By the Rev. J. Wilkinson. 329 
puzzling involution of the letters seems to have rendered the 
inscription no longer legible. The Monks therefore repeated it 
round the head! and right side margins of the stone, almost in full, 
in Lombardic characters. The interval of time between the original 
and the copy would seem to be 200 years. Mr. Bowles in his 
History of Lacock (or rather Mr. Nichols, who did all the real 
work in the book) is of opinion, that the name of the person com- 
memorated is different in the two inscriptions. He supposes it Z 
in the original, and T in the copy. Careful examination leads me 
to the conclusion that it is T in both, and that the apparent differ- 
ence in the original inscription solely arises from a slip of the tool 
{probably owing to the grain of the stone and the unskilfulness of 
the artist) in forming the lower part of the letter. 
Humphrey and Margaret de Bohun’s confirmation charter to 
Farleigh, to which Ilbertus de Chat is himself the first witness, 
set forth his “perplurima dona,” so justly commemorated in the 
epitaph. This charter also makes Ilbertus a contemporary with, 
and feudatory of Humfrey de Bohun, the second founder of Monk- 
ton Farleigh, and shows the date of this very ancient and curious 
monument to be about the latter half of the 12th century. His 
description de Chat he derived from a town in Normandy, near 
Carentan. 
The next notice we have of this property is in the Testa de Ne- 
vill or Liber feodorum,® about the middle of the 13th century. ‘The 
Prior of Ferley holds in Little Brocton a knight’s fee of the Earl 
of Sarum: and the Earl, of the King, of the honour? of Trowbridge.” 
Little Broughton is clearly the very appropriate name of Ilbertus’ 
1 The letters, Hic Jacet Ilbe, are now in the same straight line with the rest 
_ of the inscription, but their original position was clearly at the head; where 
they could, from the deep shade in which that part of the tomb lies at Lacock, 
have hardly been decyphered. ‘There does not seem to have been any other 
displacement. The left side of the tomb is against the wall, as, from the absence 
of any inscription there, it probably was at Farleigh. 
2p, 138. 
*« The seignory [of a lord superior, or lord paramount, who granted smaller 
manors to be holden of them] is frequently termed a honour, not a manor, 
especially if it hath belonged to an ancient feodal baron, or hath been at any 
_ time in the hands of the Crown.” Blackstone’s Commentaries. Vol ii. p. 90. 
