Note 55 — Chapter I · YOUTH

Unless one so regard a speech which Ordericus (ii, p. 259) puts into the mouths of the rebel earls Roger of Hereford and Ralph of Norfolk in 1074: “Transmarinis conflictibus undique circumdatur, et non solum ab externis, sed etiam a sua prole impugnatur, et a propriis alumnis inter discrimina deseritur.” But this speech is probably a work of imagination on the part of Ordericus, and he seems here to have fallen into an anachronism. Cf. Le Prévost, in Ordericus, ii, p. 377, n. 1.