Note 799 — APPENDICES.

So also Gneist: "Under Stephen, new comites appear to be created in great numbers, and with extended powers; but these pseudo-earls were deposed under Henry II." (Const. Hist., i. 140, note).

[800] Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 362. Hence the name of "fiscal earls," invented, I believe, by Dr. Stubbs. See also Addenda.

[801] See also Select Charters, p. 20.

[802] The error arises from a not unnatural, but mistaken, rendering of the Latin. The term "fiscus" was used at the time in the sense of Crown demesne. Thus Stephen claimed the treasures of Roger of Salisbury "quia eas tempore regis Henrici, avunculi et antecessoris sui, ex fisci regii redditibus Rogerius episcopus collegisset" (Will. Malms.). So, too, in the same reign, the Earl of Chester is suspected of treason, "quia regalium fiscorum redditus et castella, quæ violentur possederat reddere negligebat" (Gesta). This latter passage has been misunderstood, Miss Norgate, for instance, rendering it: "to pay his dues to the royal treasury." It means that the earl refused to surrender the Crown castles and estates which he had seized. Again, speaking of the accession of Henry of Essex's fief to the Crown demesne, William of Newburgh writes: "amplissimo autem patrimonio ejus fiscum auxit."

[803] Anno 1155. Under the year 1171 he records a searching investigation by Henry into the alienated demesnes in Normandy.

[804] The erroneous view is also found in a valuable essay on "The Crown Lands," by Mr. S. R. Bird, who writes: "It is true that extensive alienations of those lands [the demesne lands of the Crown] took place during the turbulent reign of Stephen, in order to enable that monarch to endow the new earldoms" (Antiquary, xiii. 160).

[805] The king's "second charter" to Geoffrey de Mandeville is not in point, for it was unconnected with his creation as earl, and was necessitated by the grants of the Empress.

[806] Const. Hist., i. 362.

[807] "As Stephen's earldoms are a matter of great constitutional importance, it is as well to give the dates and authorities" (Ibid., i. 362).

[808] There is a curious allusion to him in John of Salisbury's letters (ed. Giles, i. 174, 175) as "famosissimus ille tyrannus et ecclesiæ nostræ gravissimus persecutor, Willelmus de Ypra" (cf. pp. 129, 206 n., 213 n., 275 n.).

[809] A shadowy earldom of Cambridge, known to us only from an Inspeximus temp. Edward III., and a doubtful earldom of Worcestershire bestowed on the Count of Meulan, need not be considered here.

[810] Son of Richard de Clare, who, in Dr. Stubbs's list and elsewhere, is erroneously supposed to have been the first earl.

[811] The earliest mention of Patrick, as an earl, that I have yet found is in the Devizes charter of Henry (1149).

[812] In an interesting charter (transcribed in Lansdowne MS., 229, fol. 116b) of this Earl Baldwin as "Comes Exonie," granted at Carisbrooke, he speaks, "Ricardi de Redvers patris mei."

[813] I have shown (p. 95 n.) that William de Mohun was already an earl in June, 1141, though the Gesta assigns his creation to the siege of Winchester, later in the year.

[814] Buckingham is a most difficult and obscure title, and is only inserted here cavendi causa. Northampton, also, and Huntingdon are most troublesome titles, owing to the double set of earls with their conflicting claims, and the doubt as to their correct title.

[815] This view is not affected by the fact that two or even more counties (as in the case of Waltheof's earldom) might be, officially, linked together, for where this arrangement had lingered on, the group might (or might not) be treated as one county, as regarded the earl. Warwick and Leicester are an instance one way; Norfolk and Suffolk the other.

[816] Select Charters, pp. 20, 21. Cf. Early Plants., p. 37: "All property alienated from the Crown was to be resumed, especially the pensions on the Exchequer with which Stephen endowed his newly created earls."

[817] Const. Hist., i. 451.

[818] Ibid., i. 333, 334.

[819] Robert de Monte.

[820] Select Charters, p. 21.

[821] The chroniclers are positive on the point. At the opening of 1155, writes Gervase (i. 161), "Guillelmus de Ypre et omnes fere Flandrenses qui in Angliam confluxerant, indignationem et magnanimitatem novi regis metuentes, ab Anglia recesserunt." So, too, Fitz Stephen asserts that "infra tres primos menses coronationis regis Willelmus de Ypra violentus incubator Cantiæ cum lachrymis emigravit."

[822] Pipe-Rolls, 2 and 3 Hen. II. (published 1844).

[823] Compare also the moralizing of Ordericus on the death of William fitz Osbern (1071): "Ubi est Guillelmus Osberni filius, Herfordensis comes et Regis vicarius," etc.

[824] This is the date given for his death in the Tintern Chronicle (Monasticon, O.E., i. 725).

[825] "William of Salisbury" was a deceased magnate, but is mentioned by himself in the above passage because he was not an earl. As he is overlooked by genealogists, it may be well to explain who he was. He fought for the Empress at the siege of Winchester, where he was taken prisoner by the Earl of Hertford (Will. Malms., ed. Stubbs, ii. 587). He was also the "Willelmus ... civitatis Saresbiriæ præceptor ... et municeps" (Gesta, ed. Howlett, p. 96), who took part in the attack on Wilton nunnery in 1143, and "lento tandem cruciatu tortus interiit." This brings us to a document in the register of St. Osmund (i. 237), in which "Walterus, Edwardi vicecomitis filius, et Sibilla uxor mea et heres noster Comes Patricius" make a grant to the church of Salisbury "nominatim pro anima Willelmi filii nostri fratris comitis Patricii in restauramentum dampnorum quæ prænominatus filius noster Willelmus Sarum ecclesie fecerit." The paternity of William is thus established.

[826] I have never found him attesting any charter as an earl, though this does not, of course, prove that he never did so.

[827] Gesta (ed. Howlett), pp. 32, 73.

[828] Aumâle ("Albemarle") is notoriously a difficult title, as one of those of which the bearer enjoyed comital rank, though whether as a Norman count or as an English earl, it is, at first, difficult to decide. Eventually, of course, the dignity became an English earldom.

[829] Nor was it an earldom of Stephen's creation.

[830] It was granted at Northampton. Its date is of importance as proving that the charter to the Earl of Arundel, being attested by Hugh as earl, must be of later date. Mr. Eyton, however, oddly enough, reverses the order of the two (Itinerary of Henry II., pp. 2, 3). He was thus misled by an error in the witnesses to the Earl of Arundel's charter, which Foss had acutely detected and explained long before.