Note (return) — Gilbertus Anglicus (Gilbert of England)

The most recent biographers of Gilbert, however, Mr. C.L. Kingsford1, and the late Dr. Joseph Frank Payne2, after an apparently careful and independent investigation of his life, have reached conclusions which vary materially from each other and from those of the historians mentioned. Mr. Kingsford fixes the date of Gilbert at about 1250, while Dr. Payne reverts to the views of Bale and Pits and suggests as approximate figures for the birth and death of Gilbert the years 1170-80 to 1230. This discrepancy of twenty-five or thirty years between the views of two competent and unprejudiced investigators, as a mere question of erudition and interpretation, is perhaps scarcely worthy of prolonged discussion. But as both biographers argue from substantially the same data, the arguments reveal so many interesting and pertinent facts, and the numerous difficulties attending the interpretation of these facts, that some comparison of the different views of the biographers and some criticism of their varying conclusions may not be unwelcome.