Note o — Chapter IX · [a]

Mabillon, De Re Diplomaticâ, p. 55. Ordericus Vitalis, a more candid judge of our unfortunate ancestors than other contemporary annalists, says that the English were, at the Conquest, rude and almost illiterate, which he ascribes to the Danish invasion. Du Chesne, Hist. Norm. Script. p. 518. However, Ingulfus tells us that the library of Croyland contained above three hundred volumes, till the unfortunate fire that destroyed that abbey in 1091. Gale, XV Scriptores, t. i. 93. Such a library was very extraordinary in the eleventh century, and could not have been equalled for some ages afterwards. Ingulfus mentions at the same time a nadir, as he calls it, or planetarium, executed in various metals. This had been presented to abbot Turketul in the tenth century by a king of France, and was, I make no doubt, of Arabian or Greek manufacture.