seest a hart reared up in Here, then shall the English people be divided into three parts: one shall go all too late into Ireland."There John, who was Lord, removed, at his brother Richard's accession to the English crown, the fighting John de Courcy from direction of affairs, and made him an enemy; while Richard's coming crusade, exciting the hopes of the Irish chiefs, caused them to patch up their own quarrels and agree on a combined rising, of which the most notable result was the destruction of the English army at Thurles. The results would have been serious to England if the insurgents had not again fallen out among themselves. Then the prophecy proceeds-"The other into Apulia, with profitable remaining."-On his way to the Holy Land, Richard remained at Messina, where, in a quarrel about his sister's dower, he extorted from Tancred, the last of the Norman kings of Sicily, forty thousand ounces of gold, and betrothed his nephew Arthur of Bretagne to Tancred's daughter. Then of the third division the prophecy adds "The third in their highest [?] oaths, all drawn to vengeance." That is to say, by their oath as Crusaders to avenge the desecration of the Holy Place by the infidel. The last line, as given by Hoveden, is a corruption. This is my own guess at the unsolved riddle of the last part of the Here Prophecy, and if not in every word right, it seems to give the true general sense.

CHAPTER VIII.

LAYAMON.

THE extent to which, by fusion of races, the formation of English had advanced in the reign of Henry II. is indicated by the reply of " Magister" to "Discipulus,"

Fusion of
Norman into
Saxon.

in the work named towards the close of the last chapter, the "Dialogue on the Exchequer "* to the question whether clandestine death should be imputed for the murder of an Englishman as of a Norman. "At the outset it was not, as you have heard ; but already by English and Norman cohabiting and taking wives from each other the nations are so thoroughly mixed that at this day it can hardly be discerned--I speak of the children-which is of English, which of Norman race; except only those ascribed to the soil, who are called villains, to whom. their lords do not give liberty to depart from their condition."

The change made by this time in the English language was one of development, not of disorganisation. There was loss of inflexion, and there was gradual enrichment of the vocabulary. John Selden compared our language to a garment full of patches various in colour and material. But the comparison misleads, for it implies rot and imperfect restoration. The true comparison would be to a house that, with the increasing wealth of its owner, becomes more and more suited to the uses and enjoyments of his life. Transition English retains the essential characters of First* Lib. I. cap. x. Quid Murdrum et quare sic dictum.