198 The Earliest Charters of the Abbey of Lacock. 



attended the name " Locus Dei," which was proposed for Hinton 

 Charterhouse. 



APPENDIX A. 



The Book of Lacock. 



In Bowles' and Nichols' " Annals and Antiquities of Lacock 

 Abbey," reference is made to a " Liber de Lacock" which the writer 

 identifies with the Cottonian MS. Tiberius B, XIII., containing 

 the praises of Ela, the first Abbess, by Beatrice, described as 

 ministra de Lacoc (perhaps Beatrice of Kent, the second Abbess), 

 which was wholly destroyed in the disastrous fire of 1731. From 

 extracts, however, which were taken before this date it appears 

 that the " Liber de Lacok " is still extant, in the volume Vitellius 

 A. VIII. , which is still complete, though seriously damaged by the 

 fire. We owe this observation to Mr. W. H. St. John Hope (see vol. 

 xxxi. of this Magazine, p. 197). An examination of the volume 

 shows that the Annates of the house occupied the first part of the 

 book, having been (apparently) drawn up first about 1275, and ex- 

 tending as far as the year 1330 or thereabouts. Then follows the 

 narrative printed in the appendix to Bowles andNichols.of which the 

 Harleian MS. 5019, p. 231,/., seems to be a complete and fairly 

 accurate copy. The annals are afterwards resumed in a later hand 

 and carried down though largely illegible, to 1448, as stated in the 

 title, if not even later. The entries quoted (B. and N., p. 181) as ex- 

 tracted by Dugdale from this MS., are from the annalistic portion ; 

 the years, however, in the first two entries are placed ten years too 

 early, and the months in the last two are those of Easter (or Good 

 Friday) the date of which occupy the middle column of each page 

 notices of contemporary events being entered at the sides. It is 

 satisfactory to know of the continued existence, even in a damaged 

 condition, of a document which was supposed to have perished; but it 

 must be admitted, that, neither in the annalistic nor the narrative 

 portion,are the statements of the Book of Lacock to be implicitly relied 



